Adventure Aquarium!

Last week, we had a fabulous outing to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ.  It was maybe not my best idea to go on Good Friday... since everyone else apparently had the same idea.  But, Grams and I persevered and the girls had a great time.

Here were the girls' top picks:


Kyra: Our KiKi JoJo went crazy for just about everything at the aquarium ("fish! pengin!  big!"), but her top picks seemed to be the penguins ("simming!"), the starfish ("I touch!") and the jellyfish ("fish!")... unlike Chloe, she did not really care for the fossil/skeleton displays that were scattered throughout ("tuttle scary!").  More on those in a minute...

Amber: Although Amber loved the animals, she told me her favorite part was playing in the kids' area.  There was a boat to drive, drums to play, and more.  She was giggling the whole time and really loved it.

 

Chloe: Chloe is our adventurous girl.  She said that her favorite part was the faux shark cage, where everyone steps into a cage and footage of a shark is played as if the shark is hitting your cage and swimming around and trying to bite you.  She also is crazy for the shark tunnel and likes to pet the stingrays.  This great photo was taken just as a stingray swam up and splashed Kyra and Amber.  Chloe loved it!

 Chloe was also wild for the Dinosaurs of the Deep exhibit which featured life size replicas of "prehistoric monsters."  We were a little confused at first that these replicas were sprinkled throughout the aquarium, rather than having everything in one exhibit area.  I actually thought that worked out really well.  As I mentioned, Kyra wasn't a fan of the fossil replicas, although she really liked the live-looking ones.  (We passed under one that was HUGE and she said, "ohhh." I responded, "It's so big, I can't believe it!"  She said, "So big... believe it!")  The fact that it was all spaced out made it easy to re-direct her if she saw something she didn't like.

Overall, it was a really terrific day - Mommy and Grams were suitably exhausted at the end.  :-)

Amber: On School Lessons

Mommy: Amber, what did you do at school today?

Amber: I just did my work and stuff.

Mommy: What did you do?

Amber: Worked on words.

Mommy: Any good words, like caterpillar?

Amber (looking from side to side nervously and whispering): Mommy, let's not talk about the words because they are inappropriate.

Mommy: What words could you have been writing that were inappropriate?

Amber (seriously): Poopie, butt...  Peepee.

Mommy (hysterically laughing and trying to breathe): Miss Kerri did NOT have you write poopie and butt and peepee.

Amber (vigorously nodding).

Kyra: On Getting Dressed

 

 

 

  

 

Kyra: Puppy. Ow-fit. Puppy. Wear it. Puppy. Woof-woof.

(A note from Mommy: Hey, man.  I said that the posts would be authentically their voices.  I didn't promise Shakespeare.)

A New Direction for a Philly Family

A note from Mommy:


As you can tell, it's been some time since I have updated this blog, which I once updated quite a bit.  Two things have happened which have kept me away:


1) I finally embraced the current decade and got a smart phone.  Now, I can upload the photos I take to Facebook as soon as I take them and I have found that EVERYONE is on the Facebook.


2) Another issue is related to these kids of mine.  I once took a great deal of fun (and hopefully, you then had a great deal of fun) developing voices for Chloe, Amber, and Kyra.  I imagined Chloe as the gal on the go with Amber as the sassy foil and Kyra the monkey in the works of everything either tried. 


But, they are getting older now.  And while Kyra IS often the monkey in the works of whatever they are trying to do, all three of them are developing their own voices... and it feels wrong to invent fake voices for them.  So I'm going to stop doing that. 


However, I don't want to walk away from this blog entirely (as I have for several months).  I have some new ideas... some ideas to bring those unique voices to the forefront of this blog.

Stay tuned.