Clean Floors, an Aquarium, and 11 Miles to Go

Ahhh another great weekend! I hope yours was awesome. We enjoyed a lovely mix of busy and relaxed. 

On Friday, since Terry had the day off (he works a 9/80 schedule where he works 80 hours over nine days instead of ten, so he gets every other Friday off), we decided to head to Long Beach for Family Fun Day! But first, inspiration and motivation struck simultaneously, which almost never happens, so I cleaned our floors. We're talking vacuum, Swiffer, and then hands-and-knees scrubbing. Our floor has never looked cleaner! 

Naturally, Marshall has already spat up on it about five times since then. 

We headed to Yardhouse in Long Beach for lunch. Here's how a lot of meals have been ending lately:

Marshall is teething, so he likes to gnaw on the spoon when he eats, which is fine until we ask for the spoon back to feed him more food. Luckily, he's also starting to eat some finger foods, so those cause less drama. 

Then it was time for the Aquarium of the Pacific!

We discovered that an aquarium is an excellent spot for an infant. Marshall was able to get up close to the glass to look at the fish, and they swam right up to the glass to get a look at him, too!

 We thought about taking Marshall to the zoo, but I think we need to wait a while for that. With an aquarium, there's more movement, bright colors, and guaranteed "action," whereas zoo animals might be a lot more mellow and might hang back in their bigger habitats.

Anyway, Marshall was totally into looking at all the exhibits, especially the bright tropical ones!

Oh, and he also loved looking at the young ladies next to him in this photo:

My two favorite exhibits:

It was a nice afternoon without feeling too rushed, and we're lucky to have the aquarium fairly close (20 minutes away). On the way home Marshall dozed off, and we wanted him to get a good nap, so we drove out to the cliffs and listened to Harry Potter while watching the sunset. Not a terrible way to spend an hour.

Most of Saturday centered around a trip to Downtown LA for a memorial service for a family friend. It turned out to be a beautiful day and a lovely service. We also grabbed lunch at Philippe the Original, a famous French dip restaurant.

Today we took our morning super slow--banana pancakes, banana bread, whole wheat bread in the bread maker, laundry, and crawling around everywhere were all involved--and then we headed back to the aforementioned cliffs for some exercise. We ran 2.5 miles (update on our 20 miles in January challenge: we have finished 9 miles--11 to go--and we have about 12 days left!) and then continued walking while Marshall napped in the stroller. It was his first time napping in the stroller without the infant car seat! Crazy.

We hit up Trader Joe's on the way home (I've discovered a new TJ's that I loooooooove and today--Sunday--it wasn't crowded at all!) for groceries. Our meal plan this week includes:

• burgers with sweet potato fries
• lentil vegetable soup (obviously an Ina Garten recipe)
• butternut squash risotto
• beer can chicken

And now it's time to curl up with some Seinfeld before bed! Hope your week gets off to a great start!

Do you prefer aquariums or zoos? I think I'm more of an aquarium person now that I've seen Marshall's reaction to the fish!