Aquarium, at age 4.5 and 2.5 (and 35.5)

How fun to take the girls to the Aquarium this year! If I keep organizing field trips there, I can keep getting us in for free. It was so fascinating and fun to watch the girls experience the Aquarium one year older than last time, and compare. They loved it! Things they were scared to try last year (like the tidal wave you can experience by standing under glass) they were excited by this year. Adessa was interested in everything, and so eager to point things out to Eliana and I. Eliana had a mental list of creatures she wanted to see, and while what we were seeing was great and she put up with Adessa showing her things, she was much more relaxed after we had seen: penguins, sea stars, turtles, an octopus, and a hermit crab. In that order, she was obsessed.

Posin' with Penguins! We saw them swim and preen. (They couldn't have had a more appreciative audience.)

Posin' in a Penguin Egg.

Trying to get a good picture in the clam shell. Adessa is finally posing for the camera, we'll have to wait another year for Eliana, perhaps.

An exhibit I could really stand by, the Potbellied Sea horse. I felt an instant kinship. That's seven months of baby in there! 8)

Playing in the kids area. It was so fun to see them have so much fun, eager and excited for each new display.* Fun!


*I was reminded that it won't always be this way- part of the school group that went were junior highers and high schoolers. The junior highers made a point to look bored and irritated with their parents, only livening up in the gift-shop, and the high schoolers were found in corners and stairwells where there were no fish or sea life to look at at all. I'm thankful for the age my girls are at right now, even if it comes with occasional stressful tantrums and frustrations (theirs and mine!)