vacation part 1

we left thursday for our family (minus molly) vacation. it's more of a colby vacation and allen and i are along for the ride. we left molly with mimi because she's not quite old enough to be fun on these little adventures yet. nap time is a bummer when you're trying to cram as much as you can into one afternoon.
we got a cameron park season pass back in the spring from the waco zoo. this card allows us free access to the waco zoo, dallas zoo, dallas aquarium, among others around the state of texas, and half price at the san antonio zoo and texas state aquarium in corpus. we thought we'd get our money's worth from the pass and take advantage of the free and half price admission to a few of these places--especially with colby's current infatuation with marine animals.
so i planned, well semi-plan but more make it up as we go along, a trip to dallas followed by a trip to corpus; yes, two completely different directions, but we're trying to get it all in while sans molly.

we headed out late thursday morning, and after a brief stop in waco to leave molly with mimi, we were on our way to the metroplex. our plan was to stay with pollard (a good friend of allen's) thursday and friday night. when we got close we gave him a call and he gave us directions to brads house where we would be playing some odd game that i had never seen and probably never will see again. this game involved hours (3 to be exact, before we shut it down for lack of time) of conquering planets and fighting space pirates and trying to build space stations and whatnot. now, i enjoy games, but like word games and embarrasing humor games. spaceships and galaxies far far away? not so much. it actually ended up being pretty fun and colby sat quietly (mostly) on the floor and played until we were done. allen went on to the rangers game with pollard and colby and i found the nearest movie theatre and saw WALL-E.

friday we went to the fort worth zoo. not part of our season pass thingy but i think its common knowledge that the fort worth zoo makes the dallas zoo look like a pet store, and since we were about the same distance from both, we opted for the better. very cool zoo. the "shark tank", which didn't actually have a shark at all, and the penguin exhibit were pathetic, but other than that, it's a great place and i would go back. i kept having to tell colby to stop correcting people....

random person A: "hey, look at the cow!"
colby: "excuse me, thats a longhorn."

random person B: "is that a shark?"
colby: "its a spotted wobbegong."

me both times: "colby, shhh!"

for the record, he was right, but i don't want him to be that kid. he's too smart for his own good sometimes....

saturday we headed to the dallas aquarium. the list i received with my cameron park pass lists "dallas aquarium" as part of the deal. if you google dallas aquarium you will pull up many links to the Dallas World Aquarium which is not the aquarium the card gets you in to. i did not know this. i googled, i got directions, and that was that. we got up. we got ready. we put the address into our GPS and we drove 30 minutes to the dallas world aquarium. we paid $5 to park and walked the 2 blocks to the entrance where we waited in line for our turn to get in for free.......then i was given the bad news rather rudely from the window attendant...
rude aquarium lady: "we don't honor other passes."
me: "my list said this was good fo--" (thats me being interrupted)
rude aquarium lady: "this is for the dallas zoo and the dallas aquarium. this is the dallas WORLD aquarium. we don't accept this here."
then i see that its $20 per person to get in, and i thought, well we can't be that far from the right place. let's go there for free. i apologized to my son and my husband for taking us to the wrong place and they were very forgiving and not too upset about the $5 we had just stuffed into the parking meter.
then we went to the dallas aquarium. i love our GPS system. not sure what we would have done without that thing to tell us where the heck we were and where we needed to go.
however, the aquarium at fairpark (the right place) was $4 and probably not even worth that. my house is bigger, and there may be more fish in the tank at my dr's office than there were at this place. they advertised the piranah feeding at 2:30, giving them a chance for redemption. sadly, to the disappointment of the tens of people somewhat eagerly crowded around the tank, there were approximately 4 small dead fish thrown in and half-heartedly eaten by the obviously over-fed piranahs. one lady standing close by suggested they starve them a little bit so we could at least see a good fight. at the risk of PETA coming after me, i concur.
fortunately we were on the fairgrounds where any type of museum you would ever want to go to is located, so we paid our money to get into the natural history museum/science place/childrens museum; 1 price includes all. we spent the rest of the day there, taking a break between buildings for lunch, and topping the afternoon off letting colby get soaked to the bone in an outdoor fountain outside the aquarium (not the world aquarium). pretty fun, but we ended up saving a whopping $11 with our card. we tried to talk colby into the dallas zoo, but he told us he had already been to the zoo. who were we to argue? it's his vacation.
we stayed saturday night in rowlett with some friends of my family from about 18 years ago, and had dinner with them in addition to a handfull of people that my family used to "run around with" back in the day. it was great to reminisce and catch up.
on our way home today we listened to a sermon on allens ipod. he can't stand the weirdness of not being in chuch on sunday, so that was the compromise. my days all run together and i never know if i'm coming or going, so it doesnt bother me as much.
the pastor was talking about peter, and colby was listening along as much as his almost 4-year-old brain would let him...
colby: "is he talking about peter pan?"
me: "no, not peter pan. a different peter."
colby: "i know! he's talking about peter that turns into spiderman."
me: "no, not peter parker; peter the disciple."
colby: "peter pan was a disciple."
me: "no he wasn't."
allen: "peter pan was a flying boy."
me: "the disciples were the guys that followed Jesus around."
colby: "oh, ok."
so now we're home and we leave tomorrow morning for the second half of our trip.
we're going to the texas state aquarium and the backyardigans live tour in corpus, and will probably hit the beach for a couple of hours in there somewhere too.
i'll blog about the rest of our vacation (and post some pictures) when we get back!