Sea World's Just For Kids Festival

Sea World is hosting the Just For Kids! Festival on Saturdays through April 12, 2014; and, it's included with your park admission! Don't let the name fool you though, it's definitely family friendly! While it is kid-centric, it brings families together for fun activities, rides, Animal Ambassadors, and more!

We were given a festival map as we came into the parking lot.  They are also available at the Ocean Adventure areas as well. The map is the perfect size for your little one to help navigate.  It has all the Fun Stations mapped out for you with just a few main park locations for reference points.

Just for Kids Festival map

The stars on the map are the Ocean Adventure areas.  That's where your kids can go on an educational and fun trip around the park.  They have games and information at each of the four stops.  After you complete your activity, the bottom of your map will get a punch and you get a limited edition Explorer's card! The stations are really easy to spot too- there is a "take an Ocean Adventure" sign along with Just for Kids! banners like the one pictured here:

Ocean Adventure activity

The Ocean Adventures are spread out around the park, but not too spread out!  One thing that I loved about this is that they never excluded Cole. He's almost two, so he's really into doing these fun things like the matching games, but he's not quite old enough to answer questions about oil on penguin.  Some of them they let me help him with but some tailored their activity to be more his level.  It was tons of fun!

                                     

After you complete all four Ocean Adventure activities, you get a ticket that allows you to go to one of three stores and turn it in for a special surprise! 

The four limited edition cards.

Another fun part of Just for Kids is the Rockin' Rockhopper Party in Antarctica that starts at 11am. A DJ is there with some rockin' hoppin' music to get everyone moving.  There are even special penguin guests who come out and party with you! They have games, snacks, face painting and you can even see live penguins!  You don't want to miss out!

As always, there are lots of great Animal Ambassadors to wow and amaze!  It's neat to see all the different animals and to hear their stories. The SEA Garden is home to one of the Ocean Adventures, many of the Animal Ambassadors and special story tellers.

Animal Ambassadors

Story time!

A highlight for my little one was the Elmo Rocks! show. He couldn't stop talking about Elmo all weekend! Be sure to get there early as the show is only performed in the earlier part of the day and there are only a few shows.

Be sure to stick around for the end of the day too.  The Shamu Dance Party, at the front of the park in Village Square, starts one hour before park close and lasts until 30 minutes after park close.  There is a stilt walking emcee, music for the whole family to enjoy and dance to, and Shamu and his crew are there! Unfortunately no pictures of the party because we've had plans that caused us to miss it the first two weekends, but we'll be there for the third one!

Have you been to Sea World's Just for Kids Festival yet?  What was your favorite part? We are excited to go again this weekend and hopefully next weekend as well!

Back to School Crafts with AstroBrights!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Astrobrights Papers by Neenah Paper for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

As a crafter, I just love AstroBrights Paper! It comes in 23 eye catching, brilliantly bright colors that are sure to bring attention to what ever you use them for. They are great for crafting at home, using for school projects, or even for work. Any time you want to stand from the crowd, please be sure to use AstroBrights papers!

Did you know that AstroBright Papers is holding a sweepstakes right now? The "Give a Brighter Year" sweepstakes helps support the school of your choice. You could win a cash prize and school supplies valued at $30,000 for the school that you choose. That is an amazing prize! What lucky school would you choose?
They are also having a family friendly "Make Something AstroBright" design challenge.  How fun!  Unleash your creativity and you could win AstroBrights Paper and other prizes. You can share your projects with photos and videos.  Post them to your Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and what ever social media you use!  If you post them, be sure to use the hashtag #goastrobrights I can't wait to see what projects start popping up! I would love it if you all would make something and share it here when you are done!

So now that school is just around the corner, what will you use AstroBright Paper for?  Summer reading book reports? Scrapbooking a great summer?  PTA meeting flyers? After school activity sign ups? Family chore chart?  The possibilities are endless! Have fun with it!

Summer Cleaning

Kirk and I are on vacation this week and I would love to use some of that time to create new items for the Etsy store and to clean out some of the stuff that's been sitting for a while!  Sp now though August 22nd, if you enter the code "VACATION", you'll receive 20% off your entire order!

jilliebeanie.etsy.com

and I'm back...

So it's been a while, but I'm still trying :) I'll try to highlight the last 9ish months:

Sept- we had our 1 year anniversary, I can't believe how quickly a year went by!

Oct- yet another birthday, getting me closer to the big 3-0.

Nov- Pretty uneventful, but a good Thanksgiving :)

Dec- 2 years in the house, wooo! Still can't believe how much hard work went into this place, but we love it.

Jan- It snowed! In central Florida!!!! Awesomeness, although most northerners were hating, it was pretty exciting for it to happen.

Feb- I got a new baby niece! She's adorable! She was born on my best friend's birthday, so that was pretty cool. Yeti the adorable kitten turned 1. Does that mean he's not a kitten anymore? :( Oh well, I'm still calling him one, because Waffles has years on him!

March- I entered some more cards into the fair- this time it was the Central Florida Fair. I entered 6 cards, and every single one came home with a ribbon this time! 2 1st place, 1 2nd place and 3 honorable mentions. Not too surprising, most of the stamps came from https://jessicalynnoriginal.com/ because I am in love with her stamps!!

One of my 1st place ribbon winning cards.

April- My nephew turned 2. How is he really 2 already? He's getting so big! He's definitely at a fun age now though.

May- I got to experience one of the coolest things ever. I got to attend a NASA Tweetup. NASA partnered with Twitter to pick 150 Twitter users to go out to Kennedy Space Center for two days and get to talk with NASA officials, astronauts, got on tours of the property, get up close and personal to STS -132 Atlantis (well as close as you can without actually working on it), tickets to the KSC Visitor Center, and it concluded with watching the launch from the KSC press site right at the countdown clock.

Our great view (photo by Kelly!)

June- I started an etsy store- my shop - to see if I can sell some of the stuff that I'm making with my Cricut (I love that thing!), cards, scrapbooking pages, and whatever else I can think of to make and sell! So check it out, let me know what you'd like to see in there, any tips or hints, and check back often because I just started it 2 days ago :)

Until next time! I promise that it won't be 9 months next time.