Aquarium of the Pacific

First of all, sorry this is one long paragraph -- Blogger always tweeks up when I add pictures. Here are a few I took yesterday at the Aquarium of the Pacific. I think Rick might have taken the Clown fish one, now that I look at it. It was really crowded, but that was to be expected with it being Sunday and in the summer. My father-in-law went with us, so it was a nice chance for him to spend the day with the boys. Neil loved the Lionfish and ended up buying a little stuffed one before we left. Nathan loved the shark exhibits, especially the tank with the Tiger shark in it. He ended up buying 2 books on sharks and read them all the way home. I'm going to hear a lot about sharks over the next few weeks, if I know how Nathan is. It was a fun day -- a lot less stressful for some reason. Today is our last day in Southern California. Our flight leaves tomorrow at 1:10pm and we get into Montana around 6:30pm or so. Neil just came into my bedroom and is all sulky already. He hates having to leave places. It doesn't matter if it's his grandparent's house or his own home. Before we left, he was all boo-hooing about having to leave our cat, Belle. Now of course, it's the other way around and he doesn't want to leave his grandparents. I will have to remind him all day that Belle is looking forward to seeing him. I swear, it's always something dramatic with that kid. He'll be fine, eventually. As much as I'm looking forward to getting home, I still feel like I haven't had enough time. I have some friends down in the LA/Orange County area that I haven't gotten to see yet. Ironically, they were all in San Diego when I was in LA, and then when I was in SD, they were in the other place. The same thing happened with my sister, who I just missed by a few days. It's really hard to coordinate meetings like that. And, it's not like we've been sitting around at home either. It's been go-go-go-go for us. However, I am looking forward to getting home. I miss Nicole and I miss Belle sleeping on my legs at night. I've also gotten hurt twice on this trip, so it will be nice to go home and try to recover. I'm getting a little more use from my index finger that I smashed, so that's good. I think keeping it in a splint for a day did it a lot of good. I'm also looking forward to catching up on all of the blogs I love reading. It seems every time I've sat down to click on one, something yells that it's time to go somewhere. Hopefully, I can get all caught up this week at home. After all ... there's no place like home, there's no place like home -- click, click, click!