Ani is in Florida this week with my parents. My brother’s oldest daughter turned 8 and was baptized yesterday. Ani went down there as a surprise for her cousins. They live in the land of amusement parks so of course they will be going to Sea World while they are there. So we got the idea that it would be fun to take the boys to the National Aquarium in Baltimore on Thursday. Ani’s going to get to go to a water sort of place, and the boys got to go to a water sort of place. Our visit was lots of fun.

We got to see the dolphin show. Fritz was less than thrilled when the dolphin splashed us, though.

Both boys loved looking at the fish.

This is a caiman. The picture is straight out of the camera with no enhancements or anything. He’s a really freaky looking thing isn’t he?

Even though it’s an aquarium it has some non-aquatic animals. This is an ibis in the rainforest exhibit. Cameron thought he looked a bit like a miniature flamingo.

This little lizard is at the Australia exhibit. It would have been interesting to see his frills out, but he was pretty much just chilling behind his protective glass.

I loved all the turtles. The ones in the Australia exhibit were very interesting. There was one tank with very long necked turtles and this tank had pig nosed turtles.

And of course no set of pictures would be complete without pictures of my little boys. Here Fritz ponders the enormity of the aquatic life in the world. Actually, he’s having fun playing with his tongue because it’s always sticking out lately now that he has two top teeth and it feels neat to run his tongue along them.

I really have no idea just what Cameron is doing in this picture. He was standing there nicely until I turned the camera on him. Then suddenly he was jumping and being crazy. He’s in mid-air in the picture. Once I took the picture he went back to standing there calmly. I have no idea why. It’s one of those deep mysteries that you have to be a 5-year-old boy to understand.