Hey Friends! Well today I am not blogging from the most magical place on Earth, instead I am writing in a hotel room in Sevierville, TN. Hurricane Nicole decided I needed to leave early for a dance job instead of leaving tonight as planned! BUT I got to spend yesterday with my mom and dad and that was a great surprise! If you are a Floridian reading this, I pray everything is ok with the storm and you didn’t have any damage!
So today I am writing about the community down here. Last week I talked all about making friends and seeing friends when they visit, but what is the community as a whole like down here? Well, it’s pretty great!! When we first fell in love with Winter Garden, FL we started looking at all the things to do and organizations that did community events in the area. We found that there were some pretty awesome places doing pretty awesome things here! At first I just followed their social media accounts and checked out all the events I wished we could go to! When the move got real I started to reach out to the ones that really stood out to us and we wanted to be a part of in some way.
Community Organizatioins
One of the big ones here is We Are Winter Garden. They organize so many fun events and even have a community app where you can add your personal events for the public to know about! They are always out in the community with Winter Garden swag giveaways and just having fun with people. They are involved with the big events as well as smaller events where you can connect with other people in the community. We have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to the team on many occasions and can’t wait to do more with them!
Another really great organization here is Healthy West Orange! It is a non profit that is helping West Orange County be the healthiest county in the nation. You may not know this about me but I am a board certified Functional Nutrition Coach so healthy living and eating is my jam!! I got to meet with Jason and the team before we moved and now that we are here I am one of their Carrot Champion Partners with my Picky Plates Nutrition Lab program! It’s been awesome to partner with them and participate in all the fun things they do in the community! The 5k we ran with our friend Brian was through Healthy West Orange! They do so many amazing things in the community and in the schools and I am honored I get to partner with them.
I have also met up with 3 different moms groups here that I have done nutrition events with and I have never felt so encouraged, welcomed and supported by other women in my life (MOPS winter Garden, Fit4Mom West Orlando & Faces of Momprenors)! I have had coffee meetings to learn more about what some of them do and talk about partnering with them and just how we can support each other (Level Up Strength & Nutrition, Hi-Lite Coaching), we all post and share each others work on social media and promote each others events and businesses. It is really wonderful! No competition or drama, just women lifting each other up and acknowledging that we all offer something different even if we are in the same line of work! It’s incredibly refreshing!
Florida Schools & Towns
Our kiddos love their schools too! The teachers and staff at both of their schools are incredibly friendly and helpful and the boys both like all their teachers! The elementary school put on a mean Trunk or Treat at Halloween, complete with a DJ, photo booth and food trucks! I had never seen anything like it at a school! Hahaha. We have also ventured over to other towns to check out their community events and again, everyone is so welcoming! There is a town near us called Celebration (used to be owned by Disney) and one of the streets there does a huge light show on Halloween and Christmas (Lights on Jeater Bend)! The Halloween one was amazing, we can’t wait for Christmas! There were also TONS of Oktoberfests everywhere! We went to the Winter Garden one that was hosted by our favorite brewery, Crooked Can at the Plant Street Market (they had wiener dog races!) and we went to Celebrations Oktoberfest and got to enjoy the on the hour “leaves falling”. They were both outstanding events!
Conclusion
So as you can see we have landed in a pretty fantastic place with a great community! We not only live right at the Disney magic but live somewhere that has it’s own kind of magic! Next week I am going to write all about the food scene we’ve been enjoying since we moved! As I mentioned earlier, I like healthy stuff and there is no shortage of that here thankfully, and some nasty fun food too!! It’s all about balance! If you would like more info on the Picky Plates Nutrition Lab program for Picky Eaters you can check it out at PickyPlatesNutritionLab.com! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a blog post and here soon I will start doing Disney news and updates as well! Thanks for reading and for your support!! I hope you all have a Magical Day!!!