Tuesday, September 4, 2007

more about the aquarium

We're still talking about our great trip to the Mystic Aquarium last Friday. J drew one of his favorite parts, the Sea Lion show. Here is a portrait of each of the aquarium's California Sea Lions -- that's the 6 yr old on the left (I can't remember that one's name), "Coco" the 16 yr old is in the middle, and that's "Surfer" on the right, who is....I can't remeber! Somewhere in age between the other two. He also drew, above each Sea Lion, the trick they did that he liked best. The young one had jumped in the air to touch a white object suspended from the ceiling. Coco had picked out a shape on the wall and went to touch it with his nose (actually, they all did that, but I guess Coco was the most impressive in J's mind!), and he must have really liked Surfer, because he drew him doing two tricks -- spinning around on the floor, and swimming out to do a trick on the floating raft.

Here's what the show actually looked like from our seats. Not a great photo (my little camera phone doesn't like low-light situations, and if you add spotlights to the equation, it really confuses it!), but you can see that J's portrayal is pretty accurated. It was a cute show, but a little long for really young kids. J just ate it up, but Zoo Boy was ready to move on about half way through, so he and I got up to wander in the hall a bit while J finished watching the show.

Here's a penquin friend of ours, who was being quite cute and cuddly, coming over to visit at the edge of his enclosure where we were standing. After insisting all afternoon that we "hurry up all ready and go see the penguins", I lifted Zoo Boy to get a good look at this guy, and he said "Ok, I'm good, let's go see the sharks". So I didn't get a chance to find out what kind of penguin this was, or really anything else about him other than to snap a quick photo.

The kids had a good time crawling around in the "caves" built into the habitat walls. A lot of the aquarium is outdoors, which is nice on a good weather day. It was a little hot while we were there (and a little crowded -- I figured most kids would be back in school and it would be a good day to go -- I figured wrong!). We'd like to go back on a nicer day with less crowds to explore a little more thoroughly. Note to self, stay away from the Aquarium during the summer!

Can't resist throwing in a photo of some of the Parakeets in the Birds of the Outback exhibit. I have to admit, I've become a pretty big Budgie fan since our own Fruity Flock of Four joined us. The kids too. I guess we're just a bunch of bird brains!

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