Ketchup

By far, Mid-March to Mid-April is the busiest month of my year. I don't do much else besides work. However, the little free time that I do have gets taken up with T-ball and church and other responsibilities. It doesn't help matters that somebody thought it was a good idea to have the Mr. Sasquatch competition during that time as well. April 16th is one of my most favorite days of the year. It could easily be the least productive day in the accounting industry. It is kind of pointless to go into the office, so most of us don't. I think it is the equivalent of the first day of summer vacation from school. Unfortunately, I don't get to take 3 months off from work. However, I was able to take a mini-vacation with my family. First, we headed off to The Aquarium of The Pacific.I realize that I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I don't think that hanging a giant whale from a few wires in earthquake country would be a great idea. However, I think the pacificonians must have realized the awesome potential of an injury story:
"Hey, what happened to you?"
"I was in Long Beach during the big earthquake and a giant whale fell on me and broke my leg."
"If you don't want to tell me, then just say so. You don't have to make some story up."

Scuba Steve was talking to the visitors about how great fish are.

The Get Along Gang.

We found Nemo pretty easily. Waldo, however proved to be too elusive.

I wonder if they think cheese means to do a fake smile?

Bodie was stoked about being able to tap on the glass.

The girls put themselves at risk while posing for this picture. We were inside of a giant net with a lot of birds.I'm pretty sure that the scientific name for these are Kamakaze birds, because they would try and fly as fast as they could as close to your head as possible. I'm just glad that they didn't get scared during the whole process.

My favorite part of the trip was seeing the kids touch the fish. There were a couple of tanks with different kinds in them. Skyler was finally brave enough to touch a ray.

Then Geronimo and I got into the act. If you have never felt a ray before, it feels like a ray.

Then Geronimo got super awesome and felt up the big shark.

We stopped by this restaurant on the way out. We thought about eating here, but by the time they got done telling us how many ways they could make shrimp it was too late.

The Long Beach Grand Prix was going on that weekend, which made getting to the Aquarium delightful. It was my first time going and it turned out to be a fun trip. That was just the first day of our mini-vacation. Tune in next time for our trip out of state.