where i am?

here i am!

hoo boy.  mix three small kids, christmas, holiday travel to visit family, internet connection acting up (fixed now- apparently you can’t use a wireless router for six years and expect it to keep working!) and what do you get?  a month without tsai family updates!  crazily enough, i STILL feel out of breath and trying to catch up.  our christmas tree is still languishing in our living room.  completely dried up but there it stands staring at me, judging me.  i did manage to take the ornaments off two days ago though.  but those are now hanging out in the hallway.

so where to pick up?  how about at the last entry i meant to do before the month slipped by.  i know it’s kinda depressing to post christmas pics weeks after the fact, but it’ll make the most sense to go in order and catch up that way.  ha ha, though it’ll probably be valentine’s day before i actually get caught up!

early in december, we met up with christine and her kids at the aquarium.  always a fun time in spite of the fact that her kids were all studious and engaged with learning while my kids were… running all over the place!    ahem.

joshie (he’ll always be joshie to me and he said he didn’t mind if i called him that!) was so nice to pick allie up so that she could see the sea slugs (correction: sea cucumbers).

inside the giant aquarium.  this is probably my kids’ favorite thing!

did i mention how nice it is to have bigger kids willing to pick up allie so she can see too?  this time kayla did the honors.

esther was working that day and was super nice to let us in before the aquarium was even open and spent all this time with the kids.  have i mentioned that esther’s the best?  well she is!

here they are looking at a mackerel’s underside before dissecting it.

fish guts.  ugh.  (heh heh, science has never been my strong suit).  but the kids and christine were totally into it!

funny kids.  and mikey wondering what kayla’s doing.

then we walked over to the dock to go fishing for plankton.

did we get anything?

hey look!  we caught a shrimp!

the boys getting a closer look.  they were quite happy to catch that shrimp.

back at the lab, mikey got an even closer look at the plankton they caught.

mother and daughter lovingly gazing at a sea slug.  (correction: sea cucumber).

lookit that teeny tiny sea star!  (i’m so glad that mikey isn’t as squeamish to touch things as i am!)

checking out the jellies.

once again, a great time was had by all!  THANK YOU, esther!!!    and THANK YOU christine, for driving all the way down again!