Fishies and Butterflies

Every year around my birthday, G plans a short family trip for us. This year I wanted to take A to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's awesome, but it gave me nightmares about chaperoning A's field trips when he gets into school. We spent much of the day dodging middle-schoolers with clipboards. G and I were exhausted from chasing A around, and there were two of us and one of him. I can't imagine trying to corral six hyper kids.

We took a family photo inside a clam shell, and saw tons of very pretty jellyfish.



A slept on the way down, so of course there was no nap for him in the afternoon, which meant no rest for the aquarium-weary parents. But G showed the ultimate in spousal devotion and took him for a walk while I napped. He got a whole lot of points for that.

Today we had a leisurely "continental" breakfast in the hotel and then walked to the beach. It was a beautiful day, so we also checked out the monarch sanctuary. It's the wildest thing - millions of monarch butterflies winter in this tiny park in Pacific Grove. They hang like barnacles on the eucalyptus tress, and at first you can't see them. But as they start to wave their wings, you see that what looks like leaves are thousands and thousands of orange and black butterflies. It's wild.