I could gloss over the real life and just paint a picture perfect day for you on this post, but what fun would that be?

Our first trip to Santa Barbara.  It's about an hour north of us, just up the 101 along the coast...the most beautiful drive ever.  I was drooling over the scenery when out of the blue, Colin starts barfing.  I thought by 6 he would start vocalizing, "Excuse me mother, but I'm starting to feel a little carsick from the traffic we just hit.  Could you please pass me a bag to barf in?".  Wouldn't that be so nice?  No, no.  He just starts puking everywhere and then Alison freaks out because that's what sick people do to her.  She literally almost jumped out of the car while I was scrambling to find something, anything, to help, WHILE crawling along the 101 in traffic.  I was finally able to pull over into the cutest town in all creation and assess the damage.  This is the second time this has happened and he tries to hold it in because he knows we're almost there and he doesn't want to miss the event.  Of course, I was completely unprepared for this, except for 1 last children's dramamine in our first aid kit.  We were early enough and close enough that I thought surely I could find some clothes to buy for him to change into.  I mean, it's Santa Barbara for goodness sakes.  You can laugh now because I've never been to Santa Barbara, I just assumed they like to shop and I would find a store easy peasy.  Unless he wanted a latte with his board shorts, there was nothing along the lines of kids clothes within 10 miles.  He did not want to miss going to the sea center and was feeling better after the medicine (those suckers work wonders for him), so I thought maybe the gift shop would have something we could buy.  Board shorts again.

Mom's to the rescue!  This is why it is so important to have other mom's in your life...a fellow homeschool mom, found me in the gift shop and handed me an extra pair of shorts she found in her car.  They were girl shorts, but they actually fit and Colin didn't care.  She saved me life that day.  Colin quickly changed and tried not to freeze his tushy off, as it was exceptionally cold that day.  Then I had the great debate what to do with the barf pants.  Carrying them around in my purse all day was not an appealing option.  Thankfully Colin was okay with saying goodbye to the barf pants and they hit the trash.  We got him set just in time to join the tour.

Inside the sea center, we started off at the back deck, where there's a hole to the open water.  They got to help bring up water samples and set octopus traps (only to study them, not to eat them).

We saw jellyfish, shrimp, sharks and sting rays.

Our favorite part was right here:

We got to touch a sea cucumber!  They were one of the most memorable things we learned about last year in science and it was cool to feel it's texture, as it was much different than we had imagined.

Eli liked learning about shark teeth and we got to see baby sharks growing in their eggs.  I had no idea shark eggs are actually spiraled.

The center is out on a long dock.  You could see lots of ships and fishing boats, as well as the beautiful coast.  I thought it was cool, but Alison and Eli were a little freaked out about it.

Best, non-prompted photo:

After the tour, we walked around the dock for as long as Colin could stand the cold.  There were several little shops and restaurants that were fun to check out.  I might have been stalling getting back in the car as well :)

Time to get the car carsick ready as we're heading back to Santa Barbara in a few days for another field trip.  You can say a quick prayer for us!