beehive state adventures: part 9: heeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy!

yesterday morning was special. we went to the living planet aquarium:

everyone started out so happy to see the aquatic creatures:

we even got there in time for the feeding of the archer fish:

plus the aquarium now has penguins! here's a video of the archer fish eating krill and the penguins:

pretty cool, eh?

we continued wandering through the exhibits:

eventually things began to unravel:

lucy and hazel crawled through a tunnel:

and began fighting over who got to look at the small tank of fish. lucy didn't want to share and decided to block the tunnel:

what followed was noisy: reproofs, tears, squeals of despair and a time out on the bench:

once the tempers had cooled we moved on:

the end.

beehive state adventures: part 8: rollin' rollin' rollin' coming soon... (yes. i know 8 should come before 9 but i'm still working on it. be patient)

heeeere fishy fishy fishy!

i have a serious problem. i post too many pictures. i can't help it. really. i try so hard to narrow it down but i can't fight this need to show you, sweet readers, each facial expression i find charming/funny/cute, every mundane/entertaining act, and all things of mischief accomplished on any given outing. to sum up: i'm a mom. a mom that knows thinks her kids are the best at everything. with that out of the way, let us proceed to the subject of this extremely lengthy post.

on saturday we went to the downtown aquarium. we've started a reward system for hazel (and lucy too, though she doesn't really get it yet). she does simple chores, i.e. putting her shoes away, brushing her teeth, picking up her room, etc. and she gets stickers. this week she earned enough stickers to go to the aquarium:

i've been once before and while it was fun, i decided it was overpriced. luckily, i got a buy one ticket get one free coupon at one of my races, making it a lot more reasonable. well, we bought our tickets, went inside (it was blazing hot outside), and saw some huge, somewhat freaky eels:

and just as grant was about to complain that this was the smallest aquarium he'd ever seen, i realized we'd walked into the restaurant. outside, we wandered around trying to find the proper entrance:

back in an air conditioned building, we meandered our way through this mystical place:

spotting rare and beautiful creatures:

and forging bonds with fearsome beasts:

lucy and hazel each became deep sea explorers:

(true story: i nearly had to wrestle a teenage girl away from this thing so i could get a picture of hazel in it. the teenager's grandparents and bff were taking copious pictures with every digital device they owned. when she finally stepped down and hazel made her way up, the pampered princess found someone who hadn't taken a picture yet and stalked off with a scowl when she saw hazel on her self-proclaimed throne.) mr. big spender showed up again to the girls' delight:

our explorer status was not enough to help us bypass the huge line to the shark train. so we were obliged to wait ages before boarding:

the sharks were menacing (and difficult to get clear pictures of). hazel was entranced:

we moved onto the ferris wheel, hoping to feel a breeze that would cool us down:

view to the south (i think):

and to the north:

ahh, houston... the final acts of our valiant explorers were the taming of a tiger shark:

and abnormally large seahorse:

{yesterday}

i did this:

before:

about to start:

and 34 minutes, 3 seconds later:

don't mind the sick look on my face. i thought for a minute i was going to lose the little breakfast i had eaten but luckily for that volunteer cutting off my timing chip, i didn't. and the rain was much appreciated. no, really, it felt good.

p.s. i'm grover.

a day at the aquarium

yesterday we went to the aquarium downtown. it was fun but overpriced, so i probably won't do it again, at least not for a couple of years. the pictures are in reverse order, but it doesn't really matter. the view from the ferris wheel
on the ferris wheel. lucy and i enjoyed it.

kandice was a little scared of the height, but wasn't too mad when i kept shaking the basket-thing. hazel had fun too.

lucy chilled most of the time in the stroller.

kandice was nice enough to take hazel on the carousel. hazel had fun going around and around.

we had to pose by the cheesy tiger statue at the end. hazel was pretty nervous when i first got up there, but she calmed down long enough to take a picture.

grrrrrrrr.

hazel, pointing out a 'dory'.

hazel had fun putting her hands in the water until the stingrays came near.

these poison dart frogs were so cute. they were jumping all over the place. hazel enjoyed watching them.

kandice, finding her frog-prince.

hazel liked looking at everything. she had a blast on the shark voyage train ride. unfortunately my camera's batteries ran out right before we got on. it took us through a tunnel of sharks. it was pretty cool.

*just for those who had a difficult night, we weren't able to post our monday night flashback. but do not despair, dear readers, we will be posting a beautiful memory tonight to make up for yesterday. it's going to be magical....