Age of Aquarium

In an effort to cure our cabin fever, we piled in the mini-van and headed down to the Newport Aquarium with Grandma and Grandpa P. I think everyone in Cincinnati had the same idea, because the place was PACKED!!! It was a lot of fun though.

Ryan kicked back with a book for part of the trip. It was so cute to hear him babbling away with it. Wesley was reading too, but since he sits behind the passenger seat, I couldn't take a picture.

Wesley waiting in line for our tickets. He was pretty excited!

Yes, we bought the cheesy picture of the whole W. family in the shark's mouth, but we were all looking at the camera, so I couldn't resist. Wesley was pretending to be a shark, which is why his mouth is open so wide.

Wesley was very interested in EVERYTHING. Especially all the things to touch.

Ryan called the fish "Fees," but that was pretty close. We forgot to take a stroller and the aquarium was out of rentals. Thank goodness there were four adults! We needed all of us to keep track of him. He was constantly on the move! More than once I wished I had one of those kid leashes for him. I told Ryan that once and I'm pretty sure he repeated, "leash!"

Wesley was pretending to be Cooper the Cat a lot of the time and would pretend to scratch the glass and say he wanted to eat the fish.

Wesley also took his camera with him. He must have taken at least 75 pictures!

Newport Aquarium has a fantastic frog habitat exhibit. There are big frogs like this one for the kids to play on and an indoor "hamster habitat" for the kids to climb in and slide down. There are also lots of benches for parents who need a break.

Wesley spent a little time digging for dinosaur bones.

And if Wesley was doing it, you know Ryan was too.

Ryan did start to wind down near the end of the aquarium. We kind of figured out he was tired when he laid down on the floor to eat his snack and didn't want to get up.

Grandma and Grandpa treated the boys to something from the gift shop (which you HAVE to go through to get out of the aquarium.) Wesley immediately grabbed this stuffed frog, which was no surprise considering how much he loved the frog habitat.

Ryan snagged a penguin and would not let it go. It was pretty hard to even get it out of his hands to pay for it.

Both boys crashed HARD on the way home. But before they did, Wesley learned a new word. I sighed a big sigh and told Duane "That was really fun, but I'm exhausted!" Wesley piped up from the back seat and asked what exhausted meant. We told him it meant "really really tired." Right before he fell asleep he said, "I'm not tired, but I think the fish are exhausted!"