Underwater Adventures

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Mall of America--the "mega mall," to go to Underwater Adventures--an aquarium. Joining for the first time late last year, this was only the second time we have ever been to the aquarium.

The beginning of the aquarium is an exhibit with several animals that are found in the wild in Minnesota. It is neat to look at the really big turtle they have. It weighs 165 pounds and takes five staff members to move it. There is also an indoor waterfall. Some of the exhibits had changed from last time. There were still some rather large fish that came near the edge of the pond; it reminded us of some fish at Colonial Williamsburg that were enormous and so tame that when people came near the pond, they came up near the edge opening their mouths begging for bread. It was weird to feed fish by hand and I wonder if these fish have come to expect the same thing because of the staff.



Visiting, we can choose to either walk on the right or left for the people mover. We normally walk, but occasionally wind up on it to get around people. It doesn't take too long to get through the aquarium--but we slow down to take our time. There are usually touch tanks at the end of the aquarium. The kids got to see a star fish up close and learned about its digestive habits. The graphic information was too much for my taste, but the kids liked it.

Minnesota Orchestra and Underwater Aquarium

My mom is still here with us. She goes home tomorrow afternoon. We have been trying to bring her to places that she will enjoy. Friday, our homeschool had tickets to the school performance of the Minnesota Orchestra. They had dancers with them doing scenes from the nutcracker. It was wonderful to see them--they had ballerinas and less traditional dancers. They also had two very young dancers--the girl did some gymnastics. They were truly wonderful. I was glad we came.

We had been running late that morning. Alex had to work on the farm so it took longer than normal and we were late. I zipped up 52 over to Minneapolis. We would have been okay, but then traffic was completely stalled on 35 to downtown. We were lucky--we had only missed a little of the performance when we finally got to our seats. We had VERY good seats since were in the VIP box. We had been very lucky to get those seats and we enjoyed it tremendously.

I had to work on Saturday to cover some Christmas events. I had to write that evening and Sunday morning to make deadline at noon. I was done around 1:30 with some of the questions that I had gotten back from my editor. We had wanted to go to Underwater Adventures last week with mom, but just got sidetracked with things to do and not feeling well. Mom had spent the night before with my sister so she had been tired. Even though it was snowing pretty heavily yesterday, we wanted to get there and did go.


We went through the aquarium. It was really neat--and we enjoyed it. I was kind of surprised that isn't bigger for the price, but it is at the Mall of America and the animals need proper care. They also had an exhibit of crystal sculptures representing each state of the union. It was actually cheaper for us to get a membership than it was to pay a daily admission. I am happy that we did it. Now we can go back if we want to for the next year.



I am not normally a fan of the mega mall, but we go occasionally. There are a few things we like to see--Legoland is really fun. I wanted to make sure my mom saw those. The mall has been around for a long time, but she has never been inside of it. I think she discovered that she even enjoyed part of it. We went to the food court with her and asked her what she wanted for dinner. My mom never went to the mall--even a smaller mall so we actually had to explain to her that we didn't have to eat at the same place. My mom is older and we never had money--any money, to do stuff like that so it isn't that surprising that she wouldn't understand the food court...She had fun though...we watched the theme park rides zip past us on the third floor. Since it was evening, the mall was lit in a way that was really fun to watch and reflected evening rides that are outside. All in all--a good time.