Thursday of our stay was pretty amazingly full! We wanted to stop and see the aquarium that we'd spent the last four days passing, and it did not disappoint! There was so much to see and do, we were exhausted by the end of the day, but so very happy!
Before we headed out for the day, I walked past the bathroom to see Grandma giving Evie a makeover/makeup tutorial. It was fun to see them interact and know how fast Evie is growing up!
One of my favorite features were these suspended chandelier fishbowls when we entered the aquarium. Such a big wow-factor!
Checking out some fresh water fish.
These fish were so big!
My favorite part of this photo is Lizzie's face. I'm not even sure I know what they were looking at...some bug or other?
Trying to get a sloth to wave back was uninspiring.
We loved the touch pool! Anemones are pretty neat.
There was a ray pool, and we spent a lot of time here.
Evie was like the ray-whisperer...they kept coming up to her and splashing above the surface.
Lizzie getting some hands-on time.
After the rays, we had some pizza and brownies for lunch, giving ourselves a good break. Right next to the cafeteria was a little room that I first thought would be glanced at and passed over, but ended up being one of the most fun hours we spent at the aquarium!
There was a chalkboard for doodling. (Lizzie drew the sea-star, Evie wrote 'have fun', and I did the kelp and fish on the right side.)
Aaron and the boys worked hard on a big smiley face on the giant light-bright board.
All that was cool, but THIS was the coolest part of the kid room! At first, we thought it was just a video wall, but after a few minutes of watching a few other kids there, we realized that they were coloring some fish pages, then scanning them in. The colored fish appeared in the virtual fish tank!! It was incredibly cool to design our own fish and watch them swim around!
Evie demonstrated how to 'put a fish in the tank'.
Carson designed this blowfish.
This is Evie's amazing sea star. So colorful!
Grandma made one for Grandpa, then made another so the word would be right side up.
Lizzie's swirl-covered sea lion was fun!
Terribly dark on me, can't even see the fish I was going for, but MY fish was in there somewhere.
After finally getting everyone out of the virtual fish tank room, we played at a water table for another while. It was clear this was an excellent, hands-on aquarium!
All of those things above were on the upper level of the aquarium. The escalator down was really neat, with cool lighting and at the bottom, we went through a tunnel aquarium with sharks swimming overhead.
Some of the lighting was just really neat!
Looking at some itty-bitty seahorses.
The walking fish was so goofy to see! It's such an awkward, ugly thing, but it gets around by walking on the ocean floor.
The last big thing we did in the aquarium was a circular 'ride' where we sat in a small stadium while four different aquariums went around us.
We saw happy sea lions and seals.
Sharks were a big hit.
Rays have such a funny face!
There was a huge tube aquarium full of opaque jellyfish. So neat!
One last look at some coral before heading out to do other fun things. We seriously spent five hours in this giant aquarium building! And the fun didn't stop there! After this, we still did some bumper boats, had delicious ice cream, and did laser and mirror mazes. Check out how fun that was in the next post!
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