ICON Park: A Race Against Time

 After the Sanford Zoo with my parents on Thursday, we drove to the touristy area of Orlando near the Convention Center to Icon Park. We had a yummy late lunch around 3:45 at Yardhouse. We shared onion rings and I tried the Margherita pizza with Happy Hour pricing. Gasp at myself for not taking a "table of food" photo. 

The biggest problem during our day trip, which was only more of me blowing a potential medical worry out of proportion, since nothing actually happened.. but we (or maybe it was just me, and not Michael?) were concerned that Emma’s battery pack would run out. They last about six hours. We unplugged the ventilator from the wall in her bedroom and began using the battery power around 11:15am and left the house at 11:30am. So the mental countdown then gave us until 5:15pm at the longest before we needed to either have her sprinting full time (which is more of a decision that she and her lungs make) or be back in the car with the ventilator plugged into the cigarette lighter/ charging port. Each battery pack lasts three hours, and we have two packs. A total of ten power dots; eight green, two orange, each representing 30 precious minutes. The ventilator does have another 15 minutes worth of internal battery after that, but will alarm every single minute to remind you that it needs to be plugged in very soon. 

I was worried that we wouldn't be able to do The Wheel/ Orlando Eye, whichever you prefer to call it, at all, but after doing the math and my dad looking up online that the "in air" time is only 18 minutes compared to the 45 minutes that Michael remembered it as, and seeing that Emma still had two green and two orange battery lights left (about an hour of time remaining), we felt it was safe to go. Pheeew! Oh, and I need to mention, that the reason we were adding this to our plans was because at work we got an email saying first responders and their families (up to four people) get to ride for free during the month of November, so we snatched to opportunity while we were all together! I had a bunch of reminders to bring my work ID as proof of employment and also brought the printed flyer from my email just incase, which did come in handy later in the day. And I really wanted Emma to ride the Orlando Eye again, because the last time we did it with her, during the Little People of America Convention, over two years ago, she was asleep the whole time! I'm very glad she was awake this time. Lots to see. 

This photo of Michael and Emma with the Day Light Savings 4:30 sunset makes me think of the lyrics for the song "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. This is exactly what I want to give Emma. I want to show Emma the world. I want to give her more than just a bunch of toys in the living room. I'm in a "zoo mood" and already talking about taking her to the Tampa Zoo in a few months because I don't think Michael and I have ever been there either, aside from the light show thing a handful of summers ago. 

I thought it was really funny when we went to the beach with my friend Lindsey, and afterwards at dinner, she was watching Emma who was making all of her usual faces, including this mixed look of confusion and disgust. She asked if Emma was okay, and I laughed because she makes that face all the time. I assured Lindsey that she was fine. She does it for a few seconds and then she makes a normal face again.

I like her two faces in these photos.. "Ready for it?.. No hands!!"

  

  The first responders flyer also said we could get a free train ride and the train was smaller than I remembered. This was where my printed flyer came in handy because they hadn't heard of the promotion like the Orlando Eye employees had. I suppose the train isn't as popular, but they gladly honored it. 

  My dad didn't ride, but still stood next to the train with his mask on for a family photo with the train company's camera (the one where they ask you to pay $20 for a copy at the end, just like they did on the Orlando Eye and we said no thank you to that). But before we left, the manager who took the picture had it printed while we had been riding around for five minutes, handed the picture to my mom and said, "I want you to have this." Most likely because of Emma and her ventilator and everything. It was so sweet and my mom almost started crying as we walked away. In my head I was thinking, "yeah it was really nice, but calm down", yet here I am tearing up while writing about it! In this crazy world, especially with everything going on this year specifically, a lot seems to be going wrong right now, but there is still a lot of good too, we might just need to look a little harder to see it. 

   I complain a lot in general, which I should not, but I would definitely not call 2020 the worst year ever for us. We don't have a worst year. I would probably say "the worst thing" that happened this year, which is still very minor, and we are extremely lucky that nobody in our family has gotten the virus.. although technically my mom feels certain we all (me, my mom, dad and younger brother) got it after our cruise to the Bahamas at the end of January, which is highly possible, but our doctors told us it was the flu at the time, and obviously we all got better from it after a week.. anyway, Michael and I only had to cancel our Gainesville trip in March (where Emma was going to finally meet her cousins, Peyton and Helena, so she still hasn't been able to meet them yet) and we also couldn't go on our annual North Georgia mountain trip in April, both due to Corona Virus shut downs. Other than that our year was mostly the same. Since Emma came home in May 2018, our life has kind of been a mini-quarantine anyway. :) 

Lastly ~ Here are the battery pictures: this was taken after her doctor appointment yesterday. We weren't gone as long then so there are more dots filled. Below, you can see where Emma's batteries usually stay plugged into the wall when they are not being used. I think after the train ride, when we got back to the car, there was one green and both of the orange dots left. 

Sanford Zoo II: A Socially Distanced Dream

 If you have already read the post about us getting to go to this zoo last year, which was hosted by Matthew’s Gift so lots of families with medical kids got to go for free, you know we were gifted vouchers to come again for free! Wait.. I’m reading that blog post now.. did I not mention the vouchers?! There was a raffle last year that we did not participate in, but we enjoyed the free pizza from Matthew’s Gift. As we were packing the up the car to leave, a woman and her daughter who was probably in her 20’s asked us if Emma had a good time and I said, “I think she did. It was her first time at the zoo!” And she handed us an envelope saying they wanted her to have these. I didn’t know what it was, but said thank you. As they walked away, I open it and saw that it was two free tickets so we could bring her back! How sweet! They were further away at that time, so I exclaimed, “THANK YOU!!!” And they waved at us. It looked like they had won the tickets in the raffle. As Michael was driving us home, I opened the envelope again and saw that it was actually four tickets and four giraffe feeding vouchers, which I was extra excited about since I had wanted to feed the giraffes while we were there, but didn’t want to pay the $5 for one large lettuce leaf. Since we were already planning to go to the Birmingham Zoo with Michael’s parents the following month (reminder, this was last year, and we did go with his mom and had a great time), I asked Michael if I could give these tickets to my parents for Christmas and he said that was fine. 

So we were finally able to go with them quite recently on Thursday, November 5^th, which worked out great since that was also to kind of celebrate my mom’s birthday! There were probably only fifty people at the zoo, including us and the employees, who seemed eager to talk to us and give us information on the animals, specifically the giraffes when we were using our feeding vouchers, when we had questions. I only recall seeing a few other families, so it was very easy to stay socially distanced the whole time and take our masks off for most of the pictures. 

I do feel like a zoo is pretty self explanatory, so lucky for me I don't really need to write much else, and I can just post all of the pictures. But because there are so many I haven't edited any of them so the colors won't pop as much as when I edit them on Instagram or PicMonkey. Oh, and if you clicked on that link at the beginning to see our pictures the last time we went, it made me realize that on this trip, we accidentally skipped the area that had warthogs and a cougar(?) and a few other animals, so unfortunately my parents didn't get to see them. However, it maybe turned out for the best due to our time crunch we ended up being on. You'll see why in the next post! :)

^^ watching that red-billed bird.. could you see it in the middle of the photo?

  I felt the need to take a few pictures of Michael with my parents since they don't get to spend much time together. Usually when my mom comes down to see me and Emma it's when Michael is at work and my dad stays in Gainesville. But I am excited that we will be spending time with them after Thanksgiving too!

  We had four vouchers, but my dad and Michael didn't care about feeding the giraffes, so my mom and and I got to give them extra leaves of romaine! I am glad they were hungry enough because at first it seemed like the giraffes were content having their alone time off to the side. 

I was not a fan of this leopard eyeballing this baby as a tasty snack!! 

We watched this otter swim by many times, spin, and kick off from the window each time. In the picture below, Michael looks like he is making a gasp face because sometimes if you say "Oh no!" it makes Emma laugh, which he was trying to do for our pictures. And I love my dad getting the far away pictures of us taking pictures, as you will notice my closer pictures of my mom taking pictures. :)

Poor Trollie tossed off, mid-throw!! 

Who knows when all of this Corona Virus stuff will be behind us, but for now I find it somewhat interesting having the mask & social distancing signs in the background of our photos. For historical purposes. As you can see, and as I stated at the beginning, we only took our masks off for pictures when nobody was around. Clearly nobody (besides Daddy taking the picture) was around. Hooray for going to the zoo on a Thursday! 

Up on her "knee backs" to get a better look at the rhino! 

Crocodile vs an alligator

The huge turtle trying to find an escape while we were looking at the snakes. 

Visiting the llama again after checking out the gift shop, while my dad enjoyed a Bud Light (not pictured) and Michael waited with Emma in his favorite chairs by the splash pad area. 

Nothing beats a free day of family fun!!!!! :)