weekly wonder: five

WARNING: sorry for the crappy photos this week... the location had TERRIBLE lighting.

A while back I joined a mommy and baby group in the area.  I try really hard to attend some of the meet ups, but a lot of the time the events don't work with our schedule.  This week, however, we were able to attend one of the get-togethers at the Santa Monica Aquarium.

The aquarium is located right under the Santa Monica Pier and only houses local marine life.  It wasn't a very big aquarium, but there were a ton of hands on activities such as petting all sorts of sea creatures, interacting with aquatic puppets and practicing the reduction of at water usage through a home simulation project.

Noah was probably a little young for most of the activities.  He REALLY got into sticking his hands into the aquatic petting zoo and touching all the sea plants and creatures.  He also enjoyed splashing the yucky fish water all over me and himself, but that was all part of the experience, right?

He also enjoyed checking out the tiny sharks in the open fish tank.  The aquarium worker kept repeating, "be careful... they spit", which made me laugh because spitting is the LAST thing I worry about when holding my child near an open shark tank.  I was more worried about one of his little fingers or toes getting bitten off and when I asked about biting he skirted around my question and just kept talking about how they are spitters. I thought that was pretty funny.

Overall, I thought it was neat for a mini adventure, but I really wish the tanks had been a little bigger and there had been a little bit more excitement.  We might just have another trip to a different aquarium to get our fish petting fix. hah!