Winter in the Summer?

Since the girls first saw the movie Dolphin Tale, they have wanted to visit the real Winter.  Ava would come in from school and immediately get on seewinter.com to check out the live cam on Winter.  Winter lives in Clearwater which is a very long way from where we live; however, it was only about an hour and half drive from Inverness.  We took advantage of this fact while we were visiting Kelly's brother.  On our last full day there, we loaded up and made our way to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.  We first started out by visiting the glassed in area were we saw sharks, fish, and other marine animals.  We then made our way to a "touch" area where the girls were able to touch small crustaceans, sponges, shells, etc.  When then made our way to the main attraction...Winter.  She was swimming around her tank and the girls got so excited to see her.  She was not wearing her tail so she was very easy to pick out from the other dolphins.  We stayed and watched her for awhile then made our way to the sea turtles, pelicans, and the education center.  One of our last stops was a small theater that showed the original footage of finding Winter and her journey to recuperation and receiving her prosthetic tail.  Everything was so nice and the girls loved it!!

Holding one of Winter's old prosthetic tails

Crawling through the TED

Puffer Fish

Sea Horse

Trying out the turtle shell!

It was heavy!

• As we left we went through the gift shop.  We decided to let the girls pick out one thing, within reason.  Claire picked out a stuff Winter dolphin, complete with removable tail and Ava picked out a model of Winter that had to be put together.  As soon as we got back home, Ava and Kelly sat down at the kitchen table and began putting it together.  Kelly helped with some parts but Ava did about 85% of the model by herself.  She was tickled with the way it turned out!

Finished product