Seeing the Sea

Thanks to Mikayla's teacher, who gave us a coupon too good to resist, I was able to take the 2 oldest kids to the Long Beach Aquarium yesterday for the price of only one child. Will lovingly offered to take the baby to work and I resisted at first but was so glad I succumbed. The line to use the elevator was longer than any line I've seen at Disneyland!

We had so much fun looking at all the fish and even got to touch quite a few sea dwellers. Mikayla's personality allows her approximately 2 seconds per tank so, true to Mikayla form, her time per exhibit was a lot shorter than Tyler's. I had to constantly tell her to "stay with us please" to which she said, "aww, but I want to see something else." Here they are, so excited to start the day. Here is Tyler showing Mikayla the fish she couldn't possibly miss...the lovely fish kept the kids entertained by practically suffocating himself when he would breathe air and shoot out a stream of water. Spectacular, I tell ya. It made up for what he lacked in the looks department. These jellies were some of my favorites. I didn't use the flash for this exhibit. However, I did leave the flash on to take some aquatic photos only to see the sign at the end of the tunnel that stated using flash photography is prohibited. Luckily I didn't kill anything with the stunning light from the camera. Then we went to the Lorikeet exhibit. I just have to make mention of the fact that I haven't heard anything quite as loud as a cageful of Lorikeets at feeding time. My ears were ringing from the sound...oh, and I was ducking for cover after getting divebombed by several daredevils in need of a good time. One of the workers, after seeing my discomfort at getting a facial from bird feathers calmly announced in her best Disneyland voice, "don't worry, folks, they're amazing flyers and won't hit you. They just get really close" (chuckling to herself at the ignorant aquarium-goers actually nervous about the flying rockets. I being one of them). Thanks for the post-facial warning. We exited quickly afterward while Mikayla held her ears with her hands.
We then spent a little time climbing on the lifelike animals.
Oh, that crustacean looks a lot like Mikayla!
Here's a fun picture. I was noticing all of the holiday decor around the Aquarium and, after I took a second look at their snowflakes, realized they were made out of 6-pack plastic rings. Pretty creative, and ironic, if you ask me. I'm sure there was a message there.
Speaking of crustaceans, here is one that had to be mentioned due to its incredible ability to give me the chills...in a bad way. Not only does it look like a strange, hinged spider, the gills in the back move back and forth in a wave pattern. It's quite disgusting. It's called a horseshoe crab and it got my award for the least favorite animal to look at.
The touch pools were the highlight, for sure. I loved touching the soft and supple sea anemones. It brought back fond memories of the saltwater fishtank Will used to have...but then it brings back different memories of when one of them died. We'll save that story for a later date. I think even writing about it would make me shudder.
It was nice to be able to just relax with the kids and not worry about what time Lynnea needed to be fed. I did keep wondering what was missing...I kept looking around for the 3rd child who wasn't there. Habits are hard to break.