We Finally Made it.....

We finally made it to the Sea Life Aquarium at the Grapevine Mills Mall! YEA!!!!

We'd bought tickets yesterday, so we just walked right up in the short line. However! I must say that once inside, it was still very crowded and it was kind of small, enclosed, claustrophobic. I guess because I'd been to the Dallas Aquarium when Sophia was 1, I was comparing it to that. Which is probably not fair. But Sophia LOVED it! So that's all that matters right???

I'll go ahead and apologize for the quality of the pics right now. We weren't allowed to do any flash photography (they said it would scare the fish). So I did the best I could do with the flash off.

"It's a shark mom!!!"

"See!!! It's right there!!!!"

Sophia touched a barb from a sting ray.

At one of the tanks, they had this cool see through glass bottom so you see down inside the tank instead of just down below from the side.

They also had these cool tanks you could crawl underneath and into the middle of it.

They also had "the tunnel" like the Dallas World Aquarium.

But in this tunnel, it was also glass on the bottom. Kinda cool!

Jellyfish!!! I always think of Dory from Nemo when I see jelly fish.

Yep, my flash was definitely off and my 3 year old had a hard time standing still!

Here's the "Shark Walk" where you're walking over the top of the shark tank and looking down below through the glass on the floor. You could stand on the glass just fine, definitely sturdy, but Sophia still tip toed across the glass parts.

They also had tanks you could reach into and handle sea life. Sophia didn't really want to participate in this portion of the adventure.

But Russell did!

Sophia's favorite part was the sharks (so was mine). Russell's was the jellyfish and the sea horses.

On second thought, the aquarium itself is pretty cool. The crowds, the people, million people with strollers (us included), and the mall traffic made it less fun. If you can find a day when it will be less crowded, you should go, but I'd also hunt for coupons or something. I think it was $50 for the 3 of us.

That's all folks! Gotta get ready for my first full week back!

Plans??!! Who Needs A Plan?

Russell has been out of town (in Chicago) on business since Wednesday and arrived home last night. So we decided it would be fun to do something Saturday, as a family. We are so glad he's home (especially me)! Being a single parent is hard work, especially since I started back to work on Thursday.

Well good news for Texas. We got rain finally, so that meant the grass was too wet to mow (and yes, Russell was very relieved to find his grass all in one piece without any dead sections...I even watered for him). So that meant we could start our adventure even earlier. Of course, when I say early, we didn't get started that early. Sophia actually slept until 9 am and so did we. So once we got up and going, it was close to noon.

We decided on the Sea Life Aquarium at the Grapevine Mills mall. We thought we'd eat something first but we weren't sure what.

So we decided to stop in at Rainforest Cafe. And this was our ticket/reservation to get in....Yep. It was an hour and 20 minute wait. So we thought we'd head to the aquarium and check it out to see if we could do that first. But as you can see from the pic above, it was very crowded. We checked on-line to see if they had any tickets on-line available for Saturday because that line was empty. But no such luck. But they did have tickets for 1-2 on Sunday. So we bought those tickets, so we'll be going tomorrow.

Sophia WAS NOT HAPPY! She was quite upset. So in order to distract her and kill time before our lunch, we went to Build-A-Bear. They were having a special, an animal, outfit and shoes for $30. She chose the pink flower bunny that I thought she would have picked in Charlotte. 

Once we were done, we headed back to the restaurant and waited....

and waited.....

AND WAITED. Luckily they have fish tanks and a gift shop to kill time at.

But we finally got seated. We got to sit right by the rain and fog but far enough away from the animals (robotic)  that Sophia didn't get scared.

BOY was it loud! I was on sensory overload and I'm not even a kid.

About every hour the lights flicker and all the animals go off at once. Yikes!

After that, we did a little shopping for Russell (clothes). I'm SO going back there periodically. They do have some great deals but it was SO crowded today. I'll have to do it earlier in the day. As for the Rainforest Cafe, if you must go, don't do it on a Saturday at lunchtime if possible. :)