A day in Newport

Yesterday we spent a family day in Newport. Our first stop was the Hatfield Marine Science Center. As soon as you walk in there is a tank that has an octopus. He was really cute, but he has just been introduced to this new tank and so you could not take pictures of him. There was a really cool globe display and you could change the views with a touch screen computer. Dylan was changing it from the Sun, to Jupiter, to the Moon, and also different views of the earth. It was really cool.

Right outside the door of the globe room was a tank with a turtle in it. The kids were talking to him and saying, "Hi Mr Turtle, how are you today?"

Next we made our way across the room to touch tank. It was full of sea stars, sea cucumbers, anemones, and even a stingray!!! Dylan touched a few things but Ally was not all that into it she only touched a display rock and a Sea Star.

We then made our way around the rest of the building looking at various tanks with fish and other sea creatures and other various displays.

After wrapping around the whole building we decided to talk a walk along the bay on the nature path.

There was a short sandy stretch where the kids found lots of shells.

Ally loves shells! We continued along the path and Ally started to get a little tired, along comes the Daddy mobile. She happily rode the rest of the path on Daddy's shoulders.

We made our way back to the car, buckled in, and headed off to find some lunch. After a quick lunch at Arctic Circle we headed down to our new favorite beach, South Beach. the kids kicked off their boots after climbing up the hill

and settled into digging,

running,

and relaxing on the beach.

They loved walking along the top of the dune and back, their endless energy was exhausting! We spent a couple hours just wearing them out. Finally it was time to head back, we got them changed into less sandy clothes and settled in with pillows and blankets and headed back to dinner, showers, and a warm cozy bed.