mother's day weekend part 1- the aquarium

this year i had the best mother's day i've had since becoming a mom! it was SO wonderful & there will be many posts about it ;) my mother in law, kathy, travels for her job and has been working in chattanooga, tn for the last couple months. she has been wanting us to come visit her so we decided mother's day weekend was the perfect time to go! we left on friday evening at about 8:30pm (it would have been sooner but i was at a shower for a friend). it only took about 3 or so hours which wasn't bad, except they are in eastern time zone so we lost an hour. we got to the hotel & went to sleep (once the boys calmed down from the excitement. ha!)

on saturday we got up and went to target (hey, i LOVE target) then ate lunch at 5 guys burgers. it was my first time and it was SO yummy! the only area i docked points from them was the fact that they didn't have any ranch dressing for me to dip my fries in ;) (bad habit, i know, but it's so yummy!). then we headed over to the tennessee aquarium. it's one of the best in the country, and i would have to agree! not to mention it was beautiful!

we had the best time! it was so much fun to watch the boys experience all of this for the first time. nolan is a pointer... the kid loves to point at stuff. and it made it that much more fun to watch him look at the fish and other animals. he would point at everything and say "WOOOOOOW" and "oooook!" (look). priceless.

sean loved looking at stuff too! he was funny, he didn't want to touch anything, but he was amazed at everything he saw. he would get so excited and say "look at this!" and want to show us everything. he's such a great kid!

that's one big catfish

my 3 boys by the sting ray pool. the sting rays were minus the 'stings' so you could pet them. nolan just wanted to jump in the water and swim (he's our fish). sean just wanted to look and not touch. and my big boy, dathan, of course touched them!

we actually got a photo together!

the stephens family... as we should be??? hahaha

outside of the aquarium was a large grass field with these art pieces (i'm guessing). they were these funky shaped blue and white statue things (you can see them in these pics). the hill was so big going down to them and sean just wanted to run up and down the hill. sean loves to run! we saw a big group of teenagers roll down the hill while we were up in the aquarium & thought it was so funny.

it was very windy that day, if you couldn't tell ;) i love this pic, it makes me laugh!

just keeping it real here. 3 (failed) attempts at taking a family photo. they're still funny!

they had this water area outside of the aquarium and there were kids playing in it all day. since we were getting ready to leave anyways we let the boys play in it. well, nolan, being the fish that he is, just took off towards the water and wanted to go right in! he is so funny!

sean did go all the way in. he had a blast! the deepest part went up to his waist. he loved it! as you can see, he was very upset when it was time to leave. ha!

we also saw the "wild oceans" movie in the imax theater while we were there. sean got scared of it and wouldn't wear his glasses and eventually fell asleep. nolan would put the glasses on himself (or take mine off of me) and actually paid attention to the movie (well, as much as a 14 month old does!).

when we left the aquarium we went back to the hotel & changed the boys, then went out to dinner at a really nice smoked bbq restaurant (i forget the name). then we went back to the hotel and swam in the large "whirlpool" hot tub for awhile (there was no regular pool) then went back to our rooms and went to bed. it was a wonderful day!

to be continued....