Saturday in Words and Vancouver Aquarium on Sunday

Robert arrived by plane Friday evening and did the "guy thing" after the rehersal that evening. Saturday morning Seth had to report at 9am for pictures before the wedding so Mom, Dad, Aaron and his friend Nathan, Robert, Brittany and I went out for breakfast. After that Robert and Brittany were meeting up with Seth for the wedding so I headed out to Hicks Lake for a birthday party for Chris & Leah's daughter, Brooklyn's birthday party. I didn't take any pictures there but it was a nice relaxing day by the lake. We sat around and visited, watched Brooklyn open her presents and went for a canoe ride. In the evening I came back to Mom & Dad's and canned peaches!

Sunday morning Seth and Brittany drove Seth's friend Conrad to the ferry and then we met up with them at the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park. Between Brittany and myself we took well over 300 pictures during the day. I've uploaded about half to Facebook. These ones are some of my favourite.

The Aquarium was BUSY! It's a good thing we go there as early as we did because we got in without having to wait. The rest of the day the line stretched way out the door and down the side of the building. Crazy considering it costs $28 to get in. Yes it's a fantastic facility and they do good work but I still think that's an atrocious amount. Heck, I thought it was bad back when it was $14. $28 is highway robbery. Anyways, after I bit the bullet and paid the entrance fee we started planning out where we wanted to go. Robert needed to be at the airport by 6 to get on standby for his flight home so we were on a bit of shortened time line. We decided to start with the new "4D" experience, hence the glasses on Mom and Brittany, right.

Next we caught the dolphin show. My camera has a bad time lag so it was hard to capture these fast critters, but I got a few good shots.

After the dolphin show we left the Aquarium and got our picnic lunch from the car. Seth had requested Mom's "bandito wings" so she made a batch of those along with potato salad. After lunch we headed back to the Aquarium and worked our way sysytematically through the displays.

We saw the beluga tank with the new baby beluga, although we only saw them from above because the line to go below was over 20 minutes long. Inside we saw everything from sharks and alligators to starfish and sea anenomes and even "found Nemo"!

We felt kind of rushed all day but we managed to see everything and that's what counted. This is my favourite picture of Robert. A few of the tanks had these bubbles that you could view the fish from. It gave a totally different view.

When we finished at the Aquarium we drove around Stanley Park and stopped at Prospect Point for a few minutes to admire the view. Then we headed home. Of course after all that hurrying we ended up with more time than we thought so we managed to fit in one last family dinner before Mom and Dad took Robert to the airport.

Later in the evening Mom, Dad, Seth, Brittany and I went mini golfing. It was a great way to end the day.

Monday Seth and Brittany were at the PNE all day so I didn't see them at all. Tuesday I saw them at Mom & Dad's in the evening for a bit and today we're going out for lunch before they hit the road again.

It has been wonderful having them here. Hopefully next time it won't be so long before we see them again!