Aquarium in the Rain

On Saturday we were going to go to JR and Tyler's baseball games, but they were rained out and rescheduled for Sunday so if we were going to go on a day trip we had to go on Saturday. It was cold and rainy, but we decided to go to the Mystic Aquarium. We saw beluga whales, penguins, sting rays, turtles, sea lions, an octopus, and a variety of other sea creatures. Annie's favorite was watching the sea lion show and she learned a lot about the difference between a sea lion and a seal. Mollie enjoyed everything but there was a "scales and tails" exhibit where she got to touch a tortoise and ask questions and that was her absolute favorite. Besides the rainy and cold weather it was a fun trip.

Annie and Mollie's Plane Ride

So this post is delayed, but it took us a while to get the video link because we couldn't add video from my phone. When we got on the plane to head to Connecticut the girls were asked if they wanted to go into the cockpit. It took mom a little while to figure out that the captain was having Annie do the announcement of flight details over the PA. I got what I could recorded and here it is. The girls thought it was so awesome and they are pretty sure Santa arranged this because he was the one that brought them their tickets for Christmas and their cousins who are more experienced flyers have never gotten to do the announcement. It was very cool and as we walked down the aisle to our seats everyone congratulated her and she felt famous!  

Cancellation of Yellow Game, Graffiti, and Traffic

Until further notice the "yellow game", where you shout out the word "yellow" any time you see a yellow vehicle, has been cancelled. It only took about 2 minutes of being outside the LaGuardia airport and hearing Mollie shout "Yellow" about 100 times for all the taxies and buses in New York City for us to decide that the "Yellow Game" really is not that much fun in NY. We quickly replaced our trained eyes to look for graffiti instead. Annie asked Aunt Jen what all the paintings on the walls and buildings was for and Aunt Jen said she never realize just how much graffiti there really is in the city. It shows you how used you get to things you see all the time and how a different perspective every once in awhile is good for us all. The girls also learned about traffic! When we first programmed Aunt Jen's address into the GPS it said it would take us two hours and nine minutes to get home. After two hours in the car it said it would be another hour and fifty minutes. Yikes! That was the longest nineteen minutes of the girls' lives. If you quiz them on what the red dots, yellow dots, and blue lines mean on the traffic map on the phone they know them quite well. The worst part about it was that the girls wanted to see their cousins so bad and it took so long to get home, but we did have time to discuss what we had learned and thought about our day of travel. We will share what we have discovered so far: Airplanes are not ugly but they aren't real stylish either. They don't really smell like anything - just airplanes. The Big Apple got its name from either the horse races around NYC being referred to as the big apples because they had such big prizes, or from the jazz musicians making reference to the fact there are a lot of "apples" in the world but only one "big apple", or the fact that a "big apple" was used in a tourism campaign as a bright cheery representation of the city because so many thought of it as a dark, dangerous place. Overall our first day was long but had a lot of adventures and a lot of new experiences.

Early Morning Excitement

On our first flight from Omaha to Minneapolis Annie and Mollie got to go into the cockpit and low and behold Annie got to do the announcement. I didn't even realize she was doing it until part way through. Thank goodness she and grandma had been practicing how to say Minneapolis because she had been saying "Mappeapolis". She did a fantastic job and I felt like I was traveling with a celebrity as we made our way to our seats and everyone greeted her and congratulated her.

Rise and Shine - It's time to go on Vacation

Our adventure began at about 3:30 this morning so that we could make it to the Omaha airport for our 7am flight. The girls popped right out of bed though and are excited to get on the plane. We are off to New York City and Canton, Connecticut to visit Aunt Jen, Uncle John, JR and Tyler. A few questions the girls have are: Why do they take liquids away from us? Are the planes ugly on the inside? What does the plane smell like? And Why do they call New York City - the Big Apple? We will check in later with the answers we have found.