A couple of weekends ago, we traveled to Dallas to attend Josh's brother Ian's wedding. We knew we wouldn't have a lot of time in the big city, so we left late Thursday night after work. By late Thursday night, I mean, it was 7:30 PM. It takes 6+ hours to get to Ed's house, so it was a LOOONNNGG trip. Eli was fabulous and watched a movie for a little bit and then crashed for the remainder of the trip around 8:30. Josh is a machine fueled by Red Bull enegery drinks, so he drove like a champion. I tried to be a good traveling companion and stay awake for him, but in order to do that, I had to find creative ways to stay awake...enter SHAZAM :) That iPhone app entertained me for about a solid hour! I discovered that not only did it give you the artist's name and the album, but it also listed the lyrics for the songs. I was in karoke heaven! I got to be the rapper I've always dreamed of being thanks to that handy dandy little app :) It's the little things in life, folks...
We made it to Ed's house around 2AM Friday morning, and after sleeping in till around 8:30 AM, we made plans for our day. The first plan was coffee, lots and lots of coffee. Once we had our caffeine, we talked about what we wanted to do the rest of the day. Ed suggested taking Eli to the Dallas World Aquarium. It sounded like a wonderful idea to me, especially since the weather was kind of yucky that day. We had a quick lunch at Chipotle (LOVE that place!) and then made our way to the aquarium.
The second part of the aquarium had several exhibits dedicated to reptiles. They had a HUGE crocodile, some turtles, snakes, and some lizards.
Eli's favorite part was being able to touch the touch screen computers at each exhibit. He didn't necessarily read anything; he was just happy to touch buttons and watch the screen change :)
The next part of the aquarium was dedicated to ocean life. This was my favorite part of the aquarium! We first stopped to say hi to two manatees. I've always wanted to see a manatee and now I can say I have. Eli found them as intriguing as I did. I think we could have sat in front of that tank all afternoon watching those two manatees swim back and forth.
After the manatees, we went around to a few of the other tanks full of brightly colored sea creatures. Eli and Daddy found Nemo and Doree.
We saw some jellyfish or "squishies", as Doree called them.
We saw some very interesting sea dragons.
We spotted a human fish :)
We oohed and ahhed over all the colorful anemones.
We saw a couple of starfish just hanging out.
We saw an octopus scurry along the "ocean" floor and then watched him climb the side of the tank.
And, we saw a GIANT crab that looked like he was ready to fight.
Then we went to the shark tunnel. That was so awesome! I would have loved to have stayed in the tunnel longer than we did, but it was kind of crowded and noisy.
We saw so many interesting sharks though, and I was very thankful for that wall of glass separating us.
After our shark experience, we went outside to see the penguin exhibit. I'd never seen a penguin before in person, so I was pretty excited to watch these cute, little guys. While we were waiting to see if the penguins were going to dive in for a swim, my boys made funny faces for me. They make me laugh :)
It took awhile, but eventually all the penguins jumped in the water. All the visitors at the zoo clapped when they finally took the plunge! These guys may be clumsy and awkward on land, but they are super fast in the water. It was neat watching them swim all around.
Ed bought Eli a book about penguins to remember his trip to the aquarium, and before we left, Eli had to take Grandpa E back to see the sharks.
It was such a fun day at the aquarium! Thanks, Grandpa E, for making a memory with us!
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