Same Whale, Different Day

Yeah, I'm cranky and wanted to name that "same shit, different day" but I put on my smile and we took the kids to the Mystic Aquarium. First let me gripe. How the heck does that tiny aquarium get away with charging $28 for adult admission? This is NOT the Boston or Baltimore Aquarium (worth every penny) and sooo not Sea World (also worth every expensive penny). They don't have dolphins anymore. What the heck? Last time we went they *did* have dolphins and a show, but unfortunately the dolphins were dumb... OK, they weren't dumb, but they were "in the process of training" ... guess they never got trained because they weren't there anymore, lol. Last time we sat for the dolphin show, and I must admit it was amusing *not* because the dolphins were amazing and did super jumps through hoops like the ones at big aquariums, but because they didn't listen at all, which is probably better for the dolphins and pretty funny to watch . The show had us cracking up at least, not in amazement of their wonderful tricks, but just because those un-trained dolphins were cool and funny, and certainly had minds of their own. They would ask a dolphin to go through a hoop and instead it would swim away and go over and soak the audience on purpose with a good splash, which it thought was funny (I don't speak dolphin, but I know it thought it was funny, and it was), then go try to get it's reward fish anyway for *not* jumping through the hoop, and have a little dolphin tantrum when it didn't get that fish... then it would randomly do high jumps or just grab the hoop and swim away with it. Instead of fetching the balls and bringing them back, the dolphins would play ball with each other, and actually accidentaly flipped it in to the audience. They did some cool stuff... but it was their own cool stuff, certainly not "trained dolphin" stuff. I liked those "dumb" dolphins... refusing to jump through hoops and then hopping through them when they weren't supposed to, or just taking the hoop and bringing it for a swim. (That's of course what I want to do when I'm supposed to jump through hoops in life, so you can see why I liked those dolphins!l) At any rate they are gone and there was some "sea lion training session" show we missed. I doubt we missed much. The place is tiny and you have to go around it three times to make an afternoon out of it.

OK, now that I'm done with my whining about the stupid little aquarium's prices and lack of dolphins, I will share the good parts. The twinkies were *thrilled* beyond belief to see all the fish - especiallly the brightly colored rainbow fish, sea lions, the deadly blue frogs (you wanna confuse a two year old show them a BLUE frog:-) and of course, the same old whale. (They haven't been to Sea World for comparison, and they didn't pay... they just had a blast). Their excitement was infectious and I had a good time despite myself. It wasn't too hot or too cold, they pretty much all behaved, and well... we managed to do *something* with all 6 of us which isn't easy. There just aren't too many things that appeal to all the kids - an 11 year old, a 7 year old, and 2 year olds (one autistic) - and the aquarium fit. I WANT to go to Disney, which also is a fun time for people of all ages, but we're just dreaming about that and saving for someday... it always gets put off by all those pesky bills.

Anyway, here's the last time we visited the old whale:

And here is the same whale on Saturday:



The whale is pretty darn cool, I have to admit. It swims around in circles, and *always* goes right by the window to say "hi" to the visitors. The poor thing has probably been swimming the same small circle for God knows how many years, because as far back as I can remember that small whale has always been swimming in that small tank (can you say "Save Willy"?.. although I don't know this particular whale's name). Anyway, if you knock on the tank, the whale swims by and says "hi" which the kids love. Not sure how much the whale loves it, but I've got bigger things in life to worry about.

Now on to other pictures. We got a super high speed camera (my digital just takes forever to snap a second picture after the first). This new gadget, given to Chris by a good friend, can snap more than 60 pictures in a minute. We have NOT EVER gotten a single picture with all four kids even looking at the camera at once, let alone smiling, and we thought *maybe, just maybe* if we had a camera fast enough, we might be able to catch one of those pictures. No joke, this camera took seven HUNDRED pictures of the kids in front of this blue photo wall the aquarium has... yes, 700... and nope, not one with all looking and smiling... we shall try again later... or just photoshop them together and pretend we finally got one. At least the kids got new tye-dyes out of the deal... gotta love the tye-dye




And then, about 45 seconds later... the twins decided to ditch the whole posing for pictures idea and make a run for it :-)


And just for fun, here was our other pathetic attempt at a "kids all smiling together" picture near a different area. We got about 400 of these... but no group smiles. I think Abby dug something good out of her nose though, so she was happy