Water, water everywhere!

Still don't know where we went?????  Well, it IS hard to tell from the VERY FEW pictures that I was able to take indoors at The Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.  It was a lot of fun, but a very long day for the kids and a lot of riding in the car.  We brought our friend, Erica, along so that we had someone to manage each toddler.  It was a good thing that she was there because they all wanted to be going in different directions.  And their interest level switched from one child to the other every few minutes.  We wanted to be able to give them one-on-one attention and talk about the things they could see (butterfiles, sting rays, sharks, jellyfish), so having an extra person was pretty necessary. 

One of our favorite areas at the aquarium is, oddly, the butterfly garden.  I was only able to get one picture to turn out because I grabbed the point-and-shoot (didn't want to zip any butterflies up in my camera bag by accident).   Emma probably liked the butterflies the best of the three kids because she was definitely pretty fascinated to see them all fluttering around her.  I had hoped one might land on of of the kids shoulders, but they were moving around just a little too much to give the little critters any chance to find a comfortable spot.

We had lunch at Cheeburger Cheeburger nearby.  It was pretty good, but it wasn't Five Guys. : )  And after lunch we let the kids run around in the water area between the two buildings of the aquarium.  There is this little "river/creek" that is meant for wading and it is just awesome.  I had all of the swimming gear in the car, but we just went with water shoes and left the kids in their clothes to play in the water.  Poor Kendall almost had her diaper completely explode from being loaded down with the water (she spent most of her time sitting down and splashing/rolling around).  When we changed their clothes and diapers afterward, that diaper was gigantic and I think that every particle of the water-absorbing stuff was maxed-out.

I had fun taking their pictures and didn't manage to drown my camera.  They had so much fun in the water and could only be persuaded to leave with the promise of a box of raisins (have I mentioned how much I LOVE raisins these days?!?!?!) and ice cream.  We hit a Dairy Queen on our way home and they got ice cream sandwiches.  The "big" kids had some DQ treats as well.  Clark took a ten-minute power nap just before the ice cream stop and Kendall napped for about thirty minutes, but that was it for them all day.  We expected that they would crash by 7:30p, but they were up until 8:30.  Mommy and Daddy were definitely worn out, but it was SO worth it.  We can't wait to go back!