Fun at the Aquarium!

On Friday afternoon, Tootsie, Pop, Granny, Grandpa, Mark, Turner, and I loaded up and headed over to Atlanta for the evening. We enjoyed some good food and good shopping (why have I never been to The Container Store before now?) and attempted to get a good night's rest before our visit to the Aquarium the next morning.  We followed Holly's advice and spent the night, allowing us to be there when it opened at 9am.  We were so glad we did this - there was no line if you had purchased tickets online and it wasn't crowded at all.  Turner made it about 2.5 hours before the excitement turned to exhaustion, but she absolutely had a BLAST!!  Also, the new penguin exhibit wasn't open when I went on a field trip two years ago, so if you haven't seen that scroll down to see pics and get an idea of that new addition - it was really neat!

This is the penguin exhibit - you can look from a normal point of view, or you can actually crawl through a tunnel and stand in a special plastic encased area and view from the "inside out".  See pics below - WAY cool. This is us as we crawled through the tunnel.

This is us standing in the enclosure area (there were a couple of these areas) and you can sort of see the penguins basically walking around in front of our faces. 

Turner has never been to a movie, so we weren't sure how she would do in the 4-D movie.  She didn't really want to wear the glasses, so of course I am sure she was confused as to why it was blurry!  But, considering she doesn't like loud noises and it was fairly loud...she did really well!

Mark and I are both a little obsessed with the movie JAWS.  (Like, we are sitting here as I type watching the July 4th marathon!)  But, I watched it so much as a kid I was convinced that a shark was going to burst through the light in our pool and eat me while I swam.  Paranoid...yes.  I so don't want Turner to have that irrational fear!  At this particular tank, there were lots of sharks and Turner was completely fascinated!

This enormous manta ray was beautifully flipping and twisting and turning through the water - almost like a dance.  And obviously Turner was captivated, because late last night as I was tucking her in she asked me, "Mommy...what do you call that thing?  That thing that was flipping in the water?" 

After our busy morning, we headed to the Varsity for some greasy hot dogs and hamburgers before we headed back to Auburn!  We consider ourselves incredibly blessed that my parents and Mark's parents really enjoy spending time together.  It has been that way since we married and it's always great fun when we can all spend time as one happy family.  But, we have also learned that with 4 grandparents to entertain, Turner can get quite silly.  You'll notice that it's both of the grandmothers who are teaching her things like how to blow the paper off straws and who are making funny faces with her.  :) 

The pictures tell the story - we had a wonderful trip to the Aquarium!