Free Family Fun - Bass Pro Shop!

I had heard that Bass Pro shop has a huge aquarium, and I recently read about their "Santa's Wonderland" where they have toys and activities for the kids. So, since both of the scheduled activities I had planned today got canceled, I decided to venture out with the kiddos.

I kid you not, we spent 1 1/2 hours there and the kids would have stayed longer if I would have let them. First we stopped at Santa's Wonderland. The kids looked at all the toys, but when my son saw the train set-up, we stopped and watched it for quite some time. Then we colored pictures, got stickers, and my 18 month old even wrote a letter to Santa. =)

We walked through the fishing department and my son was in love with all the lures. He thought they were little toy fish, and we looked at them over and over again. He had to choose which was his favorite so he could tell Daddy, but it was a very tough choice.

Finally we made our way to the aquarium. It is an amazing display of wildlife like I've never seen anywhere, even better than any natural history museum. They have live fish and stuffed bobcats, bears, deer, racoons, etc. We sat on the bench and just watched for a long time.

After we completed this circuit of the store, we did it two more times! We had a blast, and it was all free. This is such a great find if you have a store near you. I will say that I stayed far away from the hunting displays, and personally felt very uncomfortable taking my three sweeties anywhere near the guns. But luckily, that part of the store was easy to avoid and my kids didn't notice.