Moody Gardens

Dana and I took the kids to Galveston's Moody Gardens this week. We both bought memberships there, so hopefully we will get to go many more times, since everyone had a ball.

If you haven't been to Moody Gardens, you should! Their Rain forest Pyramid was closed down because it was still on Winter hours, but everything else was up and running.

We asked all the kids what they wanted to do by importance, so that we could try to get every one's favorite in. They all pretty much agreed on wanting to go to the Paddle Boat and the big park right in front of the paddle boat line. No problem. We were all pretty tired though, from the 2 hour drive and getting our membership stuff taken care of, so we decided to do the Sharks 4D movie instead. This is an absolutely terrific little show. It is considered 4D because not only are you wearing the 3D glasses so that things look like they are coming at you...you are being squirted with water when you "jump into the ocean", you smell salt water, you are poked from the back of your chair when something looks like it is going to poke you, and little plastic thingies (like that word?) slap your legs when going through seaweed.

The marketing for Moody is pretty smart in that you exit the movie through the gift shop! Kaytlynn just about freaked when she saw a big "rock display". As many of you know, she is REALLY into rocks. I promised her a rock at the end of the day...Then she saw the snow globe display...and as many of you know, she is REALLY into snow globes. I told her I would think about that one, but that I didn't want to carry around a bag of goodies all day. She would have to wait until later.

We tried to go see an IMAX about Sharks, but realized that you needed a reservation ticket to get in...That was fine. We went to the counter, reserved our seats for 5:00 and decided to go eat. We ate a great little restaurant and headed off to the paddle boat...only to discover that the paddle boat closes down at 4...and it was 4:30. We promise the kids that we will do that next time...right off the bat, apologize profusely, and make them happy that we can still play at the park that is right beside the boat. We decide to do that after everything else is about to close, since it is outside.

We head off to the Science Museum, where they are displaying an exhibit called BONES. It was fun. The kids played with xrays, identified objects by looking at pictures of their skeletons, put skeleton puzzles together that were life size. It was a very cool, hands on place.

We then decided to go to the Penguin and aquarium exhibits. They had this Passport worksheet for the kids to find different sharks throughout the exhibit...when they found it, they got to "stamp" their little worksheet. This ended up being such fun for K and D. They loved looking at the clown fish and screaming "Nemo! and looking at the rays and skates, and eels. They touched the pencil anemone which is cool because it closes its spikes around your finger. They touched a rock lobster...and weren't impressed at all with it. They looked at skeletons of different fish and whales. And then we tried to see how many penguins we could name without cheating, due to Kaytlynn's class learning all about Penguins this year.

Off to the Shark IMAX show we went. It was a 45 minute 3D movie about all of the different sharks there are. It was very informative...and beautiful to boot.

So we leave the theater, ready to head out to the park...and there we see a security guard, blocking the way to the park, pointing all people to the front doors...uh oh...We panic and think "souvenir shop" as we turn our heads simultaneously towards the gift shop...we see the worker lady at the doors...LOCKING THEM...In our heads, you could see us in slow motion yelling "NOOOOOOOOO".

We do more apologizing...more promising (not 1 but 2 rocks next time!) and they are completely okay with it, to both Dana and my surprise!

We left the building and what do we see...a park!!! So all was not lost.

It really was fun, educational, and different. We can't wait to go back.