Conner Family Blog: Dallas Aquarium

Emily rounded us up for a trip to the Dallas Aquarium Saturday morning in Fair Park. Fair Park is where the Texas state fair is held annualy. It has a number of buildings built in the 30's all done in art deco style. It's also site of the annual Cotton Bowl.

Everything worked out, i.e. Sam's mood, traffic, etc. and we got there about 10:30 AM. It was a popular destination for a lot of families as we saw a number of kids and parents with strollers.

Upon entering, we were greeted by this "smiling" fish in a large rain forest exhibit. I can't remember the details of these fish (above) , but I can tell you they were large -- about the size of Cleo.

We brought the camera and a backup lens that does well in low light. I was immediately glad that we did because I had to swap the lens out as soon as we got there. The scorpion fish above was quite happy to have his picture taken.

I can't remember the details on this one, but I assure you, that's not a rock. Look closely, it's a fish!

I got this nice shot of a sunning alligator. Hmm, he appears to be looking at Sam....

Why so nervous, Sam?

Sam was happy to hang out with Emily. He was mostly people watching. Also notice that Emily recently got a haircut.

Here's a trumpet fish. Emily and I saw quite a few of these on our dive trip to Hawaii. It was nice to see them again.

Nope, not a rock. It's an alligator snapping turtle. Judging by the vegetation growing on its back, I'd say it spends most of its day snoozing.

According to the sign on the display, this is a baby alligator snapping turtle. I'm not sure I believe that, but anything that can grow to 250 lb. makes a lot of changes growing up.

Nemo! It seems that no aquarium is complete these days without a clown fish display. Emily got a good shot of this one with the black back.

There was an octopus display near the entrance with two large rubber tentacles. All of the kids got a kick out of it. Sam was no exception. He especially likes suckers on the bottom of the tentacles.

We stopped off for lunch at Freebird's, a burrito place, on our way back home. Sam did really well eating his lunch with Emily while I waited in line to place our order. Once we got our food, Sam was happy to play with the straw in Emily's drink. He got a big kick out of it and had this goofy grin on his face the whole time he was playing with it. Sam even tried some of Emily's rice and beans while we were there. He was a good sport.

We were expecting a lot of wind Saturday, and boy did we get it. I stood in the street in front of the house and took this picture at 4:30 PM. Winds were gusting at 60+ MPH and kicked up a lot of dust. Some of my neighbors will be surprised tomorrow morning when they step outside to find shingles from their house on the lawn. DFW airport was shut down until 7 PM because of the high winds.

Here's a shot of the same house taken today.

Melanie was flying from Jackson to Vail with a layover in Dallas. Her plane got redirected to College Station, but she was able to make it back to Dallas to spend the night with us and rescheduled the flight to Vail today.

We all went to the neighborhood park today before we packed up and took Melanie to the airport. Sam, Emily, and Melanie played on the swings. I went with Cleo and let her explore parts of the park she doesn't usually see. Walking back, we noticed these birds in trees in front of our neighbor's house. They were all happy to sit in the tree and let me take their picture. After the winds and dust yesterday, I bet they're happy to get a break.

Sam continues to grow like a weed. He got a few weeks off of teething, but it appears that his molars are coming in now. He's drooling a lot more than he did for the other teeth. Emily got a call from the day care on Thursday telling us that he had pink eye, so she took him to the doctor and found out that in addition to the pink eye he's got a double ear infection! He's a good sport about everything, so that's why we weren't concerned when we saw a few sniffles earlier in the week. We thought it was your run of the mill cold coupled with teething.

Shot above is Sam playing peek-a-boo with Aunt Melly. You can see that he's got four bottom teeth, and his two front teeth are showing.

We also had the Katch-A-Kid pool safety net installed this week. Keyhole style anchors are fastened into the pool deck and then the net is set up with hook resembling an S-hook that slides into each anchor. Tension pulls the hook from the round part of the keyhole to the slotted part. One line is used to gather up the excess in the middle and it looks off into one of the keyholes, just like everything else. You use a hand winch, similar to a come–a-long, to tension the net and lock it off. The whole thing will probably take about 10 minutes to take off or put on.