Dolphins (?) and berries and storms, oh my! (VT, Day 4)

Yesterday Dave tried to get Maya really jazzed to go to the ECHO center in Burlington.  We had never been, but heard it was a cool hands-on aquarium for kids.  Dave told Maya all about how she'd see dolphins, maybe even a whale . . . instead, she saw a turtle: 

(Addendum: As I looked up the website to hyperlink it, I found that it is, indeed, an aquarium. But if you've ever been to any other aquarium, it's probably not what you're expecting.)

And some fish, to be fair.  But the center was kind of a bust . . . more of an eco-center, not an aquarium.  Really fun if you have a 5 or 6 year old, not so much for 2.   But we made up for it by going to Ben & Jerry's afterwards, where she got to see more (you guessed it) COWS!

After naptime, we packed a great picnic and were really excited to go to the evening blueberry picking session at Owl's Head Farm.  There was a Dixieland band under a canopy and we set up our blanket and headed out to get the berries.  Much to our surprise, Maya quickly got the idea of berry picking and was really into it:

Unfortunately, she's a quick little thing, and did some fancy fingerwork---she would pretend to drop her berry in the container, but instead would nimbly grab up 2 or 3 more berries from the bottom, and then smush them all and stare at the mess in her hand.  (Dave may have a cell phone video of this---it will be uploaded sometime soon if it came out.) So she didn't get to help pick for too long.

We noticed the sky was looking, um, ominous . . . so Dave went to quickly pick berries as I gave Maya a snack.  When he returned with berries, the sky was looking even darker.  We could hear the lightening across the valley between 2 mountains, and we were really hoping it would blow by.  We danced to the band and took some quick pics:

Dave, open your eyes

Maya, open your eyes

Ok, Maya, look a little less startled

Aw, that's sweet.  (But see the makings of the storm?)

Then it got darker and a cold wind started to blow, and we ran (ok, briskly walked----but I did yell to Dave "Forget me, save yourselves!" as he motored ahead of me with the stroller).  It rained so hard that we had to pull over driving home, because I thought we might hydroplane off the road.  We had our picnic in the car instead :)

And today?  Today was Maya's first beach trip :)