Dolphin Swim

The dolphin swim at Discovery Cove was a definite highlight of our vacation.  There are three pods of dolphins and each have their own lagoon.  We were in the lagoon with the Sand Dollar pod, which was the only all-female group.  Within the lagoon, guests are put into small groups and paired with a trainer.  Only positive reinforcement (usually snacks) is used, so dolphins can choose whether or not to interact with a group.  Yoko was the name of the dolphin that came to interact with our group, and she acted just like you would expect a dolphin named "Yoko" to act.  There were some behaviors that she was happy to do (like the deep water tow) and some she did not want to do (like receive any type of attention from us).  She would come over for a little bit and then randomly swim off to hang out with other dolphins.  At one point she started jumping around in the middle of the lagoon.  Because Yoko was a bit of a diva, other dolphins were asked to come over so that we could do the various interactions with them.  We ended up interacting with five different dolphins.  It was kind of cool to see how the dolphins had different personalities.  Some of them were very affectionate and seemed to like having us love on them.  The trainer told us a lot of information about the dolphins and about Sea World's work with dolphins.  We were able to touch all of the dolphins, kiss one, feed them snacks, and do hand gestures to communicate different behaviors. For the grand finale, we swam out into the deep part of the lagoon and were towed back by Yoko (it was the one thing she liked doing).  We couldn't bring our camera into the lagoon with us, but they had a photographer present to take pictures of us.  This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so of course we bought the photos.  And since I paid quite a bit for them, I'm going to share a lot of them.

Discovery Cove

On our first full day in Orlando, we visited Discovery Cove.  This was my favorite day of the vacation.  Discovery Cove is not your ordinary "theme" park, it is an all-inclusive experience.  When I say all-inclusive, I mean it.  Everything is included- parking, food and drink, locker rental, wetsuits, snorkeling gear, towels, and even sunscreen.  They cap the number of guests that can visit each day, so it's not crowded and you don't feel rushed.  It was such a relaxing day.  

We arrived early for check-in and then proceeded to breakfast.  We were in the first group for the dolphin swim, so after breakfast we went to get a locker and change into our wetsuits.  The dolphin swim was amazing and will be getting its own post.

There are two major swimming areas other than the dolphin lagoon- one is a salt water area and the other is a freshwater area.  After our dolphin swim, we went to the salt water "Grand Reef" to snorkel with the sea creatures.  The Grand reef is a huge artificial reef filled with fish.  Some places were pretty shallow, while others were quite deep (up to 12 feet).  Brian said that it was like swimming in a huge fish tank, and he was right.  Our kids have never been snorkeling before, and this was a great place for them to learn.  They had a little trouble catching on at first, so we took the equipment to the other side of the park and practiced in the freshwater pools (so if they got water in their mouth it wouldn't be quite as bad).  Once they got it, we came back to the reef and they were snorkeling all over the place.  This was probably our favorite part of the park, and we spent the most time here.

The freshwater side of the park was also pretty cool.  There were no fish in the water here- it was more like a large pool and a huge lazy river.  The lazy river was the best one that I've ever been in.  It kept changing depth, so there were some places where you had to swim.  It also had a cave, numerous waterfalls, and it went through the aviary at one point.  There were no floats for the lazy river, but you could bring life jackets and pool noodles if you wanted them.  

We were among the first to arrive at Discovery Cove and left within an hour of closing.  We had a full, fun day.  I would highly recommend a day at Discovery Cove to anyone.

SeaWorld Vacation

For fall break this year, we went to Orlando to visit Sea World and its sister parks.  We had such a good vacation.  We stayed at one of the "official" partner hotels, and the location could not have been better.  We were literally right across the street from Sea World.  We could even see the roller coasters from our hotel window.  Another perk of staying at a partner hotel was that we received free Quick Que for the major rides at Sea World.  This was a nice bonus.  The whole stay was nice and relaxing- except that one morning when the fire alarm went off at 5 a.m.  That was a hard way to wake up.

Olivia's birthday occurred on one of the days that we were in Orlando.  She opened her gifts and received many nice things- including a wizard wand, aqua beads, a new hatchimal, and two dresses from Poppy and Nana.  We had spent her actual birthday at the water park, so it was a great day all-around for her.

Irma

After having to deal with hurricanes Matthew and Hermine last year, I was hoping that we would get a reprieve this year.  But, that was not to be.  Hurricane Irma made landfall on the gulf coast of Florida in early September, and even though that is quite far away, it was so big that we felt the effects here in our hometown.  The worst part of the storm came through on Sunday night / Monday morning.  I sat out on the carport for a good part Monday watching the wind and rain.  I actually saw one of the pine trees across the road fall to the ground, and I was reminded of how happy I was that Brian had cut down the trees in our front yard last year.  We actually had numerous trees down in our neighborhood- 5 of them knocking out power lines.  There were wide-spread power outages in our county, so it took awhile to get everything back to normal.  Our house was without power from Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon.  I guess you never really appreciate a thing like electricity until it's gone.  We spent three days living in darkness, taking cold showers, and charging our phones at McDonalds.  My parents, grandparents, sisters, cousins, and aunts/uncles also lost power.  Some of them had generators, so we were able to move last year's corn to their freezers.  The rest of the items in our freezer ended up having to be tossed.

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The damage from the storm was so bad, that school was canceled for the entire week.  The kids got to stay home and get a feel for what life was like in the olden days (before electricity).  It was probably good for them to be reminded of all of the things they could do without electricity.  Of course, we did spend a bit of time cleaning our yard and helping some of the neighbors with their yards, but we also made time for things like playing basketball and soccer outside. We played a lot of board games and had more rounds of chess than I can ever remember playing at one time.  Once the electricity was restored, we cleaned up our house (which had begun to look like a campsite), and tried to get back into our normal routine.  We were quite sad to learn that the pier at Amelia-by-the-Sea had been knocked down again.  It was knocked down by Matthew last year, and they rebuilt it.  I doubt that they will do so again.  I don't know what this means for our beach vacation next summer.  I guess we will have to wait and see.

Getting Through the Dog Days

We are in the dog days of summer and are trying our hardest to squeeze the last amount of fun out of the hot weather.  The first thing on the list was to visit Splash Island Water Park one last time.  When we visited earlier in the summer, we weren't able to ride any of the slides because it was too crowded.  We decided to give it a try again over the Labor Day weekend.  We arrived right as the water park opened, and were surprised by how light the crowd was.  We were able to ride all of the slides multiple times.  The kids' favorite was the Wahee Cyclone (the toilet bowl ride).  We rode it four times in a row with no waiting.

In August, Olivia and I attended an outdoor screening of the movie "Moana" in City Park.  I love when our town sponsors movies in the park, and I hope that they do more of these in the fall.

The kids have been playing outdoors in the evenings (when it's not too hot).  They have re-discovered their love of sidewalk chalk.

I am working on extended day (no planning period) this semester, and have been super busy.  There came a point in August when I was in dire need of  a day at the beach.  I asked Brian and the kids if they wanted to go and NO ONE wanted to.  I couldn't believe it.  The beach?  No takers?  Seriously?  Fortunately, I have two friends who are always at the beach.  I called and sure enough, they were already planning to be there on the day that I wanted to go.  

Brian has also been making the most of the warm weather.  He and his friends held their annual "guys weekend".  They rented a boat, played golf, watched football, and all of the other things that they like to do.  

Even though these few weeks have been nice, I am definitely looking forward to the fall and cooler weather.

Zoo Atlanta

We made a detour to Zoo Atlanta on our way to my sister's house last weekend.  Owen's favorite animal in the world is the giant panda, and Zoo Atlanta is one of four zoos in the country that has those.  Prior to our trip, we checked out the Zoo Atlanta DVD from our public library, and this entitled us to free admission.

As anticipated, the giant pandas were the highlight for Owen.  This cub was only a year old and was so cute!

Zoo Atlanta is small, but has a good variety of animals.

 There were several interactive exhibits that the kids really liked.

For some reason we always spend a lot of time in the reptile house, and it was no different on this day.

There were many babies at the zoo, but the baby gorilla was my favorite.  He was just precious.  He would hang on around his mother's legs as she tried to walk.  This reminded me of how my own kids acted when they were younger.  Later the baby climbed on his mother's back and she carried him around.  We arrived at the gorilla habitat at feeding time, so all of the gorillas were up front by the viewing window.  I counted ten at once. I did not realize that Zoo Atlanta had that many gorillas.


There was also a baby orangutan who came over and tugged on his mother so that she would come up on the deck and snuggle with him.  He also stole my heart...

...as did the red panda- such a cutie.  

 We haven't been to this zoo since Owen was six months old, but I remembered that there was a pretty decent playground on the way out. I told the kids that we would stop at the playground before leaving, but when we got there we learned that the kids were too big for the equipment. However, they had a new ropes course in the same area, and they were tall enough to do that.  So I paid the extra fee for them to do this activity, and I did not mind doing so at all since we had gotten into the zoo for free.

 Olivia is so weird about ropes courses.  I mean, rock climbing- fine, zip-lining- no problem, but get her on a ropes course and she gets real uneasy.  I told her that if she went on this ropes course, she couldn't freak out because no one would be up there with her.  She stuck to the "sturdier" obstacles, went right to the zip-line, zipped down it once, and then came down off the ropes.  She did it by herself, though, so this is progress.

 Owen, on the other hand, loves a ropes course.  He was darting around all over the place.  He would have stayed on it for hours if I would have let him.

 After finishing up at the ropes course, we returned stopped to get some ice cream and then headed to the car.  We sure did enjoy our visit to the zoo.