Members Only

We're members of the aquarium thanks to a pretty awesome Mother's Day gift from my mother in law, and I was paroozing the newsletter we received in the mail over the summer. (I was originally intrigued by the offer for members to arrange animal encounters, thinking maybe I could see the penguins, but it was like only for sharks and stingrays or something lame so that was a bust) but I saw they offered a member's only night in the fall. Two actually, one that was adults only and one that welcomed the kids. I signed us up for it, thinking it would just be a fun middle-of-the-week activity and it was so far in the future I had no problem committing.

I started to second-guess our decision to go this week. Things have just been so busy lately, particularly for me with work and it's just been overwhelming a bit, and Thursdays are busy and we had also just gone to the aquarium on Sunday so I wasn't sure it was going to be a good idea. Then I made the huge mistake of telling Sophie that we were going to go look at fishes when I picked her up from daycare, explaining we had to go home first to eat and wait for daddy and then go. All she heard was look at the fish and threw a fit that we went home.

AJ needed to take a breather once he got home, and the traffic to Long Beach was awful. I just wanted to say screw it, let's put Sophie to bed and call it a night. But I had more ego to not cancel this plan we had committed to so long ago, so we went.

...and I'm so glad we did. Somehow it was so much fun! I say it like that because it wasn't anything crazy, but it was a pretty memorable experience in the end. It was so empty it was so pleasant and enjoyable and plenty of place for Sophie to run around and linger at exhibits. The nighttime vibe was really fun and new too. They had plenty of bars set up all over so we got to chase after Sophie with drinks (what a difference that makes!) and they had a DJ set up for a mini dance party which so many of the kids went crazy for (Sophie started crying when Baby Shark finished was begging me to listen to it again and I had to explain to her that I couldn't control the music and she was distracted by the next song about raining tacos LOL).

It was such a fun time AJ was asking if they only do it once a year (I have no idea) but I'm sure we'll be back again when we can. It's funny how hard it is to go out on a weeknight now and how much fun and refreshing it was that we actually did. What a different life now.