Penguins and Seals and Cousins, Oh My!

Hola!  Hi!  It's Daniel here.

I went to a special place last month with Mommy and my GiGi.  It took forever to get there in the car, so I took a nap in my carseat.  And when I woke up, there were lots of people that I knew.

Great Uncle Doug/Dodo, Mommy and me, Marisa, Chris, Great Aunt Iris/Nana
GiGi, Zoe, Mia

We were at a place called Moody Gardens in Galveston.  It felt a little bit like home in Niteroi because it was warm and breezy and there was water all around us.  It smelled like the beach that was right across the street from my apartment in Brazil.

We went into a big building with lots of windows everywhere.  The first window was full of penguins!  Really!  Live, walking, swimming, diving, eating, penguins.  Some were taller than me.

The people in red coats and yellow pants are humans.
The people in white and grey coats are penguins. 



Mommy showed me how to watch the penguins.
We sat up to watch them eat and walk around.
Then we squatted down like Chris did to see them swim underwater.

 Another cool thing we saw were these giants called seals.  We stared in this window with lots of water, and then these huge swimmy things would float by.  My cousins Mia and Zoe jumped up-and-down-up-and-down and squealed a lot.


This is me watching my cousins
jump up and down and squeal
for the swimmy seals.

We explored lots more windows.  Some had big fish, some had little fish, some had lots of fish, some had dots on fish, some had shiny fish.  Hey!  That's just like the book Dad reads to me every night when we splishy-splash in the bath.


Mia and Zoe got to touch some things in this pool,
but I checked out the lights with my frog.




My Mommy and I visited with Great Aunt Iris.
Her other name is Nana.  She's fun.




After Mia and Zoe looked at some shiny fish called sharks,
GiGi stamped their hands with a shark tattoo.
Then they stamped lots of things.




Mommy and Dad's cousin Marisa liked to tickle my arm.
She hugged me a lot too, because she had to save up
some Daniel-love for when she went back home to Switzerland.



This is Marisa and Chris
with Zoe and Mia.
They are part of my family, too.

 After we had lunch and saw a gigantic movie, it was time to go.  But before we left, something strange happened.


My Great Uncle Doug turned into a Scarecrow!



Zoe and her Dad Chris walked down a yellow brick road.



Then Mia and Zoe turned into a Tin Man and a Scarecrow.

 There were lots of creatures at Moody Gardens.  Some floated and swam in the water windows.  But the ones I liked best were the squealy, bouncy cousins.