fish! fish! fish!

It's been too long since The Boy, The Girl, The Tot and I have had a real outing. So today, we got up and went museuming. I gave The Boy and The Girl a choice between the Field, the Shedd, MSI and the Nature Museum. They chose the aquarium. So that's where we went.

I managed to get 3 kids and myself out of the house pretty darn close to 9 a.m., so we arrived at the aquarium on a Sunday morning not long after it opened. My kids will grow up to pay full price because they can, a side-effect of having a mother who is too cheap to pay for parking when there is a cheaper/free alternate nearby. We parked at Meigs Field and walked over to the aquarium. I was a bit scared that you can no longer park there; there were about 20 Park District security vehicles in the lot. One of them stopped us on the walk over to say hello, but he said it was fine to park in that lot.

The Oceanarium is closed for renovations, so we spent most of our time in the main halls. It seemed to be Volunteer Day at the aquarium. We watched Nickel for awhile in the main tank -- The Tot was not at all cognizant of the tape line on the floor around the main tank during the presentation and was pressed up against the glass anyway. We also did a couple animal discovery centers, learning about turtles and skinks. The Tot and The Girl both touched the skink. The Boy and I were wimps and didn't want to touch it.

We also went downstairs to the Underwater Reef exhibit, which was unusually crowded as the Shedd apparently just started doing guided talks of that exhibit.

Total expenditure: $1.75 for a box of popcorn. We are members and parking was free.