I skipped last week because I didn’t take any pictures! I more than made up for it this week. Not only did we get to experience the solar eclipse, but we’ve had my sister Alice here visiting and we got a bonus visit one day from my brother Kevin and his wife Rita. Friday night, we drove down to Corpus Christi. Paul was already down there for a the state Libertarian convention, so he rented another hotel room for the rest of us to stay in at the hotel he was at so that we could play most the day Saturday while he was at the convention. We headed to Rockport Beach for the morning and then went over to the Texas State Aquarium in the afternoon. It was a really fun day!
Here’s a shot I got of the eclipse. The cloud cover made it so that I didn’t need the filter for my phone. It also made it difficult to see it a lot of the time. The point where the sun was completely covered was a moment where there was a lot of cloud cover, so I didn’t get any shots of that, but it did still get pretty dark.Paul took this shot. He said the birds all started acting really weird when it got dark.Okay, so my phone does this thing where it will automatically fix what it feels to be poor quality lighting situations…which I love 99% of the time. Just not at this moment. I wish I would have been able to capture just how dark it was, but you can see lights on on the houses in the background, so that gives you an idea, especially if I tell you that this was at 1:35ish in the afternoon.Kevin and Rita brought along Jake. Abigail was tickled to get to walk him.Hanging out with him on the front porch.She was being really gentle with him, which was great.She was so happy to get to have some Jake time!She was also happy to have some Uncle Kevin time. 🙂Joseph was able to gain freedom this past Thursday afternoon. He still has to take it easy for a little bit, but it’s nice to not have the cast on anymore.Sunrise over the ocean…I grew up experiencing ocean sunsets when we visited the beach, so this is still a cool concept for me.When in Texas…eat Texas-shaped waffles for breakfast!The beach!I had to get photographic proof that I was there, too.Playing along the shore.It’s really, really shallow for a long ways out. I don’t know that I ever got deeper than my knees. We also saw quite a few jelly fish. After we got to our sixth sighting, we decided we were done with the water.Hanging out with the statue of the Whataburger founder. We went to a Whataburger that had two stories, which was pretty cool. I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of the outside!Outside of the aquarium. We saw a huge ship with this tugboat behind it. Abigail was excited about seeing a tugboat in real life.The dolphins were showing off for the kids.It was so neat to see them up close.I didn’t even see the one in the back until I looked at the picture afterward.They kept coming right up to the glass. It was so neat!This little sea turtle was kind of my favorite. He had something wrong with his shell, so he couldn’t drive down (I think he had been injured by a fishing line/hook because it looked like he had some sort of bandage on his shell).He hung out over here by us for quite some time.I loved seeing such a big smile on Joseph’s face. 🙂Ah, the sea otters…They also got right up to us.There was this dome in one of the aquariums that the kids could crawl up into to be in the aquarium. It was pretty cool!Joseph loved getting to see that sea star up close and see all its suction cups.THIS is the way I like to see jelly fish, haha. We actually saw this type in the ocean a few hours earlier than when I took this picture. Only one out of the six still had visible tentacles, so I’m not sure if the others could hurt us (or if they were still alive), but the one with the tentacles was the one that made us decide to abort mission, ha.This eel was pretty cool. It was checking out Joseph while Joseph was checking it out.Inside a shark cage. I’m not sure I want to be in the ocean with anything that is big enough to not be able to get through those bars!We had to take a picture inside the megalodon mouth!Sharks!This guy was pretty menacing.Okay, so I had to zoom in a ton in order to get a good picture of these guys. They were only about an inch long, tops. I love seahorses!This is the biggest horseshoe crab I have ever seen!Checking out a very sassy flamingo named Michaelangelo (that’s what the worker said his name was).Oh, to be this flexible!!We were fascinated by how dark pink/red they were. It’s much different than the light pink flamingos they have at our zoo.I love poison dart frogs. Did you know that they’re only poisonous due to what they eat when out in the wild. If they are raised in captivity, they aren’t poisonous!This is probably the only way I would be 100% comfortable with a tarantula…behind glass!A scarlet ibis. Their color is so vibrant!
