My youngest daughter’s 5th birthday was today. We’ve gotten into a tradition of doing some kind of family adventure for their birthdays, sort of like a mini, local vacation (or “daycation” as my girls like to call it). We went to the Bob Bullock Museum last year for Alexandra’s birthday. This year, their grandma from New Jersey was down visiting during Alex’ birthday so we did some sightseeing downtown, around the Alamo, etc.

For Jessica’s birthday today, we took them out to Aquarena Springs. It’s a research/environmental conservation center that’s part of Texas State University. It also has glass-bottom boat rides, a nice little gift shop and a small, but interesting Aquarium. We thought the girls would enjoy the glass-bottom boats and the Aquarium (which they did).

The interesting thing is that I went to Aquarena Springs when I was a teenager. My mother, sister and I went on an outing there one day and I remembered finding the glass-bottom boats exciting. What I didn’t remember well were the other attractions that made up Aquarena Springs back then. When we went, the Springs was an amusement park with the glass-bottom boats as a big attraction but they also had an underwater “theater.” The “Aqua-arena” which is where the name came from. You would go into an underwater seating area and watch little underwater shows through the glass (ladies dressed up as mermaid having tea, pigs swimming and doing tricks for their food, etc.). I suspect they probably stocked the lake with various fish and aquatic animals so that the visitors would have plenty of underwater critters to watch during the boat rides. I remember enjoying it very much but the new Aquarena Springs is quite a bit different. We did find it to be very interesting, although the details weren’t what my girls enjoyed, of course. They loved seeing the fish swimming under the boat, the blue heron resting at the edge of the bank, the glimpse of a turtle or two going by the boat, going through a little interactive museum area that shared information about the underwater springs throughout Texas, and, of course the gift shop with all it’s goodies to browse through.

They probably enjoyed the aquarium the most. It was feeding time while we were there so we got to watch a diver inside one of the tanks actually feeding tiny snakes to the fish–they would take the snakes from her hand while she fed them. The tank also had a really large catfish in it that both girls were tickled to watch swimming around.

I forgot to bring my phone with me to the Springs so I didn’t get any pics of what we did there. I did however catch a couple of the most important pictures of the day:

This takes a lot of concentration...

Oh, forget the spoon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSICA!!