Swimming with the Sharks

Annalise and Bryce have been out of school on Fall Break last week and this week.  They are missing school.  Annalise has been telling me she wants to go back to school and Bryce has said school bus on his communicator multiple times over the last couple of days.  I wish all the grades could be as fun as preschool and kindergarten!  

Since the older boys do not have Fall break until next week, I decided to take the little ones and do something fun with them.  Denise, our respite worker came along to help.  We decided to go the Sea Life Aquarium.  I hadn't ever been.  I found some discount tickets and off we went.  

Waiting for the aquarium to open.   

There is something very special about Bryce and sometimes something happens to prove that to me once again.   It happened with this fish at the aquarium.  This is a three section tank.  As we came up, this fish was rapidly swimming back and forth between all three sections.  There were kids all the way along the tank.  As we came up, he swam up and seemed to look right at Bryce.  He then turned and swam on down to the other end like he had been doing.  Then he came back.  Only this time he stayed.  He would swim a very short distance and then turn, come back to Bryce, hover for a bit and swim the short distance again.  I watched for quite a while as he did it.  I watched the fish and I watched Bryce.  I know it sounds weird, but I swear there was some kind of connection there, like they were communicating or something.  It went on for quite a while.  Other little kids were trying to get this fish's attention and he just kept "hanging out" with Bryce.  I watched for a while and then I got some video of it.  I will see if I can add that here a little later.  Odd, but very cool.  

This picture is a little dark, but in this area there was a big circle tank of fish all around the room.  Bryce loved it...Annalise was more interested in the little, green tables in the middle of the room. 

Feeding the stingrays.   

Bryce and Denise overlooking the stingray tank.   Bryce saw the stairs leading up here and really wanted to go up them.  He is like that with stairs.  Denise is such a good sport and carried him up so he could look over the edge.  

We went all the way through the aquarium and Bryce and Annalise just didn't want to leave.  Since we had an all day pass, we decided to go get some lunch and then go back through again.  While getting lunch, they noticed the carousel in the food court and of course wanted to ride.  So after lunch, we rode the carousel and then headed back to the aquarium.  The second time through Bryce's fish friend was sleeping up in the rocks so we didn't stay there long.  We did spend some time in the tide pool area where we got Bryce and Annalise out and let them touch the starfish and other animals in there.  Annalise loves water and did not want to leave that area.  Every tank we came to, she wanted to put her hands in. As we passed this area with the sharks, she kept saying that she wanted to swim with the sharks and the turtles!  She could not understand why I would not just let her go swimming!  Maybe someday she will get to swim with the sharks...or maybe she will settle for dolphins!