a weekend apart

Last month, Tyler's niece got married in Canada!  Her reception in Washington was this weekend.  We bought Tyler a plane ticket a few months ago to attend.  As the date got closer, we batted around the idea of sending one or both of the kids with him so they could spend time with their Smith family.

We finally settled on sending TJ, while Eli would stay in Dallas with me!

 TJ was so excited to go see Grandpa Joe. 

Eli and I dropped them off at the airport on Friday morning, then we headed downtown to have some adventures of our own!

 I've been wanting to go back to the Dallas World Aquarium since our first visit 2 years ago, but it's SO expensive.  Since it was just the two of us, I felt like it was slightly more affordable.

 It was so fun to be there with just one kid!  I always have fun on outings with the kids, but they are also laced with the stress of constantly having to keep my eye on two small kids.  Just having Eli was so relaxing and I really enjoyed getting to spend time on the exhibits he was most interested in!

 This crocodile ^ exhibit terrified me two years ago - it seemed way too easy to fall in!  They have since added metal handrails above the exhibit, which seems a little safer than the fragile wood fence that was up before. 

What was even more alarming to me was how HUGE the crocs had gotten.  I was astounded to see how much they have grown.  The picture does not do it justice, but this beast was at least 4 feet wide.  There are two of them in the exhibit and it just seemed way to small for two enormous beasts of that size. 

Soap box rant!  I'm not by any means an animal rights activist, but over and over during my visit, I kept thinking, "That exhibit is too small for that animal!"  There are so many animals in such small spaces.  After our first visit, I did some reading on the aquarium for this reason (and because I was concerned about safety... hello, a stick fence above a croc exhibit?!) and their practices are questionable, to say the least.  This is definitely the last time we will be going, because I don't feel good about supporting a facility that treats it's animals so carelessly. Soap box over!

 I made sure to get a picture of Eli on this ramp.  Last time we went, he was so little, and he was looking in to all the planters to see if there were animals in them!  There aren't in this part of the aquarium, but in other parts there are, in fact, turtle and tortoise species living planter holes.

Little baby Eli!  This was on his 1st birthday!

And now he's turning 3!  Look at that smile!

 He was super happy to smile for me.  Usually he's a stinker about pictures but he kept posing and smiling.  It was really fun!

 We finished at the aquarium, then had lunch in the car before walking a few blocks over to Klyde Warren park.  I had packed Eli's swimsuit, so he got to play and splash around.

 He also scalded his feet on the sidewalk when he tried to run around with the other kids (who had shoes on).  He ran into the shade and fell to his knees screaming before I got to him.  It was so dramatic I had to laugh, but I did feel so bad that he burned his feet!  I forgot how hot the sidewalk gets here.

 After a few minutes of winding down, he let me put his shoes on and we went to the other end of the park where there is another splash pad.

 We were only there for a few minutes before Eli notice train tracks in the street.

 He was so sure a train was coming any minute!  We sat and watched the train tracks for a long time.  Finally I got on my phone and found out it was the downtown trolley line.  There was a trolley car coming, so we waited a little longer until it arrived!

 Eli was over the moon the be riding the train.  We ended up taking the whole 1-hour circuit to get us back to the park.  At one end, we even turned around on a turn table.

 The trolley cars are restored.  The one we were in was built in the 1950's, then restored about 10 years ago.  It was really fun to ride.  The driver let Eli blow the horn!

 We moved seats a couple of times until Eli settled on this bench in the back where he could see all the controls and all the cars behind us.

 We made it back to the car around 3:30.  Since it was Friday, we hit nightmarish traffic on the drive home and Eli fell asleep.

 I brought him in the house and kicked and screamed for about 3 minutes before falling right back to sleep!

I could not wake him up for the life of me, so I just let him be.  He finally woke up around 6 pm, so we picked up some pizza and partied late into the night.  Eli finally came to bed when I turned of all the lights and climbed into bed myself!

We missed Tyler and TJ, but it was so nice to have some one-on-one time with my sweet Eli boy.