My Little Trip

Oh boy, y'all! What an amazing 24 hours I just had! It all started with this letter I got in the mail a little over a week ago:

Woohoo, I won something!

This is kind of a long story, but I'll give you the shortened version. I entered a contest to win a free sleep-over trip to Busch Gardens through the Florida D.o.E and I didn't win. Sad :( Then, a couple of weeks later I received an e-mail that I HAD won. Oh Yeah!

Fast forward to yesterday and there I am on my way to Tampa with my sister {Kindergarten teacher, who also won the pass - thanks to moi!}

*A little background information about what I won. It is a Busch Gardens educational program for teachers and is held after the park closes at 6 pm and lasts until about 10 am.

When we arrived, we signed in, got our camp t-shirt, enjoyed a lovely dinner and socialized. On a Friday, after a long week of Halloween madness, this was a much needed break. Plus, teachers are the nicest people ever! We were sharing, laughing, commiserating, eating, and drinking from the second we arrived. Never a dull moment...

Check-in

They offered us beer and wine. SO NICE!!

Kelly Seay, from the Florida DoE, she made this night happen!

So, here's a little view of our adventure!

We met some cool new animal friends:

Carlos the 2 toed sloth

I was right next to her - SO AMAZING!

Rescued Owl

Cutie pie Serval

Our sleep mates: the tigers

We learned about some cool lessons for the classroom:

Adaptations

Echo location

Create an animal

Then, we spent the night at the Tiger Lodge. FYI - Tigers in captivity don't need to conserve a lot of energy, which means that they pace A LOT!

We were all jammed packed together in the Tiger Lounge.

If you are a light sleeper (like me) you won't get a lot of shut-eye here. I think I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. I woke up around 4:30am and I just couldn't get back to sleep!

SAFARI - First thing in the A.M.

We went out on safari in these trucks. Very rocky!!

I learned that zebras are jerks. Now I can tell my kiddos to stop being a zebra!

Ostrich and Rhinos

And then there were the GIRAFFES!!!!!

WARNING:

The following pictures are extreme close-ups because giraffes were that close to us!

The giraffe is a two year-old boy named Captain. He was so sweet and very hungry! I bet the smile on my face was huge. I was feeding and petting him for what seemed like forever. This was the best ever!

After the safari, we had a yummy breakfast, listened to our sponsors, and ended the event with a few words from our State Educational Commissioner. Wow, I didn't expect all of this! Thanks Kelly Seay and Busch Gardens!!

Gerard Robinson and two big teacher nerds!

The lesson of this blog post: Check your state DoE's website for giveaways, don't forget to enter, and it doesn't hurt to ask for something!

Changing gears, I'm a proud auntie.

Here's a picture of my cutie-pie niece, Molly, and her trainer's horse Bindi tebowing. Yep, that's a verb folks!

Molly and Bindi

Check it out {here}

Happy Saturday!