Long Island Aquarium

On Thursday morning we swam in the indoor pool and then after lunch we went to the Long Island Museum, which is a Smithsonian affiliate. We walked through an exhibit about the prohibition, one about duck hunting, saw lots and lots and lots of carriages, and visited a one room schoolhouse. We skipped the art building. Aunt Janet is a member there so we all got in free. It's only five minutes from the beach, which was our next stop. Because it was cooler, there were hardly any people there. Nadia had hoped to play with McKenna again as her family had planned to come on Thursday, but they changed their plans. Nadia was the only one of our group who got in the water that day. Janet played monkey in the middle on the beach.

It rained most of the morning and early afternoon yesterday and was even cooler than Thursday. We decided to go to the Long Island Aquarium first and spent about 3.5 hours there. We would have stayed longer to see a second sea lion show and a presentation about otters, but those were held outside where it

was raining. We enjoyed the sea lion show we did attend as well as a presentation about African penguins. The kids got to touch various animals - starfish, crab, stingrays, hissing Madagascar cockroach, etc. We also fed birds and walked through an area where butterflies were flying all around us. A beautiful butterfly landed on Oliver's shorts. A bird landed on Janet's shoulder. Nadia also had two butterflies on her fingers at one point. When we got back, I took the kids swimming in the indoor pool. Although it had stopped raining, it was rather cool so we opted to eat dinner at Janet's house. Nadia was the winner in the Monopoly game. The kids had fun playing hide and seek with her as well. Nadia, Ian, and I played Taboo with Aunt Janet after Oliver went to bed. She read their devotions each night from a Mini and Maxi devotional book. We had a fabulous week with Aunt Janet! Ian was crying last night and again this morning because he didn't want to leave. We will see her again in a month at my dad's wedding in Virginia.

We are about to leave. Our first

stop will be the Cradle of Aviation Museum and then (on the same street) the Long Island Children's Museum. We can get into free at both of those. Then we'll finish our drive home. Hopefully we won't hit too much traffic. We hope to come and visit Aunt Janet again in the future!