An Outing with Grammee

Today was a fun outing with mom and my niece and nephew. We had wanted to go to Liberty Park and the Tracy Aviary but it was chilly and rainy so we had a contingency plan, the Living Planet Aquarium. Belle usually asks to go four places, the park, the zoo, Lagoon and to see the "big fishies and the little fishies" so we were sure our plans would be fun for her either way.

As we pulled away from their house, I told the kids where we were going. She had asked if we were going to the zoo so I told her it was too rainy. She followed that up with a request for Lagoon, definitely too cold and rainy for an amusement park. I told her we were going to see the fishies. She informed me that the fishies were in the Quararium. Very good for a 3-year old!

We met with Grammee (my mom) and headed in the direction of the Aquarium (I still want to call it a Quararium) but we were very early so we filled some of the time with breakfast and song at Starbucks (we were having a grand time, especially mom when they played the old western classics). We didn't kill enough time at Starbucks, so we were trying to think of something entertaining to fill an hour. Everything I tried was met with comments from the back seat "I want to go to the quararium, where is the quararium?" "It's up the street" "Let's just go to the quararium up the street"

How do you argue that logic? You don't without a tantrum, and I didn't want any of those so I went to the aquarium and parked. I let her know that they were still closed and we'd have to play and keep busy for an hour. They did well for the first half hour because the rain let up a little and we were able to get out and do a little running and walking. When the drizzles came back and escalated to a downpour we hurried back to the Trailblazer and huddled under the open hatch while the kids played in the very back until they finally opened the doors.

Things went very smoothly, and Belle was very taken with the Jellies. As we left the exhibits, she asked for a Jelly from the gift-shop. I didn't know if we'd find what she wanted so I warned her that we may not find one, but we were both pleasantly surprised when we not only found 3 different plush Jellies to choose from, we found that one of them was pink and purple (her very favorite colors). We couldn't interest Jules in anything, every toy we would show him would get looked at, we would be told "no" and he would put them away.

We had just enough time for lunch before we needed to get the kids home to mommy and daddy, and Jules was just too tired to eat. He fell asleep not 2 minutes after we left Wendy's.

It was a nice outing, I'm glad we got to do it on a cold and dreary day.