A Vacation At Home

Our family left us today. It has been a good visit, but so busy. Everyday we have gone somewhere or done something. The highlights were definitely going to the Creation Science Museum and the Newport Aquarium.

The Creation Science museum was about a two-hour drive from our house. When we finally got to the museum, we found out that all that planetarium tickets were sold out, which was a disappointment. I had really been looking forward to seeing that. The museum was so crowded we could hardly get through it. I can't even imagine what it must have been like the week it opened. People would stop in front of exhibits for ten and fifteen minutes at a time holding up the lines. The first exhibits were gardens with dinosaurs, then we went into rooms with mostly written displays and fossils. I wasn't able to read much of those. The crowd was too thick to do more than glance over them. Then we came into beautiful garden rooms for the Garden of Eden and a room of all wooden rafters that made you feel as if you were inside the ark. There was one theater after the ark, but we skipped it and decided to go upstairs for the special effects theater. We had to wait in line for about twenty minutes to get in. It was a mini movie featuring two angels talking to a young girl about believing in God versus believing in evolution. My favorite parts were the Garden of Eden and the ark. They were so beautiful.

Newport Aquarium was also about an hour and a half away from us. It has a great view of the Cincinnati skyline, which I posted above. Kati was so cute going to all the exhibits to see the fish. She had been a little frightened at the idea of being near a shark tank, but once she saw them, she was too excited to be afraid. The aquarium wasn't anywhere near as crowded as the museum was, except for one shark tunnel. Lots of people crowded into one shark tunnel to watch a diver feed the sharks. For a long time there were so many people we couldn't even see the sharks, but we finally worked our way forward until we were able to see what was going on and I was able to get a fairly decent picture. One of the best parts was the penguin exhibit. Kati loved watching them because I took her to see Happy Feet last year. It was so neat to see them waddling around.

We spent lots of time on the other days going shopping, eating out, and watching movies. It was a really great week. We always look forward to having them here.