"The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea."

When me and Mrs M first started seeing each other we spent a lot of time in my home city Birmingham. It was a really romantic start to what has become the most important thing that has happened to me. Around that time we were doing all sorts together and one afternoon we decided to visit the Sea Life centre. It's important to know that personally I'm not a fish person, if I'm round at someone's house and they point out their tank I'm generally not at all impressed. I do however like otters so my initial visit with Mrs M was sold solely on there being otters present.

We had visited again when I was first introduced to Seth and we had had a great time again. So when Opeie started saying that he wished he could go somewhere and see water dinosaurs I knew that evolution had won that impossible battle and I needed to find the next best thing local to us. Knowing the area quite well i found somewhere free for us to park in walking distance from the town centre which gave us the chance to walk along the canal which i always loved doing when i lived in brum.

It's amazing how different a visit is when you are approaching it from a parent/home education point of view and as we entered the main doors of the Sea life centre the excitement on everyone's faces was contagious. To add to the excitement there was also a LEGO event running over the summer, LEGO City deep sea explorers, being such huge LEGO geeks that little bonus really added to the build up of our visit.

As a grown up that doesn't have a passion for Sea life it was fun to just walk around with Mrs M taking in all the sights, there are some beautiful fish and the plants, displays and even the smell of the place really pulls you in. But this time with children (and especially a very excited 4 year old) i took a lot more time reading the information as we moved through each room. Opeie loved that the male seahorses hold the eggs in a pouch until they are ready to be birthed and then continued to tell me we were going to sew a pouch on the front of my jumper to carry him about, cute.

I love visiting attractions like this, where everywhere you look there is something interesting to look at. It also good that attractions like these get the boys asking lots of questions (even if i did have to get my good friend Google out to answer a few of them).

I loved this, made me think of me and the boys

 Being such huge LEGO fanatics and knowing the crazy things that we create ourselves weekly, the boys were a little disappointed by the amount of LEGO that was on display. I think we were all expecting to see life size deep sea divers and maybe a full size LEGO shark in the tanks. The disappointment soon vanished though when we spotted a room full of LEGO to play with and a display of all the sea related creations built by visitors. We built a starfish, an octopus and a penguin head.

I really wanted to take some LEGO related shots during our visit but because of the lighting and the 'No flash photography' it was really difficult. The boys loved that we had props for some of the LEGO trivia about though.

Opeie always gets a little jumpy with 4D cinemas so i was shocked when he said he wanted to watch the movie. The Sea life centre was showing 'The polar express' the last time we visited but this time we watched 20,000 leagues under the sea which the boys loved.

And then on to our favourite part, the under water tunnel. I think this was where we were expecting to see quite a few LEGO installations but the sharks and giant turtle made up for that. The boys looked completely captivated by all the amazing Sea life around them and as we chatted about all manner of things water related it was clear that educationally the Sea life centre is an amazing place to take your children. It's lovely to read about this sort of thing in books but to be there and see a shark for yourself is i real experience.

After a few hours walking around it was time to head home and all the way home we talked about jellyfish and seahorses and all the lovely things we had seen.

but not before Seth attempted a few more shots with his LEGO.