At the Ameys: Mini Vacation

Back in February over President's Day weekend, we decided to take a little mini family vacation and go see some local attractions we hadn't been to before: the Legoland Discovery Center, SeaLife Aquarium and Ft. Worth Zoo. We didn't tell the kids where we were going until we got there! They were excited.

Legoland (which is what I will call it even though it was a smaller "discovery center") had a bunch of things to do inside, but the space was fairly small. Here you could build your own Lego car and then race it down the ramp.

There were three rides. When you first enter you are given a little explanation on how Legos are made, then you are immediately in line to ride the first ride - a laser tag type ride where you can shoot guns at targets while you ride a car in the dark. So we didn't go back and do that ride because it was always busy. And I didn't take pictures because I was too busy shooting targets (plus it was too dark). The 2nd ride was little cars that you could drive around a track. Neither Wyatt nor Lila were brave enough to ride those (and Ben and I were too big). BUT, the third ride was a winner. It was a two-seater with pedals. The faster you pedaled, the higher your seats would rise as you went around. This is the best picture I could get of Ben and Lila (I just used the camera on my phone). She also rode it with me twice. We couldn't get Wyatt to try it though.

Meanwhile, Piper was having fun in the Lego pit.

"Can't go over it? Then I guess I'll just have to go under it!"

Second time to ride!

This was probably Wyatt's favorite area too.

Piper decided she needed to gather up all the windows.

Legoland also had a 4D movie theater... where in addition to the 3D glasses, we also got misted with water or "snow" during different parts of the movie. We watched both movies they had (about 12 min. each).

Legoland had a small miniature city with several Dallas landmarks. It was neat to see. Every few minutes the overhead lights would dim, so we could see the city at night!

Here Lila is standing next to downtown Dallas, so you can see the scale.

Finally, right before we were about to leave, we convinced Wyatt to give the ride a try. You can tell he isn't so sure in this picture, but he enjoyed it once it was over! :)

We ate lunch before heading over to the Aquarium. Everyone enjoyed this too, but by far, Lila had the most fun of all the kids. She loves animals and asked all kinds of questions about the various creatures we saw.

This little bubble was under one of the fish tanks.

This picture is kind of hard to see because it was so dark, but Piper is laying flat on the floor looking through the window. We were above the large tank which had some sharks in it.

Looking through an aquarium.

Toward the end, there was a pool where you could reach in and touch some starfish.

Piper could have stayed in the water forever!

To continue the adventure (and decrease our driving), we decided to stay in a hotel that night since we were planning to go to the zoo in Ft. Worth the next day (which was pretty close to where we were already.) I didn't take any pictures at the hotel. We made sure to pick one that had a pool, so we could swim. The water was so COLD even though it was inside. We didn't swim long... ok, I didn't even get all the way in... that's what dads are for :) Everyone did a pretty good job settling down and once asleep, we slept all night long.

The next day we went to the zoo. The weather was perfect - sunny and in the low 70s. Again, Lila loved the zoo. Piper did too, but mostly because she could get down and run!

One of the favorite things we did at the zoo was feed the birds.

Here's the moment the bird finally came over to her feeder. I had to hold her up to get her a little closer to the birds, so I took this picture by holding my phone out.

Wyatt also got a turn to feed the birds.

Taken with my DSLR. I love his bright little cheek. God is so creative!

I wish I remembered what this was called. Some weird type of eel I think - with lots of teeth. I took this through a window, or I would not have been that close! :)