Sea Life Aquarium and Feeding the Ducks

 Derek and I went to the SeaLife Aquarium in Grapevine yesterday. This will definitely become a weekly outing for us (thanks Mom!). Some of these pictures are... well, consider them artistic, since it's hard to take pictures and wrestle a two year old at the same time. :)

 Cownose ray

Loved these pajama cardinals!

There were several of these pop-up bubbles and Derek had a great time with these.

We were surprised to find a HUGE walk-through tank! There was even Plexiglas underneath our feet so we could see a few feet down to the bottom of the tank. Lots of sharks and huge rays as well as tons of smaller fish and this super cool sea turtle.

 A shark swimming over our heads

 Some kind of fish

Nurse shark

Another walk-through area of the same shark tank. This time, we were in a room above the tank with sharks beneath our feet.

 Lined Seahorse

 Seahorse nursery

 Freshwater fish

 This was pretty cool. It's a replica of a tide pool. Lots of little fish and crabs in it, plus every few minutes the "tide" comes in through the little rectangular opening in the upper left area of the picture.

 This was a touch tank the kids could reach into.

Today, we met up with some of the other mothers in the ward and their kids for a playgroup at one of the local parks. When I told Derek we were going to feed the ducks, he ran around the living room yelling "Ducks! Park! Ducks!" He was super cute. He stopped only to tell Mitchell (who had been in the bedroom) that we were going to the park to feed the ducks. We got to the park and he ran towards the closest ducks he saw...

 Aren't they cute?! They didn't really like Derek getting too close though.

 Derek was so excited about seeing this baby turtle that he nearly jumped in the water to get to it. That's a pinch of bread to illustrate size. He was maybe two inches across.

I was surprised to see what looked like a bait ball of baby catfish swarming around the surface

The catfish didn't escape the notice of a hungry heron, either

Pool with Logan

 Jeff and Tammy picked up this awesome inflatable pool for the grandkids to play in this summer (since the last one popped) and the boys looooved it. Derek got so excited he started jumping around and discovered that slipping was rather fun. Logan encouraged Derek's excitement and they started screaming with delight. One would scream and the other would echo and back and forth til we were afraid the golfers were missing their putts.

 Showing Logan that splashing is fun

Jumping for joy

Right in the middle of a joyous scream, haha

He cut some very interesting figures trying to "accidentally" fall

This one looks like a rocker scream to me

Mr. Kick-Back

Slippin' N Slidin'

SURPRISE! Tag, you're it!

 Gotta jump a little further from the edge

That is SO wrong!

Love this story... Derek was trying to psych himself up to jump into the deepening water and Lanae, David and I were all encouraging him saying "Go, Derek, Go!" Logan took up the call ("Go, go!) and tried to push him off the edge of that little inflatable ledge. We all laughed and decided that, when these two get a little older, Logan will be the one to tell Derek something like "Hey, I heard about this really awesome thing called Parcour. You just jump off buildings and stuff." And Derek will respond with something along the lines of, "Cool, I'll do it and add my BMX bike into the mix!"

Two cousins

Cheering Derek on

Even little boys get tired of the pool eventually. Logan is signing "all done."

Playing with Cousins

Right before Jared, Sereen and Preston left for the airport, we tried to take cousin pictures. Never leave anything like this to the last minute, haha! The boys were... shall we say uncooperative? Just check out these pictures...

Preston just had to be touching Andrew. It was sweet, but Andrew wasn't too happy about it.

We brought back the "Sunshine Face" by singing "Slippery Fish." Everybody got into it, even Preston!

These two are so funny

Lovely, Derek... just lovely

Derek trying to comfort Andrew... bahaha!

Telling Isaac "sorry" for taking his car... Preston's just being cute

Logan was the one who really comforted Andrew

All better!

Logan absolutely loves playing with this duck-on-a-stick my dad sent to Derek a while back. It will entertain Logan for hours.

LANAE!

We are all exactly the same height. Crazy! And three of us are pregnant! Crazier! Sereen just had Preston almost 4 months ago. 

Logan doesn't like community baths

Derek was pretty entertained by the bubbles though

Liz and I took our boys to Aviator Park (no obligatory red plastic airplane pictures this time) and let them play in the water. When we first arrived, the water wasn't working so we let the boys play on the playground and then, just as we were leaving around 11-ish, we saw a lady with her two little girls in swimsuits. Liz was nice and stopped to tell her the water was off and the lady told us the water comes on at 11 every day. Thank heavens we stopped or we wouldn't have these cute pictures!

Rarely do I leave a photo uncropped, but this one turned out so well I didn't have to do anything to it!

The boys loved these little jets

Being cute

Here's another I left uncropped. How cool?!

This was Derek's favorite jet. It would hover about this height and then shoot up (see the next pic)

Surprise!

I know this isn't at all a flattering picture of me, but I love how Derek is fascinated with the camera and always tries to take pictures when my back is turned, haha! We seriously need to think about getting him an old camera for him to use.

Liz and I went to Kid-to-Kid and Once Upon a Child (kid's resale shops) all by ourselves one morning. The kids stayed home with Uncle Mitchell and Giga and Papa (Jeff and Tammy). When we came home, they were bustling about a giant turtle they had left in the yard a few minutes ago that had suddenly vanished. I did some poking around and finally found it nestled up against the fence in the side yard. I had been skeptical about this "giant" turtle but it was a pretty good size...

TURTLE! Well, red-eared slider. He was sure mad and kept opening his mouth and hissing at us.

We were afraid the boys would get bit (turtles bit hard and this one could take a toddler's finger off) so we made them touch the shell instead of the legs.

Nature lesson

We finally released it into the backyard again and watched it crawl under the bushes.