Georgia Aquarium

While we were in the Atlanta area for Christmas, we made sure to go to the Georgia Aquarium since the girls’ fondness for sea life has not died down.

Aside from thinking that the dolphin show was a little hokey, I was really impressed with the attraction. It had a lot to offer without being too big and it was easy to navigate.

We really enjoyed every exhibit and I ended up taking a lot of pictures so the girls could remember the experience later.

There were several variety of jelly fish, all of which were neat to watch.

There was this really neat tank that was suppose to mimic a reef close to the shore (I think). The waves would come in overhead and you could watch what that looked like from below. Mallory’s and Tessa’s expressions in the photo below is from watching the wave crash above (not sure what’s going on with Chelsea. ).

We also liked watching the tank with the sea horses.

They had just a few dolphins and beluga whales, both of which the girls were excited to see.

There were several interactive exhibits where you could touch stingrays, star fish, and other sea creatures. Mallory and I were the only ones interested in getting up close and personal.

The penguin exhibit was fun because they set it up like you were in their habitat.

My favorite area of the aquarium is their largest tank. It held huge manta rays, whale sharks and grouper. I was amazed by the sheer size of these fish. I could have sat and watched them hours. It was very soothing.

While beautiful, the Lion Fish are dangerous to humans and the waters along the East Coast.

There were even a couple of albino alligators.

Tessa is proving more and more how close she is getting to being a two year old.

She is getting more opinionated and made sure we knew that she did not want to be carried unless absolutely necessary. She really enjoyed the visit because every where we turned, she saw “hoo-ALES!” – her favorite. (whales = dolphins/whales/fish to her).

I’m so glad we got the chance to visit the Georgia Aquarium. It was time and money well spent.

Thanksgiving Break

This year we decided to take a little family vacation for our Thanksgiving break. The girls get the entire week off school and since I generally do not enjoy cooking, we thought an in-state trip would be something fun to do for the holiday.

We went to Sea World in San Antonio in August and the girls absolutely loved it. The tickets we bought in August were good for the rest of the year, so we decided another trip to Sea World would be a good idea. Since we used Jonathan’s hotel points, our main expenses were food and gas (it is 12 hours round trip for us).

When we went in August, it was crazy hot, practically unbearable, but we still had fun and drank a ton of water and lemonade. This time the weather was perfect and the park was not crowded at all.

For this trip, we spent two days at Sea World which means we fed the dolphins twice,

saw the dolphin and whale show twice

and the killer whale show twice. We also visited some of the other attractions there too, but the dolphins and whales are always our top priority. All three girls love the dolphins and whales. (Tessa has a little stuffed killer whale that she absolutely loves and “whoo-ale” was one of Tessa’s first words.)

The park has been promoting their new watermark Aquatica that’s scheduled to open next May. They had this small tank with baby (4 month old) sting rays that you could pet. Aquatic is going to be a water park with animal interaction. I am sure we will be back to see what it’s all about.

Mallory loves riding the little Shamu Express roller coaster and did so many times.

Chelsea even worked up the nerve to ride one time this visit.

Mallory willingly went with me on the The Journey to Atlantis ride which is part coaster part water ride but after we got off of it, she said it hurt her tummy and she didn’t like it one bit. Mallory and Chelsea liked watching the big ‘boat’ come down from the The Journey to Atlantis ride because it would almost splash them (they were hoping to get wet, but we wouldn’t let them).

Compared to when we went in August, this trip was a much different experience for Tessa. In August, Tessa (18 months) still wasn’t walking. She sat in the stroller nearly the whole time and was happy to be there.

This time, at 21 months and walking, she did not want to be in the stroller which meant both Mallory and Chelsea got to ride in it. I let her walk a good bit, but she is still extremely slow (and walks like she has had a few too many drinks), so I carried her most of the time.

The baby girl had a hard time by the end of the day because she can still take two naps a day but really does not nap well on the go.

However, all of that walking can wear a girl out and on one of the days at the park, she conked out in the stroller.

We changed hotels on Friday, the last night of our stay in S.A., and made our way into the city to stay on the Riverwalk to be near where the Christmas boat parade takes place along the river. We stayed an extra night in San Antonio because of the parade. There seemed to be a lot of hype for the parade and we thought it best to buy tickets ($15 each) so the girls could see and so we would not have to camp out to save spots on a bridge to watch it (access to get down to the Riverwalk was limited to those who had tickets).

The parade was not quite what we expected. Our high school homecoming floats were better than the boat “floats” in this parade.

Jonathan and I thought it was pretty lame but the girls seemed to enjoy it.

Just a block away from the Riverwalk down from our hotel, the Nutcracker was performing. Too bad we did not go to that instead!

After four days of fun, the girls slept well Friday night. It is funny to see how they sleep together, since they were in the same room as us (Tessa slept in our pack-n-play in a closed off part of the suite). You can see that Mallory is touching Chelsea with her hand and foot in her sleep. And you can see the big dolphins they got on their first trip in August and the smaller dolphin and whale they got on this trip. If Mallory becomes a marine biologist/marine animal trainer when she grows up, I would not be surprised.

Oddly, one of the things that the girls enjoyed the most on our trip was using the key card to open the hotel door and also pushing the buttons for the elevator. We practically had to assign the tasks at the beginning of each day to ensure it was fair for both girls.

On our way out of town, we drove by the Alamo. Luckily, I convinced Jonathan to stop and the bigger girls and I got out to take a couple of pictures while Jonathan drove around. Please pardon the comfy clothes and crazy hair of the girls; we were prepping for a six hour road trip. Also, I forgot to pack another shirt for Chelsea, so the shirt she is wearing is actually one of Tessa’s dresses. At least the pants match, even if the “shirt” doesn’t fit.  

Mallory was interested in seeing more of the Alamo (we talked about it the previous day), but we were ready to get back home and I know Chelsea and Tessa could have cared less, so we skipped the tour this time. I know we will be back to San Antonio before too long, so we will be sure to visit it then.

Halloween 2011

I know it is mid-November, but better late than never for a Halloween recap!

We had two princesses and a frog at our house for Halloween.

Our princesses had a fantastic time trick-or-treating with Jonathan around the neighborhood and collected a nice little selection of treats. Tessa helped them eat the treats they couldn’t have.

Chelsea was excited to be a purple princess, especially because of the hat. She is our candy girl and would happily eat skittles for breakfast.

Since our Halloween day was so busy, I didn’t get a chance to redo Mal’s hair from the morning before she went out trick-or-treating. We’ll call her look royally messy. As far as treats go, Mallory repeated her behavior from last year and picked pretzels as her first treat of choice.

Our frog did not get a nap on our busy Halloween day so she was ‘done’ before it was time to trick-or-treat. She went to bed shortly after we snapped pictures so I stayed home to hand out candy pretzels to the kids (and the occasional adult!) who came by.

If you hadn’t noticed already, we try to get the most out of our Halloween costumes, so they get passed down from year to year. At some point I’m guessing the younger girls will want to be more original than that. For the time being, they are happy with my suggestions.

Little Fish

The older girls took swimming lessons for the first time this summer. They attended a two-week/ten-day camp at AquaKids and loved every minute of it. As soon as they woke up in the morning, they would ask me, “how long until swimming?” to which I would reply, “ten hours.”

Chelsea was in the Three-1 class.

By the middle of the second week she could independently swim a couple of feet under water. That is a major accomplishment for a girl that doesn’t like to get her face wet. She can now also jump into the water, turn around and swim back to the edge of the pool on her own.

Mallory was in the Preschool-1 class and on day two was already swimming under water on her own.

By the end of the second week she could swim across the short width of the pool, independently take breaths while swimming, float on her back, back fin (swim on her back with baby kicks), and go down the big slide and swim to the side of the pool on her own.

We decided to break our newly introduced “one sport at a time” rule and the girls will take once-a-week swimming lessons in the fall in addition to gymnastics.

Mallory did so well in her lessons that she’ll move up two levels to Preschool-3.

 And Chelsea will be in the Three-2 class. Yay for swimming!

I better get busy

Via Flickr:
I have 16 potholders to finish binding in the next couple of days for the girls’ teachers end-of-year gifts (there are eight teachers between two of them). That’s a lot of corners to miter (64 to be exact)!