pictures, part 2

so phil joined us in our new home thursday evening (hard to believe that this all happened three weeks ago already!) and esther and eugene invited us to visit the cabrillo marine aquarium the next day.  we got to go before the aquarium opened and esther gave us a private tour.  it was so cool!  and so cool to see how much esther loves her job working with the marine animals and teaching kids all about them.  she did such a great job with mikey that he felt brave enough to touch some of the animals.

i don’t remember the name of this spiky little fellow…

 

but mikey held him all by himself!

 

pretty sea stars.  are these not also called starfish?  have i been mistaken all these years?

 

here’s esther showing mikey the underside of a sea star.

 

then they moved on to to a bigger one.

 

allie was fascinated as well!

 

mikey got mighty comfy with esther mighty fast!  here they are watching these fish get their breakfast.

 

doesn’t this look like the lab of some mad scientist?  and hey, is that a sea monkey tank in the bottom right hand corner?

 

there was lots to see and many different areas to visit.  we were in a classroom where esther was showing us this gross fish (was it even a fish?) that oozed out slime when it was touched (or was it when exposed to light?).

 

then eugene reached over to pull out even more slime!  mikey wasn’t too keen on touching the slime.  i wasn’t either. 

 

finally, we got to hatch grunion eggs.  that was so cool too!

 

you can kinda see the little white eggs in this jar.

 

after swirling the water around in the jar, the eggs hatch!  see the tiny little grunions?

 

the next weekend, phil and i took the kiddos to the beach.  not sure when we’ll do it again since it ended up being pretty messy with the kids getting covered with sand.  there’s still sand in our minivan now to remind us of how messy it was!

here’s allie all dressed in her new swimsuit and hit the beach!

 

making our way down to the water…

 

here comes the wave!

 

my little adventurous girl loved walking around as the waves came in and kept wanting to go deeper into the water!

 

and look who built a sand pyramid complete with a moat around it?

 

heh heh, just kidding.  she had help. 

 

like i said, sand got EVERYWHERE.  allie even ate a mouthful of it.

 

it’s been fun (aside from the unpacking) getting settled in to our new home.  and a BIG thanks to esther for the wonderful time we had at the aquarium!