At the MOTE with fish that I would cuddle if I could

The MOTE Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida is a magical place.

Dwarf Cuttlefish! These are my absolute favorite fish! OK, they're not technically fish, they are mollusks. They look similar to squid, about 4 inches long with tentacles coming from their head. They can CHANGE COLOR and PATTERNS right before your eyes! When hiding in a dark space, they are often black with white polka dots. When they come out of hiding, they lighten to browns and tans and quickly trade the dots for stripes, circles or no pattern at all. When they swim to the white side of the tank, they turn, yep, white.

There's three in this photo, see them all? See the different colors and patterns?

This very interesting creature has the tail of a lobster and the head and arms of a praying mantis. We watched it roll into a ball like those ropy poly bugs. There were no signs explaining what this is, so when we left I googled it and found it's called a Mantis Shrimp.

We love being able to touch fun sea creatures!

Touching a squishy sea cucumber.

Following the manatees to the Oh Baby exhibit, where they explain reproduction of marine life.

These sea turtles were enormous! This one kept swimming over and popping his head up to look at Journey.

We arrived during manatee feeding time.

Playing in a TED (turtle extruder device). This allows fishermen to catch fish and shrimp, and when a turtle
 is caught, he will hit the gate towards the end and get pushed out instead of caught in the final section of net.

Garden Eels are brightly colored, interesting creatures that bury themselves tail first in the sand. 

We watched them stretch upwards to eat, but never saw one come completely out of the sand.

The life cycle and stages of a jelly fish. Super cool seeing microscopic jellyfish swimming around!

Touching a baby Epaulette Shark.

Do you know what these are? 

Teeny, tiny baby seahorses! 

Those circles are about the size of a dime for reference.

We loved the MOTE and plan to return next week!

Everything is Awesome.....at Legoland!

Our first trip to Legoland was a huge success. The fact that we went to their Florida location, which is the world's largest, 

certainly made it, well, awesome! We arrived an hour before they opened which gave us time to spend with our 

new fulltime family friends. There were about 150 of us there, attending from our roadschool group. 

All but one ride is restricted by height. Fortunately when you put shoes on our 39" Journey 

and ask her to stand up super duper tall, she just barely stretches to the 40" line requirement. 

Miniland includes lego models of New York City, Washington DC, 

the Kennedy Space Center and Las Vegas....ahhh feels like home!

Lots of sculptures thru out the park. See the sign? This guy is made up of 211,000 legos and took 640 hours to build!

I was super impressed by this full-sized SUV, made of legos.

They flew aircrafts and boats. 

Somehow we ended up backwards on the boat, while I was driving!

They drove cars and earned their "drivers licenses". 

We played a game as a family where we had to drive this firetruck by pumping the levers, 

over to a building so the kids could spray water on the fire, then raced it back to the starting place.

And then they were ready to ride their first real ROLLER COASTER! 

I was not sure this was a good idea. As we waited in line for the Dragon Coaster, I kept questioning myself and the kids but they wanted to do it. I rode with Journey first. The first half of the ride goes thru a tunnel with animatronic lego creations on both sides of the coaster. At one point a giant dragon sprays mist on you. As soon as you make it outside to the light, you're already climbing up, up, up and then at the top you feel the chain let go and the coaster flies down and around in the loops. I held Journey's hand the whole time and every time I looked over at her she had a big smile on her face.

As soon as the ride was over she said she wanted to ride again! Daddy had been waiting for us and we traded kids so I could take Asher with me this time. Asher asked if it was scary, I told him Journey didn't think so and that I held her hand the whole time. He grabbed my hand, gave me a kiss and was ready to go. This time I didn't pay attention to the ride, I watched his face the entire time. It was priceless. My heart soared watching his face. He was full of excitement, wonder and pure joy. He also immediately wanted a second ride, so once we exited we found Daddy and Journey and got right back in line. I actually took a video of them both riding their second time so Daddy could see how excited and happy they were on it.

These shots are from the video clip. Look at those happy faces!

We met Emmet and Wyldstyle from the LEGO Movie!

Watching the waterskiing pirate show.

They were very captivated by the show!

I love that LEGOland has these waiting areas for kids to play while their parents wait in line. 

Although, I look at those legos and see the germs that they must be spreading.....

And we came home with a new (temporary) family member, Rambler. He is Fulltime Families' mascot and he travels around with a family for awhile until he is passed on to another Fulltime Family. The kids love having him around and are happy that Emily decided to pass him on to us.