ORLANDO...Part II

Tuedsay morning Kenny had meetings, so he left early. Carson and I slept in...we were worn out from 12 hours at DW the day before! I think we finally went downstairs for brunch at 10:30! Our original plan had been to swim at the hotel's awesome waterpark/ pool that morning, but the continuing rain sorta put a kink in those plans...so we sat in one of the hotel restaurants for almost 2 hours, eating and hainging out. It had this great kid area with all kinds of video games, etc... so Carson was in heaven. I was in heaven just drinking coffee and relaxing! :) After getting dressed, we headed to the convention center to meet Kenny for the award ceremony. There were easily 1000+ people in the main room of the convnetion center for the keynote speaker and award presentation. We got there a little early and everyone made a big deal about Carson being there - again, the only kiddo! He did pretty well through the looooong keynote speaker, etc...thank God for the games on my iphone! When the awards presentation started, one of the speakers made mention of the fact that he thought it was great that one of the winners had invited his wife and child to come and said something like "Carson, aren't you excited about seeing your Dad win this award?" Unfortunately, Carson was so involved with his games, he missed it! So, the contest Kenny entered was called a "Knowledge Sharing Contest". He (and a coworker) wrote a technical paper about a process that he had developed and implemented at AT&T. He spent hours on this back in February and admitted that he really never thought he would win. He received word about a month ago that he was one of 6 finalist, that his paper would be published and was eligible for prize money. Well...I am SO proud of him...he won 2nd place (that is 2nd out of 415 entries)!!! Plus, he told me before the presentation, that in the history of the contest, a non-EMC employee (it is an EMC sponsored contest) has never won first place. Well, EMC did win first, which was a given, so I told him he basically did the best he could have! It was really exciting! I think Carson really enjoyed seeing his Daddy up there on the stage, winning that award. I am glad that all Kenny's hard work was rewarded! It was the highlight of the trip for sure!

Kenny had a business dinner that night, so Carson and I had dinner by ourselves and then headed over to City Walk to see the Blue Man Group. This was absolutely awesome! Carson LOVED it! He sat through an hour and 45 min show with no problem, if that tells you anything. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. It is kind of hard to describe, but there is A LOT of percussion, which Carson, of course thought was SO COOL!!! He got some blue drum sticks, which was what he decided would be his special treat/ toy for the trip. I had told him the day before we were only going to buy one special "thing", and this is what he chose. Kenny looked at me like I was nuts when Carson showed them to him! :) I was really proud of him throughout the trip because he really didn't ask for a lot and we were in a lot of gift shops (ALL of the rides at these parks have you exit through an appropriately themed gift shop). But, when he saw those blue drum sticks those little eyes LIT up and I could tell he really wanted them! We did stick around after the show and meet them and Carson even got "marked"...the guy at the gift shop said they often do this. After we walked away, I noticed a little smear of blue paint on the back of his neck - kinda cool! Another exciting, memorable, full of fun day...