On Sunday, we surprised the kids with a trip to the aquarium.

Adam loved the touch pools and being able to pet the animals. His favorite was the horseshoe crabs.

The aquarium was having a special mermaids and pirates event. Maggie was thrilled to meet Coral, a real mermaid.

Coral taught the kids how to make a turtle with their hands.

After visiting with her for a bit, we went to check out the rest of the aquarium.

Annie took a short nap while the big kids had fun on the indoor playground.

After she woke up we continued our exploring.

We found another mermaid, this one was in the water. Maggie was over-the-moon.

She was less pleased when she had to be the fish for this picture. She wasn’t tall enough to be the mermaid.

Adam stole my phone to take a couple of selfies.

Then we split up for a bit. I had to feed Annie, so Dave took the older kids to revisit one of the exhibits we had seen earlier.

On their way back, they got to meet Calliope.

And play some more with another mermaid.

Here’s all of us, in front of the wishing whale.

And the kids, seeing how they’d look with a tail.

It was a really fantastic day. The kids were all extremely well-behaved and loved the aquarium. The boys especially liked the shark bridge – a rope bridge that goes over the top of the shark exhibit. They went across it twice. Maggie did too, but the mermaids were definitely her favorite though.

One of my favorite things is how Maggie refers to it as “a quarium.” As in, “Mama, I had so much fun at the quarium. Will we go back to a quarium again sometime?” I love it.