Wet Dreams?

Ok, this is totally not about what you are probably thinking!

This past week-end a friend (who is a volunteer at the Aquarium in Cape Town) invited us to join her at a special sleep-over event. Apparently once a year the voluteers are allowed to invite friends and family to join them for a sleep-over, and this year we were the lucky friends.

On saturday evening the boys and I packed up a picnic dinner, drinks, sleeping bags, and other paraphernalia and off we went to the Two Oceans Aquarium. It would normally have cost about R130 for the 3 of us to go in.

We met up with our friend, her 3 daughters and another child at about 6pm and started getting settled in. We laid our sleeping bags out in front of the kelp forest display. The shark tank would have been most exciting but since the 100 or so other people are there, we decided to chose a quieter spot.

Posing in front of the Clown Fish (Nemo) Tank

After a quick look around, we snacked on dinner and the kids roamed around. At 7:30pm we were told about the various rules and regulations and told that movies would be showing all night. The kids were thrilled to hear this *groan*.

5 of the 6 kids on the Ship (Quinn missing)

At 8pm we settled into the Eco-theatre with sleeping bags, chocolate and Amarula to watch 'Robots'. Several of the kids fell asleep during this, and afterwards we attempted to cary them back to our sleeping area. They of course woke up and claimed not to be tired at all, and so we all went down to the downstairs theatreto watch 'Ice Age'. This finished after 11pm, with me almost asleep, but every one of the children looking like nag apies (bush babies) they were so wide-eyed and awake. I got them all into their sleeping bags, and then they asked if they couldn't watch another movie. I decided they could go back to the upstairs eco-theatre which was close to our sleeping spot. I thought they would go to sleep there, and that would be fine. Hoever 10 minutes later they all came back and wanted to explore. by this point I was tired and didn't care, so went to sleep, while the kids went on adventures around the aquarium on their own. I can only hope they behaved themselves! According to my firend they came back and went to sleep at about 12:30am! - Note that these are 4 and 6 years olds!
I woke several times during the night from the glow of the tanks, and the noise of another gang who had decided to party through the night and not sleep, and of course sleepng on the floor is never the most comfortable thing.

We were woken at 6:30am the next morning, as the Aquarium opens at 8:30 and we had to be out before 8am to allow for cleaning etc. The kids were of course dead to the world and even though we left them as long as possible, we had to wake them from the dead, and they were not in the best moods. HA, now they know what it's like ;)

Kids dead to the world at 7:30 on Sunday morning.

My 2 ended up having 2 naps during the day on Sunday while we were driving.

All in all it was a fun, interesting and different experience, which we will remember for a long time.