The Fish Museum

Today's little road trip was a whole 120 miles (round trip) to downtown New Orleans. In May we bought a membership to the zoo and the aquarium; one trip to each and the membership pays for itself and we have already surpassed that. Kevin had to work (those pesky year-round jobs!) so it was me, the boys, and Lila on our way to the aquarium a.k.a. the fish museum. We listened to what seems to be our favorite family song (if you don't count Daddy) "Tonight, Tonight" by Chelle about eight times and the rest of the trip was Lila Songs (those awful kids CD songs). We coasted into New Orleans traffic free, had no trouble parking, and nary a complaint from any of the children. It was so smooth that it was almost eerie. I thought surely something would go wrong (aquarium closed, for example) but nope, it was a perfect little adventure. Lila wanted to go without her stroller (I agreed) and she stayed by my side. The boys also followed all rules and never got separated from us, which I am absolutely paranoid about. It was really an amazingly delightful trip. We loved all of the usual attractions, like the penguins, the sharks, and the otters and Lila LOVED the play room. The only issues were that feeding the stingrays is more exclusive, you have to wait in a longer line and if you come in right behind a daycare (like we did) you will find out the stingray exhibit is sold out. However, that was trumped by the success of the new bird exhibit. The boys loved going into the bird addition and buying little feed sticks ($1 each and we only needed one). The birds were easy to coax onto the sticks and Carson and Cullen enjoyed getting birds to choose their sticks above those of the other children. When we finally left Carson mournfully said that he was really going to miss his bird. Poor Carson feels very deeply, for better or worse! If you're almost 12, almost 10, and 3 what is the perfect meal to end your morning of fun? No, not Drago's, not Mittendorf's... it's McDonald's. We zipped into a McDonald's on Veterans and we all decided that our perfect outing was completed by McDonald's actually serving our order with NO mistakes. I loved listening to Lila have her Blueberry Muffin toy talk to the boys' Star Wars Toys and say "I a girl! I a girl" and then later sing Jesus songs. To me, the perfect ending was that Lila did not sleep in the car but instead saved her nap for home, giving me my few hours of freedom that I treasure. What a gift of a day and it's not even over yet!

Time for this sleepyhead to go home!