Monterey Bay Aquarium

For our first real activity of the trip we visited the aquarium with Aunt Jean, Uncle Aaron, and cousins Clay and Owen. The girls were incredible troupers, walking all day and staying interested in everything we saw. Even after waking at 3:45am pst (which is their usual waking time of 6:45 at home), they kept on looking, listening, being cheerful and asking questions until 4:30pm when we finally gave them a car nap driving back to SF. I'm so proud of them! And all at the young age of 34 months (Insert sheepish laugh of a parent who is too cheap to pay 17.50 x 2 for a child admission...) Before drifting off, Dani told me one of her favorite things we saw were "the birds with long skinny legs" (sandpipers I believe) and Alex said "I liked the penguins." I loved the sea jellies exhibit, the school of anchovies in the Outer Bay tank (one million gallons of water!) and the sea horses - so cute and amazing how they glide like the ghosts in "beetlejuice".

I'll upload better pics later from my real cam but here's a taste of today. :)


Anchovies swim together like the one big fish in Leo Lionni's classic book "Swimmy"!

Beautiful jellies

Alex & Dani make otters swim, bob, and spin. We got to see an otter feeding near the end of the day.