A High Sea Adventure

The kids and I have spent the last week at Vacation Bible School.  The program was "High Seas Expedition - Exploring the Mighty Love of God".

 

We started each day with singing, and learning our Bible point for the day.

1.  God's word is true.

2.  God's word is comforting.

3.  God's word is surprising.

4.  God's word is life-changing.

5. God's word is for everyone.

 

 

We then separated into Preschool and Elementary groups and went and listened to our Bible story for the day.

I was a Preschool "Crew" leader

 

My fearless crew

Then, at some point each day we had a time of:

Games...

(They're simulating the stormy seas when God comforts Paul)

 

Pulling an anchor

 

...Chatter's Theatre...

(where they reinforced each day's Bible point)

 

...and the all important craft time.

 

My precious turtles

 

Tristan wasn't in my crew, but he did travel to the different activities with us as we were in the same larger group.  He did really well, and stayed with his own crew most of the time - except during the story time when he wanted to hang out close to me.

 

He was so into singing on this particular day that he was right up in front of the television singing and signing along with the video.

 

Tristan's crew, the Nemos

 

Grace had a great time too, but I didn't see much of her as she was with the elementary kids and we only crossed paths at the beginning and the end of the day.

Now, it's off to Egypt with our church, learning about Joseph's journey from prison to palace.

I don't know that I'll get many pictures of that as David and I are in a class and church service during their VBS time, but I'll see what I can do.

Mother-Daughter Tea

Today was a special day for Grace and I.  We had our first mother-daughter event!  It didn't start out as we had planned it, but we made it work.  I had intended on both of us going and getting manicures and pedicures, but it turns out that you need to make appointments to do such things...

 

So, we improvised, and I did Grace's nails.

 

On our way out the door for our special date:

 

Grace chose to wear her (mine 30 years ago) hanbok and begged me to wear a dress.

Since I don't have a decent dress, I dug out and dusted off a skirt to wear.

 

We had several varieties of sandwiches, cupcakes, fruit, and tea (the iced variety since it is 90 degrees with 90+ % humidity).

They even had hats for all of us to wear.

 

Grace chose a tiara (anyone surprised?)

 

Enjoying her cupcake (while eyeing "The Princess and the Frog")

 

They had several games for the girls to play.

This first one was a freeze dance.

 

She loves to dance (though she was hardly moving at the party) and made it to the final round.

 

And she took home the prize!  Though, as I said, it's hard to tell if she really stopped dancing when the music stopped because she was hardly moving at all in the first place.  But, the judge said that she was the winner.

 

She chose a Princess Tiana puzzle.

 

We both really enjoyed ourselves and I look forward to doing more of these things in the future.  I have noticed that Grace is requesting to do more and more things just the two of us, so I'm hoping to make a date with her once a month.  The boys can have their day and us girls can have our day and go do girlie stuff (though I was never much of a "girl" like my precious princess is, so I'm gonna have to figure it out as I go - any suggestions are more than welcome!).

Coex Aquarium - Part 2 - Other critters

Now for the rest of the critters at the aquarium.

 

I am just fascinated with seahorses - I don't know why, and I don't know what purpose God had in mind when he created them, but I like 'em.  And they had thousands of them!  No, I'm not exadurating.

 

Love this one with the daddy and all the babies.

There are a ton of the "flecks" in the water that are tiny seahorses.

 

I just have two babies though...

and I think they're much cuter.

 

This, though it is difficult to see (look closely) is a two headed turtle.

 

I never realized that beavers were so unattractive

 

And here's a bunch of frogs... again - I really like the ones that are brightly colored - you know, the poisonous ones.

 

Man these are ugly!

My undersea adventure goers

 

They even had manatees

They said these were from China (I think - again didn't pay much attention to the sign - they're manatees, therefore they must be from Florida).  It was feeding time so the kids really got a kick out of watching them eat their lettuce - and watching the turtles try to steal some too.  It was interesting to see the way they used their top lip like fingers to push the lettuce into their mouths.

 

Who doesn't like seals? This display was neat because they had a glass bottomed float so even if they were resting out of the water, you could look up and see them.

 

I won't bore you with more pictures of jellyfish that you've already seen in previous posts (what? they're cool).  But this guy is something I've never seen before.  I thought all jellyfish were transparent or at least light colored - but this guy looks like a black mushroom in the water - and there were blue ones too!

 

By the time we got to this guys tank I was really hungry and thought he would be delicious.

 

This penguin was apparently building a nest.  She would go back and forth between this bucket of sticks and a hutch.  She would look over the sticks and choose just the right one.  And it couldn't be one that had been on the ground - it had to be out of this container.

 

This has nothing to do with the aquarium except that it was in the mall.  I just was caught off guard by the name and had a good laugh.

Coex Aquarium - Part 1 - Fish

Last weekend we headed back up to Seoul to check out the aquarium they have up there in this huge underground mall.  It was an ugly, rainy day, so it was the perfect time for an indoor activity. 

Be warned... there are a lot of pictures in this post!  We love fish, and they had some pretty crazy looking ones here.

The obligatory entrance photo.

(Grace forgot her shoes - thankfully Tristan had 2 pair in the car ?? and she didn't have to wear her rain boots around all day.)

 

I don't know what kind of fish these are, but they are certainly unique.

 

This is some sort of a special Mandarin fish.  They are only found in certain areas of the world, and come in a couple different colors, but this one is the rarest.

(You'd think I'd take pictures of the signs so I'd be able to tell more about them!)

 

They had an aquarium display going on (I don't know if it's there all the time or not) that showed the coolest ideas of different things to make aquariums out of.

 

They had two made out of vending machines - We didn't try them to see if they were still functional.

 

This one was neat.  They had a fountain with several vertical tubes that the fish could swim up into.

 

Yep, that's exactly what you think you're seeing.

Grace saw this and said, "Really?!?"

 

TV

 

We all thought it would be great to have a headboard like this one.

 

Fish playing soccer

 

This fish reminded me of "Rainbow Fish"

It's not as brightly colored as the book portrays, but he's certainly got his share of glittery scales!

 

Now that's a big catfish!

 

Fish kisses

 

I have no idea what these fish are (surprise!) but boy were they cool!

 

They had a really nice place and bigger than I anticipated it was going to be.  It was a bit on the pricy side, especially when we discovered we had to pay about $20 to park!  Oh well, it was well worth it.  Next up - more pics from the aquarium - just not fish.