For Mike’s 4th birthday, we decided to visit the Aquarium of the Pacific, where the boys both looked forward to seeing the sharks. I bought the tickets via Goldstar, but realized only the night before that the tickets only allowed us entry in the afternoon, to visit during the last three hours of the day. Bummer — the difference in discount versus the corporate sites I had access to was a measly 50 cents. We had a good time regardless, but I’d pay the extra 50 cents next time so that we could go when we want and stay as long as we want. Ah well, you live and you learn.

Mmm, crab. Pretty sure we saw this guy near the entrance.

We had been waiting for my brother, and my boys pretty much threw themselves at him when they saw he was here.

We made a beeline for the outdoor attractions because we’d gotten to the Aquarium late. Check out Mikey’s face.

Chris and that finger.

Penguins!

Chris, Mike and some strange man agog at the penguins swimming underwater.

Mike on my brother’s shoulders at the shark tank. It was annoying how all these gigantic adults were basically blocking all the kids from seeing the sharks when we got there.

Mike’s face here is priceless!

Sharks! They’d been looking forward to seeing sharks all week.

Mike hugging a ginormous penguin statue.

Chris being nice to the little penguin statue.

Jellyfish!

Nemo and Dory!

This kid has a million dollar smile.

Chris found Nemo!

A rare picture of me looking not horrible.

Colorful fish

Stingrays always look as if they have happy faces.

More crab.

That would be a rock fish. You can barely tell its a fish.

A type of seahorse that basically looks like seaweed.

Like I mentioned, we got to the Aquarium pretty late, so Chris had only had a short nap in the car, so he was understandably tired toward the end of our visit. Or was he? He “barnacled” himself to my brother’s girlfriend Kat as if he was soooo tired, but later gave us a smirk as if, “yeah, I got the girl!” What a sly fox…