Today was the mid-point of Summer Xtreme in Gainesville, and as we've been doing lately, we headed off on a longer and farther away excursion, this one to the Georgia Aquarium. Madison has been here several times by this point - you can see her just outside with her group above. She really likes her friends here in this picture. The girls in the middle come from a good distance away though, one from Chattanooga and the other from Bowden, Georgia, which is essentially in Alabama. It's been a really nice week for them, and their group leader has been a lot of fun.
We drove down and there wasn't any traffic to deal with. We got there and had Chick-Fil-A on the lawn in Pemberton Park, and what a big group we have!
Just about everyone can be seen in this picture - you just have to zoom in, there's so many of us. If you're looking for Madison and Daddy, you can see us both (although not next to each other) in the zoomed in photo below. It's sort of like an old "Where's Waldo?"
Anyway, once we went inside, everyone went straight to the gift shop. Don't ask me why! One reason is that we couldn't go at the end of the day due to our schedule. Daddy and the other staff members went down a few weeks ago and plotted this all out, and realized that a gift shop trip could only be made before 1:30 pm. So... a lot of the group leaders decided to get it out of the way, right away. And yes, Daddy bought some Penguin Poop. It's just chocolate-covered peanuts, but since he talked about it in the video yesterday in front of the kids, there was an unusual surge in people buying "Penguin Poop."
Speaking of which, here's Madison teasing some penguins. I think they believe it's a fish she's holding up. I don't think she knew that's what she was doing here - she just thought they were following her wristband up and down, but they were pretty excited to see her.
We went from place to place in the aquarium, with Daddy sort of following the girls around for a few locations. Here, you can see her in the Ocean Explorer exhibit, that massive tank with the whale sharks in it. See one big whale shark in the background? And yes, there's a diver there actually posing with the girls. Earlier, the divers were answering questions from the kids. One of our favorite questions was, "What happens to all the poop?"
It was kind of fun greeting the divers. You could call this one above a "Hi Diver."
Okay, so you've seen one picture. Now here's the otter one! The girls didn't get to every exhibit, but they did see quite a bit today, including a lot of fresh water exhibits and of course the big tank with all the amazing salt water ocean fish in it.
The Ocean Explorer room is such a relaxing room, a nice place to just chill and look into this massive tank with so many different sorts of fish in there. The big ones loom by, and the kids all gasp in amazement as they slowly glide by through the water. Trixie, the largest one, is 22-feet-long.
We owned that aquarium for a bit. There was this sea of tie-dye shirts coming in, and a few of the employees there were quite surprised that yes, there were still more and more coming in. We had a lot of kids there today. And it was all really nice in there for a few hours. We moved from exhibit to exhibit, just having a great time.
Daddy left early to go to the Dolphin Celebration area, and save seats for the girls. I saved an entire row, second row, dead center. I asked before I got there, "Does everyone want to sit in the splash zone?" The answer was yes!
The girls were dead center, right in the middle of the splash zone, but also right there with the dolphins very, very close!
It's a big auditorium with a very large amount of people in it, but here's Madison getting chosen for a trivia question about whale sharks. She and her friend here talked it over and got the question right! And soon enough, it was time for the dolphins to come on out.
I can't even begin to express how amazing it was to look to my left and see Madison and all the other girls in that row, all beaming and waving and cheering. They were all so very much into the show, and though this picture wasn't one that I took (I was in the splash zone, and wanted to keep the camera protected), this was essentially how close we were to everything. The girls loved it!
The show was great, but soon enough though came the part of the show where the announcer said that people were about to get soaked. And there were plenty of warnings up until that point: we were going to get wet. We just had no idea. Daddy had all the KidPak kids in the auditorium shouting, "Soak-ing Wet! Soak-ing Wet!" And the dolphins obliged, and the screams and laughter filled the auditorium as dolphins jumped and splashed hundreds and hundreds of gallons of water out and onto the first five or six rows of screaming kids. The loved it. I looked over, and I'll never forget those faces, so full of joy and hysterical laughter. We were at the end of it, screaming for mercy, and absolutely drenched. It was so funny, and unforgettable. This made up for a splash zone miss a few years ago, where we sat with ponchos at Sea World, right in the zone - only to walk away untouched. This made up for it and then some. We were absolutely just as the chanting kids screamed: "Soak-ing wet!"
What a way to end a trip to the aquarium. I don't think I was dry until later on in the evening - and that's when we had our Summer Bash outside. We had all the rides and inflatables, even with weather looming in the distance. We still made time to squeeze in some fun, as you can see Pastor Lance doing here!
Madison rode rides, jousted, went down slides, and spent a lot of time doing the baseball game below.
She was getting better as the night went on, swinging at the ball and aiming for targets. And after that, we aimed for a free snow cone - Daddy got the Pina colada flavor again, and yes, it started to rain a little at the very end. So in fact, "I like Pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain."
Anyway, as you can read for yourself, it was quite a full and adventurous day. Lots of fun, and lots of favor. We are blessed!
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