Some fabulous field trips

The Lord blessed us with some great field trips recently. At times it seems that the more you spend, the better the field trip, but that was not so with these. They were free and some of the best we've been on in a long time.

The first one was to a wholesale nursery and it was by far the most inspirational one we've ever been on. This home schooled (with Rod and Staff and Saxon) young man had the idea to start a nursery on his family's 5 acres of land when he was 9 yrs. old. Today they own 45 acres and have a flourishing (pun intended) wholesale nursery business. He is 17 now and he runs the business with his family's help. He is brilliant. When his only English speaking employee quit, he had to learn Spanish -quick. He used Bi-Lingual America (which I am sure going to look into it) and became fluent in 3 months! He was so motivated that he used to get up at 3:00 AM to study. (He's been tested as being at a 3rd yr. college level! How awesome is that?!) He has an invention he is working on that a lawyer and some engineers think will be successful. He memorized this 300 page irrigation book and had questions that the authors couldn't answer for him. He needed this system to treat the water and get the right ph balance for the plants (you can tell it was over my head) and it cost $12,000.00. He studied it and decided to make one on his own. God gave him favor with that company and they agreed to sell him the parts for only $4,000.00. He built it and that company actually thinks his design is better than theirs. He also has a web design business on the side. He was such a sweet, soft spoken humble young man. (with a rightfully proud mama!) It was so inspirational to see how God gave him a vision and a passion for this and what all has become of it. I could go on and on about the things he's designed and studied.... Just amazing!

The other trip was to Honeymoon Island. We were blessed with a sweet park ranger who gave us two programs. The first one was on shells and we learned the different names of the two most common ones and learned why live shelling is prohibited etc...
She had the younger kids go on a "treasure hunt" to look for these shells. Well, it turned out to be a real treasure hunt for Joy! She found a $20.00 bill blowing in the wind. : )
(and she generously bought us Slurpee's on the way home)

The next program for the older kids was all about sea grass. They learned which kinds the sea turtles eat and which kind the manatees eat etc... Then we searched for creatures with nets and examined the water in a microscope. It was so much fun!!!
After all that we played on the beach. I was about the only mom who wanted to play in the water! ; )

~Becky