10 August 2014

Ocean Discovery Center in Ft. Pierce

One of my goals this year is to get back on the field trip bandwagon.  I have fallen off of it the last couple of years as my oldest has approached and completed a year of homeschool high school.  I don't want to sound as though I'm depriving my children of educational opportunities.  I'm not.  But we do have a specific set of places we tend to enjoy experiencing over and over and over.  Enter the "staycation" that was my sneaky way of attempting to ease us all back in to exploring places we've never been.


How we've never managed to make it to the Ocean Discovery Center in Ft. Pierce is beyond me.  We had such a wonderful time I actually forgot to take photos and remembered as we were leaving to run back inside and snap the one lone shot above.

Even though the center is on the smallish side, there were plenty of displays and activities to keep my crew occupied for about an hour and a half on the day we visited ... a touch tank, skeletons to observe (two dolphins, a manatee, and a sea otter), interactive exhibits with touch screens and fun questions, a short film in the theater, a microscope complete with drawers full of Florida shells and such, tanks full of tilapia and apple snails being raised on the outer porch area and more. 

Admission to the center is free.

05 August 2014

Gluten-free ice cream sandwich ... a little piece of Heaven


As part of our recent "staycation," we stopped by The Fat Donkey in Cocoa Beach to check out their gluten-free ice cream sandwich. 

Oh. My. Goodness.

I was told the cookies (chocolate chip sprinkled with large pieces of coconut shavings/flakes) are made in-house.  Piled in between two of these delights (each larger than my entire hand) was a thick layer of gluten-free vanilla bean ice cream.  YUM-O-RAMA!  It took three of us to eat the entire thing, but we did it!!!

My teen boy ... a picky eater who does not have to eat gluten-free and despises most gf baked goods ... loved the cookies so much that I bought individual cookies to bring home.  That's saying something!