The Membership Put to Good Use, Once Again

To finish off our long weekend, we shared our guest passes with Jeff, Amy, Jonathan, Grace and Benjamin for another great day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  (Seriously, this membership may have been one of the most awesome things we've ever purchased!)  Enjoying the aquarium with some good friends was its own highlight, but some super active undersea critters also had a big hand in making the day memorable.

One of our first aquarium stops is always at the giant octopus.  Though we run there right away hoping to catch a glimpse of this favorite, yet mysterious and shy, animal doing something interesting, he's always just bunched up in a tentacle-y ball, hiding in his cave.  Not yesterday!  We actually screamed (Delia the loudest!) when we walked up and saw him all stretched out!  We watched for a looong time as the octopus changed colors and zoomed all around the tank, climbing the rock walls and suctioning to the glass with all those twisty arms.  Coolest thing ever.

We started a bit of a routine in watching the movie Finding Nemo during the long drive to Monterey.  It's always fun to then find friends from the movie in the tank that's especially designed to display the Finding Nemo collection of coral reef fish.

 The seahorse exhibit never fails to impress!  Yesterday, little Grace shared my enthusiasm for the artfully created Leafy Sea Dragons.

 The girls' favorite part of the seahorse exhibit has become the mating movie romantically entitled "The Dance".  Don't worry, it's very G-rated, though one of our aquarium guests did once label it "Seahorse Porn"!

 Of course, Ella and Delia had to choreograph their own "Seahorses Falling in Love Dance" after watching yesterday!

I think this shows Grace getting a piece of the love that the dance ends with! :)

I include this picture of our friends because I think it's a really nice picture of their sweet family, but also because shortly after we took it, we noticed the dolphins jumping boat waves in the bay!  Seeing wild dolphins in the ocean is something we've been lucky enough to do a number of times now, but it never stops being exciting!

There were a number of great animal encounters yesterday-- an unusually frisky octopus, lots of laughter over seahorses getting together, a rare dolphin sighting and these extra friendly penguins.  The girls were befriended by two penguins who seemed to be trying hard to get as close to them as possible.  The guy above even acted like he wanted to pose for my picture!

Our aquarium day was great, but every good thing must come to an end.  And with 5 little kids that end comes abruptly and with sudden fatigue and crabbiness.  This group picture we grabbed upon leaving may not capture everyone at their best, but it will help us remember the good times we had!

Our family ended the day off in Monterey with one more hour at the beach.  It became very important to the girls to round up every hermit crab they could catch in the shallow tide pools and move them into a pool of water they had dug and decorated special for the crabs.  That is what is happening in the following pictures...it actually was a lot of fun!