Lake Ivanhoe Cleanup

We have some good friends who have organized park cleanups in the past, and much to our disappointment, we've never been able to attend. So I was excited to learn about the Lake Ivanhoe Cleanup organized by Keep Orlando Beautiful.

We showed up on this very hot Tuesday morning, and they armed us with gloves, trash bags, nets and tools for picking up the trash from around the lake. One of our favorite restaurants is on Lake Ivanhoe and we often wander over to Gaston Edwards Park to play afterwards, so it was nice to help out an area in which we spend a lot of time.

After a group photo with the mayor, we were off to do our cleaning and pulled lots of styrofoam, plastic bags and aluminum cans from the lake. Noah is a lot like me and tends to go strong all day long, so I always have to remind myself to look out for little Ava and remember that she's only two (that was the last day I could actually say that - her birthday was Wednesday!) About 45 minutes into it she tuckered out, planted herself on a park bench and refused to budge. Fortunately, one of the really nice volunteers drove us back in a golf cart and helped Ava get refreshed with a cold washcloth and water.

And since we can't get within a mile of Ethos without stopping in, we treated ourselves to lunch - and they treated us to a free cookie for our cleanup efforts.