Corolla and the aquarium...

On Tuesday we went to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island with John, Susie and the boys. It was an hour away from our house, but we made a day of it and had a lot of fun.

Who knew that aquariums and dinosaurs had so much in common? We didn't, but we walked through their animated dinosaur area, which was pretty cool. 

Tri-sarah-tops, she came up with that herself.

Digging for dinosaur bones.

Whose afraid of this BIG BAD T-Rex? Not this kid!

Next stop was the aquarium where the kids each got a turn to spin the shark trivia wheel to get a shark tooth. With a little help from the dads, they all got their own shark tooth.

 

They had a sea turtle hospital where they take in sick sea turtles and help them recover. The boys got to ask any questions they had about sea turtles. Brayden and Sammy then became special sea turtle technicians at the sea turtle center where they got to help diagnosis and treat their sick sea turtle and release them back into the ocean.

We also got to touch stingrays, watch them get fed, as well as touch starfish and hermit crabs. 

The last exhibit we watched 2 scuba divers who were in the large tank with fish and sharks. Really cool! We could ask the main diver any question about sharks or the tank. He had a microphone and could talk to us from inside the tank answering our questions.

The black and white stick is used so that the sharks keep their distance from the divers.

The guys got this picture taken half-way through our time at the aquarium.

We stopped to look at it as we were leaving and decided we all needed to get in the picture, so went back and got group/family shots taken as well. Stephen was fast asleep, which is why he isn't in any of them.

On our way out Sammy and Brayden got into this hurricane simulator. They thought it was pretty cool. We just laughed at them and their reaction.