Something fishy

We took an unplanned field trip today. Or rather, we took a "My child threw up last night but he doesn't seem the least bit sick but I still probably shouldn't take him to Bible study" trip.

I went to bed thinking I was going to leave the house right after breakfast to spend the morning away from the house with my kids in their own classes and not come home until it was time for naps. So when I woke up and realized that was no longer my reality, I had to shift into emergency Entertain The Kids mode.

We opted for a morning at the aquarium. It was Levi's first time there outside the womb. He slept through it, and the other kids were none too thrilled at my suggestion of a family picture to commemorate the event. To be fair, it's hard to look at the camera when there are penguins swimming around behind you.

Caleb, as usual, was only interested in standing in front of the shark tank. It would have a been a tranquil scene were it not for his need to yell out the names of everything that swam by. "It's a saw shark! Look, a manta ray! Here comes a black tip reef shark! Whale sharks! Whale sharks! They're bigger than a bus!" (You get the idea.)

Abby insisted we explore the frog exhibit again, and was more than a little excited to find a goliath frog skeleton on display, just like the one she read about last week in her Tadpoles and Frogs book for science. The other visitors to the aquarium enjoyed the mini-lecture she gave. "Did you know this is the biggest frog in the world?" she asked the adults standing nearby. They didn't. "It can be as big as a cat," she went on. This was news to them. We dismissed her students, took her picture next to the skeleton and I promised her she could tell Daddy all about it later.

This membership to the aquarium has been worth every penny.