Newport Aquarium

Several weeks ago, Hannah came down for a week to stay with me. During that week, sadly, there was a lot of stress as I was dealing with my homeowner's insurance company (still in process, by the way) and having my new heat pump installed. Hannah and I did make a trip to the Newport Aquarium, which is in the weird part of Ohio that is just across the state line into Kentucky but literally falls "inside" Cincinnati. Anyway, here are some highlights from that day. It's a pricy place to visit, but it was a lot of fun to spend the day together. I'll be inundating you, bombarding you even, with pictures of that day because there were several interesting onesand because I am making up for my long absence! :) Let the commentary and picture-viewing commence.

Outside the aquarium is an outdoor mall of sorts. There was a neat display of of crabs with painted shells of every design and color imaginable. You could buy individual cases for them and take one home. It was neat!

Also outside the aquarium is the Ohio River and the view of Cincinnati. It was pretty!

Here's the bridge we drove over to get to Kentucky.

They had some of those pay-to-use telescopes to check out the city. Hannah was so cute as she peered through. I love how she covered her eye to see through the telescope. I also think it's cute that she was open-mouthed in amazement. She's such a doll!

Other sites as we checked out the city from across the river.

Once inside, we passed by a HUGE replica of a humpback whale. The rest are various pictures from around the aquarium.

We happened to catch the final shark tank show of the day. These divers talked to us about sharks. One faced us and talked to us from inside his dive helmet, while the other "stood watch" so that no sharks got too close. If they did, he had a long PVC pipe to gently nudge them away. He was very mysterious. Also, you can see in some of these pictures how big the sharks are in comparison to the divers.

This is a Taiwanese shark ray. It's a member of the shark and ray families. Pretty cool!

This is a Japanese spider crab. It was HUGE!!! They live in darkness, so we couldn't use flash pictures in this area.

Alligator snapping turtle, like the one at the Columbus Zoo. This one is real, though, not like the model at the zoo.

We walked over some glass and looked down into a turtle and alligator pool. Hannah thought that was very cool.

Hannah likes frogs (just like her Tia), so she enjoyed the frog area.

There was a rainforest area where you could buy nectar to feed the birds. It was only $2, but it would have been nice if they would temporarily close that booth when the birds got full. There were cups all over the place and lots of birds, but no birds were hungry. Hannah wanted to do it, so I bought the nectar, but we just ended up leaving it on a wall for the birds to drink later.

As we approached the jellyfish area, Hannah got so excited. She loves jellyfish! There were probably dozens of different species of jellyfish, so it was really neat.

By turning the dial Hannah has her hand on, lights of various colors would shine into the tank. These jellyfish were translucent, so that was pretty neat.

Suction cup jellies!

These were huge and sooooo cool!

In a different area, you walked through a tunnel where stingrays and sharks passed over you.

Look at those TEETH! And that's just a sand shark, not a Great White!

Hannah didn't quite "measure up!" ;)

Okay, so this area was neat and frustrating all at once. There were small tiger sharks swimming around. You could touch them by using your first two fingers and stroking their back AFTER their heads were past you. It was really neat. The trouble was, Hannah is so short that, even though the tank was pretty shallow, she couldn't reach the sharks. We tried for a few minutes, and Hannah got discouraged/started to cry. I may or may not have gotten frustrated with her because I really wanted her to get to do it, and I may or may not have been one of "those people" who was scolding the small child she was with for not having more fun. Then, I may or may not have "strongly encouraged" her to try again, and I may or may not have picked her up and stuck her hand in until she got to touch a shark.

Ahem.

But, the end of the story is that she got to touch a shark twice, thought it was really neat, and, if those aforementioned details took place, she probably got an apology from her Tia for not handling her feelings with more grace and understanding.

But I digress. On with the show.

Hannah loves penguins (which she calls "pengwans" and I find totally adorable), so we caught a short 10 minute show about them.

This picture accurately captures our show host's personality. He interacted with two animated penguins on the TV monitor you see here as he told us about the penguins.

In the inevitable gift shop at the end, Hannah was so good when I told her I'd buy her a souvenir but it had to be a reasonable price. She picked out a very cute and very soft pink stuffed dolphin, but I told her it was too much. She saw another cute stuffed animal and said she liked it but then said, "Tia, it's probably not reasonable. Let's find something else." So cute! She eventually got some ocean-themed bath toys for $10 and was thrilled with them. However, I saw these shot glasses with our names on them, and I had to get a picture.

On the way out, we passed this balloon-animal maker on stilts. Hannah thought he was neat.

Last but not least, the adorable Hannah posed in front of a sign in the shopping plaza before we returned to the car garage.

Last little story: as we left, we couldn't find my car. We wandered around two levels in SWELTERING heat for probably 15 minutes. I knew I parked in section B, but I couldn't find it. Seriously, that's when it was about 97 degree outside with no breeze and high humidity. To top it off, we were wandering around a concrete parking garage with overheated engines and car fumes. It was awful. Hannah was tired and hot, I was tired and hot, and that led me to sort of panic. I even called the button near the elevator to ask the parking attendant for help. I kept hitting the panic button to listen for my car, and I'd hear it half the time. When I got close, though, the car wasn't there and the sound was far away. I'll admit I burst into tears and was literally crying out to God to help us find the car. I was kind of losing it, and I had Hannah who was worked up, too. FINALLY, near the elevator, I heard the car alarm again. Turns out there was a THIRD level that I didn't know about. We took the stairs and found the car in no time. We said a prayer to thank Jesus for leading us to the car, and the car ride home was mostly uneventful. That aside, it was a fun day!