Lessons at Shedd Aquarium

Yesterday we (a friend with three girls and me with my two) took a much needed break and went to the Aquarium in Chicago for the day. Now I need a break from the break, but we did learn some valuable things:

• Do not attempt a field trip into Chicago during The Taste.
• The Taste of Chicago continues even when the fourth of July is over.
• It is not in any way easier, cheaper or more fun to take the train into Chicago.
• A single adult's definition of "not far" is not the same as that of an adult with small children in tow.
• By all means, pay the extra money for the ticket that gets you in to see everything, but be prepared for the child with Asperger's to be more enthralled with the fake trees and rocks than what you actually paid to see.
• Why do they always have to play the "Jaws" music in the shark exhibit and creep the little kids out?
• It is not wise to put an unsecured fruit cup in the backpack to save for later.
• Make sure you prepare the four-year-old for the fact that the dolphin show in Chicago is not in any way similar to the Shamu show in Orlando.

On a more positive note:

• We saw "Granddad", a lung fish that has been at the Shedd since it opened in 1933.

• The seahorses and frogs were really neat.
• We found almost all of the characters from "Nemo".
• The lizard and Kimodo Dragon exhibit was cool and M made a new friend. This little bearded lizard followed her back and forth around the cage and had her laughing quite hard.
  

"Sting"rays look like pancakes when they are sleeping.

The morray eel was bigger than me!

There are 36 species of dolphin and J wants to learn about them all.

We got to touch live sea stars and anemones!

Two four-year-olds and a plastic shark with a squeaker in it can entertain a whole train car of people with no effort whatsoever.

Planning next trip for after school starts!

Note: I refrained from posting alot of pictures here. I'm fairly certain that just about everyone has an album somewhere filled with the same blurry images from trying to take photos of cool things in fish tanks.

*originally posted July 7, 2006