Georgia Aquarium

Donald, Emily, and I took a half day off from school today to take a visit to the Georgia Aquarium. What a great place to spend a rainy day! The crowd was not bad at all and the fishes were out doing all of their best tricks. We saw some amazing spectacles and Emily had a great time. She's even decided that she's changed her mind about being an acrobat or a tabby cat for Halloween. She's going to be an otter! We have the face mask, courtesy of the Aquarium's gift shop. Now, I'll have to break out the trusty sewing machine to whip up the rest of it. Hope I still have that polar bear costume pattern......Enjoy the pictures!

There's a photo for Daddy's desk.

Just arrived - so excited to see the giant wall of schooling fish!

Sometimes it's nice to view things from a different perspective.

A purple starfish - oh my!

Taking the penguin crawl.  A good idea on paper.  The reality was a little more....claustrophobic.

Slippery little suckers.

Spooky albino alligator

Emily's favorite - the otters!

One of my favorite pics of the day.

Trick or treat!

Student of the Week

Emily has been selected as this week's Student of the Week.  We worked on completing her poster, which will hang outside of the classroom door, and it was interesting to listen to all of the facts that she listed about herself.  For example, her future profession is......librarian!  She wrote me a letter the other day and told me that I was the one who "inspired her to love reading."   Hooray!  We must be doing something right! 

More from Callaway!

I think we spent three weekends in a row visiting Callaway Gardens and have throughly enjoyed ourselves every time.  There's always something new to see or do down there.  We always visit the butterfly center because that's Emily's favorite spot.  She has a really good knack for getting the butterflies to land on her.  We met several lovely butterflies, a turtle, a lizard, and a not-so-lovely snake curled up in the falls beside the chapel.  Watch your toes if you plan on going wading there!

Dr. Doolittle

An organist was performing a concert on the day we visited.  You could hear the music all throughout the Azalea Bowl  Incredible!

Mr. Snake was curled up just a few feet away.  I wondered why Donald was in such a hurry to get out of there!

Walking through the Azalea Bowl after a great picnic lunch

Very cool in her faux Ray-Bans.  I had a pair just like them in high school.

Tagging monarchs (almost) at Callaway

Last weekend, we spent a day at Callaway Gardens helping with the monarch butterfly tagging process.  Because the monarchs are migrating through the Callaway area toward Texas and Mexico, they invite park visitors to come and help tag butterflies in the hope of better understanding migratory patterns.  You can even track your own butterfly online, kind of like a Webkinz, just to see where it finally lands.  Very cool, if you are actually able to tag some!  We netted lots of different types of butterflies, but monarchs are notoriously difficult to catch.  They fly high on regular days, but on cool and windy days (such as ours was) they are almost impossible to locate.  We did actually see one, but the ensuing rush of kids with nets was enough to run me out of the park, let alone a butterfly!  Oh well, there's always this weekend!