Fun Friday

Our Fun Fridays are coming to an end… the Summer is almost over which means that Grammy goes back to work on Fridays! Since we’ve only got a few left, we needed to squeeze in another Fun Friday last week.

Momma was going to be in Ocala to have her car serviced, so we left straight from Blue Run to meet her.

We thought AB might enjoy a couple hours at Silver Springs, another old Florida favorite.

We hit the park right when it opened, and were some of the first to enter. The park wasn’t crowded at all, and we didn’t have to wait in line for anything.

We did the glass bottom boat first.  

Grammy bought some fish food from the stand before we got on the boat. It was what we thought looked like “hog pellets” in an ice cream cone. The concept was a great idea, since the cone was also broken up and thrown into the water for the ducks to eat…but the fact that it was an ice cream cone made AB want to eat it, too. Ha… She would be throwing pellets (one at a time, of course) out and reach for another and the next one would be headed straight for her mouth. No “hog pellets” were consumed, thanks to a fast Momma & Grammy,though!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       After the glass bottom boat, we walked over toward the giraffes.

We got a “stack” of “giraffe snacks” and Mom & Annabelle fed them to the smaller giraffe. The Momma-Giraffe wouldn’t come out from the barn.

AB was hilarious when we gave her a cracker to feed him. She would hold it out, then throw it as hard as she could. She didn’t want that long tongue getting too close to her!

We rode the Jeep Safari next.

The highlight of the Jeep Safari?

Meet this little guy.

I don’t remember his name, but according to the driver/guide, he’s a “self-shearing sheep, who wants to be a rock-star.” That’s why he’s growing his hair out long. I wish you could hear all of that in the driver’s heavy northern accent, because for whatever reason, we found it hilarious.

After the Jeep ride, we walked over to see the bear. I think this was our favorite of the whole day. This Kodiak bear was massive. His head was the size of a small kitchen table. He was so huge…

We walked back by the carousel, and AB took a little ride on that. She was a little scared and was glad to get off. :)

We made our way to the other side of the park to see the birds and alligators.

It was at this very spot in the park, that 20 years ago, when my class was on a field trip to Silver Springs, one of my classmates had a pure fit.

Not just a fit, yall… a PURE FIT… I mean threw herself on the ground, kicked my Momma (our group’s chaperone) in the leg, cussed her out, and took off running. I am not even kidding.

Here’s the story… my teacher assigned “Problem Child” to our group, since my Mom worked at the school, too, and the teacher knew she could handle her. The first part of the day went ever so smooth. It wasn’t until we had a decision to make as a group that it got ugly. Momma had told all the kids in our group, that she’d buy us ice cream at the end of the day. The end had come and we were on the side of the park where the ice cream booth was… well, “Problem Child” decided that she didn’t want ice cream, she wanted a giant sucker from the gift shop on the other side of the park. Here’s where the decision problem comes into play… we could either all walk back to the other side of the park for the suckers, or we could get ice cream, but there wasn’t time to do both, and we had to stay together as a group, so we could only do one or the other. All the kids wanted ice cream except for “Problem Child.”--- That’s when she flipped out and kicked my mom as hard as she could in the shin, cussed her out (I think I need to add that we were like EIGHT years old, yall!), and took off running.  What a memory! :)  It will go down in our family’s history of bad field trip experiences for sure! ha…

Well, nothing to that extreme happened on this trip, but we did have some excitement IN THE SAME SPOT…

It was so incredibly hot outside and we were parched, so I ran in the gift shop to buy a drink. $4.00 later, I came out with our one bottled water… Mom and I both had a big gulp, then AB insisted she needed to hold the bottle. Grammy was holding it, so you can imagine what happened. AB got it. :)

After we strolled along for a minute, I heard a big “THUD”---when I looked down, I saw our Dasani rolling off the walkway and “BAM” right into the big gopher exhibit. With that, Annabelle yells, “OOPSSSS”…

At least our incident didn’t involve bruised shins or cuss words, though! Ha…

After all that excitement, we decided to call it a day!

Another Fun Friday! :)

~amw~