Airlie Gardens, Fort Fisher Aquarium, and More

8/8/2011-  We all woke up early and I was starving. We got dressed and head down to eat breakfast at the hotel. They served a hot, made to order breakfast, so I got french toast...yummy.

We had decided we would visit Airlie Gardens since 1)we've been to Wilmington a ton and never went 2) I was totally burnt and 3) I could not handle the sand with these kids another day. Christina and Jeff wanted to spend some time at the beach so they skipped the garden tour.

I knew it was going to get hot so we went as early as we could. They opened at 9AM but I think we got there around 9:30AM. I headed in to pay ( found out it was free day yesterday, of course) and Paul lotioned up the kids.

We headed out for our adventure and can I just say HOT. SWEATY. MESS! We made it to the first marker and we were already sweaty and thirsty. Thank goodness I remembered to bring some cold drinks (if you know me, you know I always forget important things like drinks, diapers, formula,etc).

I have a crazed obsession with taking our family picture using the timer function on our camera. So every time there was a nice place, I wanted to take a family pic. We were so hot by marker 3, therefore no more family pics were taken  LOL It was less than a mile walk to tour everything and there was a breeze, but by the time we were done, we had to go back to the hotel and change our clothes for lunch!

Here is one of our family pics, but the other pics are in the slide show/link at the bottom of this post...

After lunch we headed to the aquarium. We've been to the Fort Fisher Aquarium numerous times but it is always fun and it was Jenna's first time at an aquarium.

We hit the timing just right because we got to see the staff feed some of the fish. The kids were so excited and the fish were going nuts over the food. I wish I would have gotten it on video but it happened so quickly.

These fish, followed you whenever you moved and Jenna liked them...

Jenna was amazed at the fish...

One of their favorite parts is always the touch tank. Ash even got to touch a sting ray this time!



This window looks into the shark tank which also holds other fish (eels, stingrays, etc). Every time we go I want to take their picture there and for some reason Addy didn't want to sit in the window, so I told her to just stand there:)

And here were are at the end in the mouth of a shark! LOL



Everytime we go there, I am always amazed at how small the aquarium actually is but how long it takes us to go through it. The kids love to look at every single thing!

Once done, we headed back to the hotel. Christine and Jeff were headed downtown Wilmington but it was too hot to drag them around, so we decided we would jump in the pool for a bit and then head out to dinner once it cooled off.

We then got ready and decided to go to dinner. We went to Bluewater Grill and it was so good! It was the perfect time to go to dinner. We got to sit outside and watch the sunset while eating without being overheated. We were right on the water and the breeze was great! For going without naps the entire trip, the kids were extremely good, even though Bean does have her nuk in the pic:)

And our Family Pic!



After dinner, we headed to the beach. We love the beach at night! Totally one of the best places to be, IMO. It was perfect! The moon was bright and even though we told the kids no to get wet, they of course did. Some awesome person at the beach offered to take our family pic!



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