The Living Planet Aquarium

So my friend Heather and I trade off Thursday's to volunteer at our kids' school.  This past Thursday was my turn to take Rusty to her house for a play date while I went and helped the teacher.  Well just before I was suppose to head over to Heather's house I checked my email and read that there was a free day over at The Living Aquarium if you dressed in Black and White!  I'd never been to there since they were at Gateway...and I wasn't too impressed with them there, so I wasn't sure I wanted to spend very much money to just check it out...but I could certainly handle it for free!  So I called Heather, told her the change in plans and asked her if she wanted to go, NOW?  She agreed and so we both found  a stunning little black and white outfit for our little men and we headed out! 

Just so you don't think I'm a horrible person for standing up the teacher...I actually hadn't gotten a hold of her to tell her I was going to be able to come in today, I was going to just surprise her and hope she had something for me to do!  Things like that happen on short weeks! 

Anyway, we got to the aquarium, pulled out my camera started taking pictures and my camera started screaming at me and telling me I had no memory card!   DUH.  So I started taking pictures on my cell phone, they turned out like this!

 Luckily, Heather also brought here nice camera...look how her pictures turned out!

 Much better!  Although it was pretty dark and some of the fish were light sensitive, so most of them are a bit dark.  I'm so glad she was able to snap a few for me.   The boys had a blast looking at all the fishies together.

She was able to get some great smiles out of Rusty!

It was penguin day or something like that, hence the black and white entrance requirement!  The penguin room was great!  They were feeding them frozen krill when we got there and they would jump in the water and then jump a good foot or two out of the water on the other side...it was pretty neat!

 A picture of a blurry penguin in the up most right corner...wow, those things are fast!

Looking at a giant snake!  Aren't they just the cutest things?

After we went home Rusty and I had a good talk and decided to take the other kids back to the aquarium once they got home from school!  We made sure everyone was in black and white and we headed back out (Great idea Heather, thanks!)  We went over to the giant tank with the sharks in them, my kids watched in awe at all the different kind of BIG fish.  At one point I asked them all to turn around so I can get a picture of them standing in front of it and Mily started to freak out!  She did NOT want to stand with her back to those sharks...she even started crying!  I let her move off to the side, but she was still not happy and would NOT smile for me!

Here she is in a different part of the aquarium...much happier to be standing in front of the Piranha tank!  Silly girl.

 I also saw this little beauty there...

 if anyone is looking for a birthday present for me!  J/K, it's too expensive or I would have bought them myself.

We were walking through the gift shop and heard a lady starting a presentation over to the side, so we walked over to see what she was showing...a very large, very hairy TARANTULA!  yuck.

The kids also got to touch a star fish and a poky fish...forgot the name of it!

Seriously worth it to go there....for free!  It is much bigger and better than when it was at the Gateway, but I still don't know if I would be willing to pay that much to bring my whole family there...you know? $9 for adults and $7 for kids???? Crazy!

Big thanks to Heather for being flexible enough to change plans at last minute and go hang out!