In which we meet a Real! Live! Mermaid!

Friday June 8th was World Oceans Day so the kids and I got up early and headed over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic...free admission and all sorts of really cool exhibits.

Our first stop was the Bedford Institute of Oceanography table, where the kids got to explore rocks and sand and got to watch a webcam streaming live from the harbour, in a spot not too far from our house. The staff working the table were awesome, great with the kids and even managed to get Cam involved in the display (no mean feat, seeing as he was really into his role of "moody tween" that day. He also managed to dodge almost all of the pictures I took. One day that kid is going to look at our family albums and complain that we never got any pics of him at family things and I will pull out all the blurry shots of him running out of view).



From there we said hi to Merlin then headed into the main gallery. The big draw for us was Raina, the Halifax Mermaid. She did not disappoint.



I knew Grace would be excited, but I was pleasantly surprised at how into Gabriel was. She gave the kids a little treasure, Grace chose a sea shell and Gabriel chose a smooth green stone which he clutched in his hand the rest of the visit. He even went up later and quietly asked if she could put mermaid sparkles on his face. He was fascinated by her, and it was wonderful to see.

(Frankly, I was too. If you click through to her website you see that you can hire Raina to do birthday parties. Highly tempted to have myself a mermaid party this year.)

(And I have no idea what Cam's thoughts on the mermaid were. Again, moody tween is moody. At one point I told him if he didn't at least try to become engaged in what we were doing I would make a big deal of hugging and kissing him right there in public. He got a bit better after that, lol)

We wandered around the museum a bit, then the kids played with some dead fish



Then we headed outside where we ran into some other home schooling families. We checked out the exhibits outside, collected all sorts of pamphlets and booklets and posters and stickers, chatted with all sorts of interesting people and learned some cool things.

And got pictures with a giant lobster



All in all, a pretty great day out with my kids. The definite highlight was meeting the mermaid. I mean...it's a mermaid. A real live mermaid. Awesome.