Visiting the Aquarium of the Pacific - Our Family Trip to Long Beach (Part 2)

Read about our visit to San Pedro, Downtown Disney and how to babywear at the pool:

Long Beach trip Part 1

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Visiting zoos and aquariums has kind of become my thing when I travel with the kids. This past year we've tagged along on three of my husband's work trips - Long Beach, Whistler & Vancouver BC and Dallas, Texas. The Aquarium of the Pacific was my favorite part of our trip to Long Beach.

We have an aquarium in Seattle, but to be honest it really hasn't been updated since I visited in high school. I didn't know what to expect at all when we visited the Aquarium of the Pacific and in hindsight, it was one of my favorite days ever.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is right in the harbor at Long Beach. One of the first exhibits that we walked into was the deep sea exhibit which featured a recreated "whale fall." When a whale dies in the ocean, it falls to the ocean floor and becomes a source of nutrition for many animals. The Aquarium recreated the habitat that it would have become. When I saw it in October, it had already been on display for several years and it really wasn't as gross as you would expect. The crustaceans that were working on it kept everything very clean, so there were several spots where ribs and other bones were exposed but picked clean. I've always had a fascination with the ocean, especially whales and the deep sea, so I geeked out a little bit and texted pictures to my real-life marine biologist friend, who had participated in several whale decropsies. She geeked out too!

The most impressive view at the Aquarium of the Pacific if their Blue Cavern exhibit. It's modeled after Blue Cavern Point near Long Beach, a popular diving spot.

Several times throughout the day they got a team of divers in the water. They cleaned the glass, fed the fish and were mic'ed so they talked to the crowd about what they were doing, who they were feeding and conversation information.

We also visited the penguins, seals and jellies. Then I got kissed by a ray.

Penny was in a pretty intense shark obsession phase, so it was only perfect timing that the Aquarium has an area where we could touch different types of docile sharks. We worked up our courage and Penny was able to pet one. I could tell that she was not expecting the skin to feel like sandpaper!

When big sister took her regularly scheduled nap in the stroller, I took little Ruby out and she got to get an up close view of the colorful tanks without Penny's toddler agenda pulling us around. This is one of my favorite pictures of Ruby as a little baby.

We easily spent 6 hours at the aquarium that day. I walked through all of the exhibits several times, each time finding a different tank that we missed because of too many people crowding it. The outside area had toddler story time, a splash park and more climbing structures to give the kids something to play with.

At dinner that evening, Penny asked me to draw a few of her favorite animals that she saw. All I had was a napkin, but she was happy to color them in for me too.

Have you been to The Aquarium of the Pacific? What was your favorite part?

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about

Our family trip to Long Beach (7 months later) Part 1

While I'm away on my next adventure, I realized that it was probably high time that I shared about my last big one with our little family. I'm talking about our trip to Long Beach, CA from back in October. Uhm...yea. Bad blogger. Normally I'd be super pumped about writing down our travels the second that we got home, but there's something about 2 kids that makes the words pause at the end of my fingertips and sometimes they just never make it to the blog. Sorry! But nonetheless, here we are. Enjoy!

My husband's current position in his company takes him around the country a little more often than we were accustomed to a few years ago. Most places that he travels to are boring or he has a work project to support and will be working 16 hour days, so it doesn't normally make sense for the girls and I to tag along. But on the rare occasion, he snags a work trip that has a light work load and is actually in a destination where we could turn it into a little family vacation. And that's what happened with Long Beach, CA back in October.

I'm a pretty independent gal and I love to travel. To turn my blog into a family travel blog would be a dream come true. But for now, I am blessed to be able to piggyback on a few of my husband's business trips. The girls and I have a blast. They travel very well and I like to justify these little trips as our warm up for our trip to Germany in the winter, to visit my parents.

During these work trips we expect that my husband will be occupied during working hours (and sometimes longer), so I make sure to find ways to fill our time and make our travels worth it. While he was networking about natural gas solutions for the semi trucking industry, the girls and I cavorted around the Long Beach area for 4 days. Our hotel was in San Pedro, not too far from Long Beach. For one of our days we puttered around the water front there.

There is a little walking trail that takes you along the water front that parallels Harbor Blvd. It takes you past the USS Iowa, and we ended at the Gateway Plaza Fanfare Fountain. Every so often, classical music begins to play and the fountains are choreographed along. It was really pretty!

After his work commitment that evening, we took the drive out to Disneyland and walked along Downtown Disney. My husband comes from a Disneyland lovin' family - he's been dozens of times throughout his childhood and together we have gone twice. Our girls aren't at the age yet where we could justify the expense of the park tickets, let alone the sheer stimulation overload! So we went the free route and walking along the street of Downtown Disney was enough free fun for all of us. My father in law keeps asking me when we think that we'll take the girls into the actual park, and our best guess is that when Penny is 8 years old and Ruby is 6 they will have a total blast. Hopefully we will have someday-Baby #3 (and maybe even someday-Baby #4) along with us, but at the moment we can only plan for at what age these two girls will have fun. :) We had dinner at Tortilla Joe's, where Penny got her first balloon animal and I learned a few secrets on how to make the perfect guacamole.

The locals had a good laugh at us too. It was October and the temperatures were in the high 60's, low 70's. That is called tank top, flip flop and shorts weather in Washington. My kids are out in the backyard in the swimming suits and playing in our sprinkler while I lounge on a blanket in that weather. Californians don't seem to think that's appropriate in October, so we got laughed at when we hauled our family down to the hotel's pool. It had already been shut down for the winter! But luckily the hot tub was turn down to low and we went in that instead. Whatevs, works for us!

Oh, and that ring sling that I'm sure you've noticed? The one that lets me wear Ruby and still play in the water? None other than the fabulous Beach Front Baby ring sling, of course!  Click on over to that link to read more about it! No babywearing parent should be caught without one this summer.

My absolute favorite part of this trip was our visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. As it turns out, I have started to make a habit of visiting the local zoo or aquarium whenever we travel somewhere. It's a fun outing for everyone because they tend to be very toddler friendly. There's countless lessons to learn about the animals, our environment and thinking about the big picture. Not to mention, it's a great way to expend some of that toddler energy that builds up when cooped up in a hotel room! Penny was able to run around and I didn't have to constantly reign her in. But that, my friends, is a story for another blog post! Head over to read about our adventures at The Aquarium of the Pacific.

Vancouver Aquarium

After this weekend, I feel like I'm on a West Coast tour of Aquariums. In the last year, I've been to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, Seattle Aquarium, Aquarium of the Pacific (post coming soon..so behind on this! We were there in October!) and now the Vancouver Aquarium. The only aquariums that I'm missing are Seaside Aquarium, Oregon Coast Aquarium, Monterey Bay, Morro Bay, Santa Monica and Cabrillo... Bucket list for 2016? ;)
So our weekend in Vancouver started off with a two night stay in Whistler. On Monday Adam had a meeting with a supplier in Vancouver so the girls and I spent that time at the Aquarium, which I haven't been to in about 15 years. I remember seeing the orca the last time I was there. In the emergence of the movie Blackfish (and my feelings towards cetacean capture in general), I was happy to learn that in the early 2000's Vancouver had created a bylaw preventing the Aquarium from displaying wild caught cetaceans and only obtain cetaceans from other facilities if they were born in captivity, captured before 1996 or were rescued and deemed un-releasable after this date (source). Since 2001 they haven't had an orca but currently have two belugas (one was the first conceived and born in a Canadian aquarium) and two rescued Pacific White Sided Dolphins. They do put on a show for both of these, but it's more of a walk through of their daily health check and training with a big emphasis on education of these animals. I whole heartedly agree that animals in general should have the freedom to be wild, but that's not the case every time and at the very least..I am thankful that institutions put forward the effort to education and conservationism. When I was younger, children would see the orcas and want to become trainers at Seaworld. Now this current generation will learn about these animals and hopefully want to be scientists who study them in the wild. 

My favorite part about aquariums is that the animals are always visible. Now that Penny is a toddler I take the time to stand in front of most of the tanks and talk to her about what's inside and have her describe as well. 

 My favorite animals to photograph are jelly fish!

Penny truly enjoyed the beluga show. She is too young to understand what the narrator was discussing, but it was so cool to see her finally realize that there is such a creature as a beluga (we sing the Baby Beluga song to her every night, since she was born). Penny kept shrieking "It's a BABY WOOOGA!" They did only one or two "tricks" but even as someone who has had an interest in whales all her life, I learned a lot! 

We also watched the dolphin show, which had a lot more acrobatics. Unfortunately..there's something about the dolphins jumping very high and the loud clap as they hit the water that just really upset Ruby. Poor baby just cried so hard whenever they did that! So we left the show early and I got a few very strange rude stares as we left. ? Sorry guys, yes I have to inconvenience you as I push through, my baby can't take it anymore. So strange.

Have you visited the Vancouver Aquarium?

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about

Catch the moment: Week 3

Well, this week was all catch up because I didn't spend any time on the computer while on vacation (imagine that?!) and then the rest of the week was a battle between recovering from the explosion of post-vacation and the girls and I got the crud that's been passed around. But I did manage to take my "real" camera out more!

Squirt has come a long way with the kids. When Penny was born he kept his distance because rather than petting him, she preferred to yank his fur. With baby #2, I think he's learned that they're not all so bad and sometimes they make decent companions. Typically when I'm done cooking I lay the bowls, pots or pans on the floor and let him get a taste (and do a little dishwasher prep for me). This evening Ruby came over to check it out too, and he bravely stood his ground and allowed her to peer on while he cleaned up.

I took this picture because it was Ruby's first day of going into childcare at MOPs. Until now she's snuggled with me in the Boba and napped for most of the time. Nowadays she has little tolerance for the Boba if I'm just sitting down so she'd prefer to crawl. I decided that we were both ready for her to be in the care of MOPPETs while I got my mama break time. The girls were so darling that morning; Penny dressed herself (in a dress that I absolutely love and kind of wish they made it in my size) and I ended up putting Ruby into this little tunic dress that I remember Penny wearing a lot. As it turned out, poor Ruby had skipped her 20 minute power nap before MOPs and while she put in a good effort, this time was not meant to be so she returned to spend the rest of the morning with me. 

We finally took the getaway vacation that I have been whining longing for. Adam had a supplier meeting in Vancouver BC scheduled on a Monday, so we drove up the weekend leading up to it to Whistler and stayed at a great condo. It was located right by the Whistler walking trail and it was a less than 5 minute walk to the ski lifts and sledding. No skiing for us this time around, but it was so much fun to get to play in the snow multiple times in one weekend. Read more: Whistler weekend

I am not a football fan. I really can't even convince myself to jump on the Seahawks band wagon...yea, I've got Seattle pride and I understand it's a huge accomplishment. But to step up onto a soapbox for a moment, I *hate* it when teams are called "brave" or "heroes." Really? I'm going to quickly step off the box before I get into too much trouble and instead tell you about how we spent a part of our vacation having a quiet afternoon, warming up from a morning of sledding (and rain) to snuggle and watch the Seahawks win the NFC championship. Maybe it wouldn't have been my choice of what to watch on TV, but I'm blessed that we got to do it together. 

The afternoon that Adam had his meeting in Vancouver, he dropped us off at the Vancouver Aquarium so that the girls and I had something to do. I just love aquariums! I had not been to the Vancouver Aquarium in probably 15 years and much has changed. My favorite animal to photograph is always jellyfish and seeing Penny discover that a beluga whale is in fact a real creature (not just one we sing about) was pure magic. Read more: Vancouver Aquarium

These little hens of mine. I try not to get too gushy and put them up on an honorable pedestal, but really...these girls rock. When you think about what an intense and intricate process it is to create and lay an egg (almost daily), you can't help but be thankful for this seemingly simple gift that they give my family daily. Chickens are easy to keep and will surprise you with all the benefits they provide. I'd like to remember to take a page from their book; because a chicken lays an egg regardless of whether her day was crappy or awesome. Whether she got the extra attention or if she snagged a juicy worm. Without fail she'll still do her job and be sure that the whole world knows about it with her egg-song of triumph after.

This girl's imagination is at full speed. She loves to pretend and this time I caught this little conversation: "Come on little ducklings! Stay with your mama and you will be just fine. The daddies are at work but they will be home soon. Let's go swimming. The water is not too deep, it is just fine. Stay close to your sisters and your brothers."  more: A Penny for your thoughts

Catch up on previous weeks: 

Catch the moment archives

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Whistler family vacation

I've got a dormant monster inside of me. It's called wanderlust. I love to travel. Near or far, whatever it is I love seeing new places, eating new food and just seeing what else is out there. It's amazing to me how little we know of the great places so close to us. Wanderlust doesn't mean traveling across the globe. It's just being somewhere new.

Well, this past year has been a quiet year for us. It's been spent majorly focusing on this whole transition of one to two kids and the craziness that it ensues. We've also been cutting back on expenses in order to maintain staying a single income family and honestly that's way more important than vacations. Truly. However, sometimes we just need a change in pace.

The last few months I've been somewhat obviously hinting that I'd like to take a weekend getaway with just our family. "Oh look, did you see that That Mama Gretchen escaped to the coast?" Oh man, my husband got sooo tired of all my weekly updates of everyone's travel plans during the holidays. Well, it got the point across and last week he got invited to meet with a supplier for work in Vancouver, BC and he nonchalantly asked via email "hey, would you and the girls like to come up with me to Canada? ...We could make it a weekend in Whistler."

It wasn't even a minute later that I was on Air BnB looking up condos. I even found the perfect one that fit into our budget and right in the village. Alas, that didn't work out because of some kind of techno glitch and I was ready to throw in the towel because who has an available condo on the cheap on MLK Jr weekend. Then on my last ditch effort search I FOUND ONE. It was perfect! So I snapped it up and we prepared for our trip to the north. Squee!!!

We only live about 4 hours from Whistler and with all of our stops along the way (yay for Penny in taking her first long road trip in undies!!) we got there in about 6 hours. The border crossing was a breeze for us old pro's, took a stop for lunch and groceries and thoroughly enjoyed the drive out of Vancouver up to Whistler. My camera was packed away (!!) and my cell phone was dead (!!!!) so I couldn't document the absolutely gorgeous drive out there. We talked about going up again during the summer and hiking along the way.

We checked into our cozy little condo, which was at the Marquise and just across the street from the Whistler Walking Trail. A few minutes down this trail brought us to the back of the Whistler Fairmont, which is at the base of Wizard and Magic lifts. There was a bit of sledding behind the Fairmont but in the early evening when the lifts stopping running, many people came out to sled that part of the run.

The condo

We spent the next two days alternating between snow play and warming up in the condo. Unfortunately it poured rain all day on Sunday and that was the time that we decided to take the trail from the condo to Whistler Village. Normally it would be a 15 minute walk for an adult, but when you're pulling a sled with a toddler (who wants to get out half the time) and/or wearing a baby (both of you are bundled up in your snow gear), it takes like 45 minutes. Add that it was raining and creating huge puddles, and your toddler just LOVES puddles, which means their non-waterproof snowboots get soaked before you get to the village. Oh, and for some reason a ton of the restaurants and shops were closed! On a weekend during the winter season. So weird. But, we made it to Blenz for some coffee and cocoa, warmed up and started the trek home. Along the way, our brave all weather warrior passed out. Yes, those are pink gloves on her feet. We couldn't bear to put the wet boots and socks back on..

daily photo challenge for 2015

But no complaints here - it was exactly what this family needed. We are so project driven, between house renovations or whatever other project the hubs has going on, we very very rarely aren't "working" on a weekend. So it literally took us hopping the border to get a break.

On Monday, when Adam had his meeting with his supplier, he dropped us girls off at the Vancouver Aquarium so that we'd have something to do while he was busy. Read more about our Vancouver Aquarium adventure tomorrow!

Visiting the Seattle Aquarium and how I almost lost my mind (I mean, my camera)

Lately I feel like I've been truly losing my mind. And everything that I touch. Doesn't normally mommy brain disappear after 2-3 months? I feel like mine gets progressively worse over time. In the last few months I've been continually losing my car keys, glasses, Boba and have broken a cell phone (but been on and off without one for almost 3 months). A couple weeks ago I lost one of my most treasured possessions - my camera. I'm a photoholic, ask anyone who knows me, and to lose the memory card alone was just devastating. Because I know computers crash without notice, I've been in the habit of using the memory card on my dslr as a mobile external hard drive and have gotten lazy about uploading them onto the computer. I mean, what are the odds that I'll lose the camera, right? It's certainly not small like a cell phone. Well, friends, it happened, but this story has a good ending, so read on!

A few weeks ago we visited the Seattle Aquarium. I hadn't been there since high school and Penny loved our visit to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium shortly before Ruby was born (and we also visited the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach back in October, still working on the post for that one!) so we took a family trip and were tourists in our own backyard for a day. 

It's a relatively small aquarium, and on the day that we visited it was very blustery outside so we opted to run through a lot of the outdoor exhibits on our way to the next indoor area.

The main room has a lot of viewing tanks that draw childrens' attention. Penny's favorite was the touch a tank, where she got to touch starfish, urchins and other coastal tidepool creatures.

My favorite exhibit, which is a curiosity to all, was seeing the Giant Pacific Octopus. Most of the aquariums that I've visited have an octopus, but they always seem to be hiding. On this visit, the octopus was out in the open and there even was a volunteer standing next to her with tons of information. 

I loved walking around and showing the girls all the gorgeous colors that you can find throughout the different ecosystems that make up the Pacific Ocean.

You can kind of begin to see my love affair with my camera, right? Don't get my wrong, my cell phone camera does a great job for 90% of life. But these scenes require a little more firepower and I'm thankful to have my camera handy for them.

The last part of our visit was at their felt board area where Penny got to make her own ecosystems using the felt creatures. Somewhere between taking these pictures, playing with the felt, changing diapers and going to the car, the camera was set down and not given a second thought until we came home and I went to upload pictures for this blog post. 

We scoured the truck to see if somehow it was tossed in there without us thinking. It wasn't there. I contacted the aquarium, only to get the voicemail machine for several days. I even put out a lost ad on craigslist! I prayed and prayed that someone had found it, saw that the memory card was full of pictures of our family and turned it in at the front desk. It was a long shot, unfortunately there are people out there who would just call it "finders keepers" and take off with it. I think a week passed by and I finally reached out the the aquarium one last time via facebook.

This time I got a message back and they had my camera! Joy of joys! We picked it up and now I have these pictures to hold on to forever.

It was a close call. I've had this camera for over 5 years, it was a college graduation present from my parents and it's traveled the world with me - on our honeymoon to the Dominican Republic, our babymoon to Europe and everywhere in between. I was beside myself that in all the places that I've taken it, that it could have been lost so close to home.

What it comes down to is that even though we get bogged down in life because of that jerk who cut us off or that unapologetic glare from another shopper while you deal with your toddler's melt down at the grocery store, there is still so much good in this world. There are still people out there who when presented with an opportunity to get a nice camera for free they choose to do the right thing and help it find it's owner again. For all the less-than-helpful experiences I've had from strangers since becoming a mother, I've been met with ten times as many helpful ones.

Have you visited the Seattle Aquarium?

or

Tell me about a time when a stranger was kind to you!

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about

Pierogie Babies: Almost there!

Ruby

Well, clearly a lot has happened since my last pregnancy check in on the blog (uhm, 6 weeks ago..oops). Little Ruby has been rolling, shaking, twisting as normal and head down. It's so hard to summarize how I feel these days! Excited to meet her (beyond all measures), but also completely content in her coming in her own time. I had Penny at exactly 39 weeks so next week is when I'll really go on watch. However, yesterday I was hit with some major nesting instinct and pretty much tore the house apart, so we'll see what happens ;)

Penny

As always, Penny is such a joy. Over the last month or so she has started talking so much and her memory is impeccable. We visited the Aquarium/Zoo about a month ago and she still talks about visiting the sharks and all the things she saw there. We also got chickens about 3 weeks ago and she gets a real hoot (ohhhh bad bird humor) out of them. We have a bay window that looks out into their pen and it's one of her favorite places to hang out if we're not visiting them in the backyard.

My Duraburb has been the main mode of family transportation for the last couple weeks and she very delightfully squeals "mama's honk honk!" whenever she sees it. Though yesterday she asked about Daddy's honk honk (which I'm assuming she meant the old green truck we've had that we sold about a week ago) and I had to very proudly tell her that only mama has a honk honk now - Daddy does not! Adam traded in his very tired commuter car (my faithful high school ride, mind you) and got an early 2000's Saab to replace it. We also are planning to downsize even more by selling my Volvo when the Duraburb is completely tested and ready to hand over.. Which will bring us down to 4 cars from 7. To be fair 2 of them are Adam's toys so they spend most of the year patiently waiting for the perfect ride.

The last 2 weeks have been rough for our family though. I came down with a mild cold, got better and then fell deeper into it. Then Adam caught it. And now Penny has a mild flu. This is the first time that she's ever been sick for more than a day (halleluah for nursing through toddlerhood!) and it's just been heartbreaking to watch her go through this. There's been tons of extra snuggles and she's been back in our bed for the last 3 nights and I'm happy to say that she is very close to being her old self again as of this morning. Which is a good thing, because with the end of the pregnancy drawing near I need to have my whole family in the best shape possible.

One last thing before I go.. As I was brushing my teeth last night and sitting on the edge of the tub last night, Penny walks up to me and gives my big belly a hug. She sweetly kisses it and says "wef bebe Ribbit" (love baby Ruby). It made me think of this saying that I'd like to have put up on their sister room someday..

The fun part.. Cast your guesses on Ruby's birth! Here are the stats from Penny's:

Born at 39 weeks gestationally (today 2/20/14 I am 38 weeks 3 days)

8 hour 40 minute labor

Born in the water

6 lbs 14 oz, 17 3/4"

Finalizing being 3 - Our visit to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium

Becoming a second time mom has put me through a lot of emotions lately. I'm so excited to meet Ruby; to hold in my arms this little being that I've held inside of me for the last 8 months. I'm wildly anticipating how this experience will be different and the same as the first time was with Penny. I'm also thoughtfully embracing these last few weeks we have together as just us three - Adam, Penny and I - before we become four.

As many of you know, we're project oriented around here. Renovations, car projects and new ideas sprinkled here and there are just how we are. We very rarely stay still. I should rephrase that and say that my husband rarely stays still; he always has at least one project currently in the works. His skills and knowledge have really been the key element in why we've been a successful single income family for two years. But too much of one thing is never a good thing; and so one of my main roles in our relationship is teaching him how to slow down and enjoy the moment. :)

With the weeks drawing to a close before Ruby's arrival, we've taken a few very precious breaks from our busy work to create memories of just the three of us having fun. Recently we visited our local zoo & aquarium combo - The Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. I grew up going on field trips there and it was really interesting seeing how much has changed but also stayed the same since the last time I had been there over 15 years ago.

She loved looking at the fish tanks. She learned all about the different colored fish and was especially impressed by their sharks.

Visiting the walrus exhibit was my favorite part. I grew up in the area and one of the field trips you can count on every year was going out to the Aquarium. They used to keep beluga whales as well, but that program ended in the early 2000's I believe. All the same to me, after seeing Black Fish I don't think I will ever view zoos or aquariums the same way ever again. Nonetheless, it was so amazing to share this experience with my daughter as it is one of the most vivid memories I have of being a little kid.

This experience made such an impact on Penny and I'm so glad we did it. Every night she wishes good night to each of the animals she saw - "Shark? Nigh-night. Seal? Nigh-night. Biiiig feeesh? Nigh-night..." and then she launches into how much she loves each one - "Wev (love) shark. Wev seal. Wev fish." And of course we always sneak in a "do you love mama/daddy too?" and she responds, thoughtfully, "wev shark. Wev mama. Wev daddy. Wev Wurt (Squirt)."

Our time as three is drawing to a close, but even the twinge of sadness that comes with change I'm so excited for the possibility of the new. I know that in a few short months that both Penny and Ruby will be running around, causing trouble and melting my heart with their cuteness that only two sisters can do.

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about