The Living Planet Aquarium

On our way home from our Lagoon trip, we stopped at The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy, UT. It was really cool and Emily loved seeing all of the fish.

We went with the Bassett's. All of the tanks in the Aquarium were filled with all different kinds of fish and water creatures. Emily could identify every character in Finding Nemo, like Nemo, Dory, the seahorses and more. There were even places to pet and feed the fish.

Here are a few pictures of the cool fish. I thought the lobster was humongous. It was bigger than Emily's head. In one tank was an electric eel. Outside the tank was a metal ball you could touch and it would shock you as if you were being shocked by the eel. We were scared to touch it at first but then when we did it wasn't that bad. It felt more like a tingling. I am sure an electric eel feels much worse.

The penguin exhibit was really cool. It was fun to see the penguins dive into the water and then pop back out of the water. Too bad my picture of the penguins didn't turn out too well. On the wall near the penguin exhibit was a growth chart of the different penguin species. Emily is just about the same size as a penguin.

There were also different reptiles, and insects at the Aquarium. I thought the best display was the one of the scorpions. This certain type of scorpion actually glows under black light! First you look at the scorpions under normal light and they appear black, then, when the black lights come on, the scorpions glow yellow. It was actually pretty creepy but cool.

Like I said before, Emily and Colby had a blast. They even got to ride a huge frog!

The funnest part of the Aquarium was petting the Sting Rays. We probably spent close to a half hour here just petting the rays and watching them swim. Don't worry the barbs had been removed from the rays' tails so they couldn't sting us. It was fun to watch the rays swim around and some of them even tried to jump out of the tank by swimming up the side. While Russell and Emily were petting one, it jumped up the side at them and scared Emily so much that she wouldn't pet them anymore. The Sting Rays felt really slimey, but it was fun to pet them. We also got to pet starfish, little sharks, sea urchins, and a few other things.

After seeing all there was to see at the Aquarium, we started the long trek home. We did good for the first part of the trip because Emily and Colby were asleep. Then Russell got tired too so we pulled off in Meadow to walk around and wake up a bit. By then, Emily and Colby had both woke up so then began the entertaining. Emily read her library books and colored but Colby was a little more tricky to entertain. When I ran out of ideas, I handed him a carrot to chew on.

He loved it. I had to watch him so he didn't put the whole thing in his mouth but he did like sucking on it. I didn't worry about him biting off a piece because he doesn't have any teeth yet (thank goodness) and carrots are a little too hard to gum to death.

On our way home, we stopped in New Harmony to see Russell's Grandpa and Grandma Maxwell and his sister Jen. It was fun seeing them and telling them about our trip. It was also a good break for the kids because Emily got to run around with Paul and Alex and Colby just got to be out of the car seat.

Here is Great-Grandma Maxwell with the great-grand kids. Finally we got back in the truck and headed the rest of the way home. We got home at about 9:00 and were we glad to be home! Luckily the ants had not taken over the house. We cleaned up and went to bed because we were so tired from a fun weekend.

One bad thing about vacations is cleaning up afterward. It has taken me two days to get everything put away and laundry done! It was all worth it though. We had a great time.