Merry Christmas

Lucy did not like sitting on Santa's lap!

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Let There Be Lights

Monday and Tuesday were spent in Callaway Gardens. That trip was to see their Fantasy in Lights and to check out the gardens for a possible future trip when the azaleas are in bloom. Wednesday we went to Bellingrath Gardens to see their lights. We also stopped at a fabric store in Pensacola on the way to Bellingrath. It worked out nicely for Penny since we hit just about all of her favorite things—lights, birds, butterflies, taking pictures of plants and flowers and, of course, quilting.

I enjoyed the lights at both gardens.

Callaway Gardens is a large facility with an associated resort (golf/swimming/tennis/spa/lodging). The gardens surround man-made lakes and have hiking trails camping and a 10-mile bike path. There is a discovery center containing artwork, sculptures and information about wildlife in the area. Next to that is their birds of prey area where free-flight shows are conducted in warmer weather. There is also a large butterfly house a horticultural center and a chapel.

We originally planned on driving up seeing the gardens, catching the lights that evening and driving back home the next day. We did all that except we ended up going back to the gardens on day 2. There was just too much to cover in 1 day.

Here are some Callaway pictures:

This is an artificial flower constructed completely out of copper

The butterfly house

the horticultural center

a chapel in the woods

 At Callaway the light show was a drive through show that lasted almost an hour. We rode a trolley and it was freezing cold. Bellingrath’s light show was a walk through with weather warm enough to shed your jacket. We didn’t get any good pictures of the Callaway lights. It was impossible to do in the moving vehicle. We did get lots of pictures of Bellingrath. Here are a few.

 

We had gotten to Bellingrath early and we left about 7PM. Lots of people were just arriving and the road into the gardens was bumper to bumper. It was like the final scene in the movie Field of Dreams with car headlights for miles along the road approaching the attraction. Bellingrath proves that if you build it they will come!

Both attractions are well done.  Callaway claims they use 8 million lights and 40,000ft of cable for the audio alone.  They begin setup in Sep for the light show.  They didn't skimp anywhere on the lights.  Bellingrath does a great job for the size of their gardens and they don't skimp either.  I believe we got our money's worth for each place.
 Today is Christmas Eve and we just got back from the childrens liturgy mass.  No Christmas Pagent this year.  We are going next door tomorrow for Christmas dinner. 

Merry Christmas!

B-r-r-r-r-r

Everyone in the East US has gotten an early winter blast. We got into the low 20s here with teens just a little inland.

Both Penny and I are still under the weather. We thought we were better, the stomach virus, or whatever, seems to have only have taken a respite. It now has returned for us, to Penny more severely than with me.

It’s provided a good reason to stay in the relative warmth of the house. I’m taking the indoor time to load Windows 7 on my desktop, catch up with the house after traveling and break out the Christmas decorations.

I bought the windows 7 upgrade for my computer thinking I could load it and keep all my programs. I did back up all my data but I had about a dozen downloaded programs I would have liked to keep. I also wanted to avoid having to re-load all the programs I have disks for.

The problem I had with my computer was it would crash whenever the Vista service pack 1 update was installed. When I tried to install the windows 7 upgrade it wouldn’t install without SP1 being installed. So I installed SP1 hoping the computer would at least boot afterwards but, as in the past, it crashed hard. My only option was to install Windows 7 cold and have to set up the computer again.

I’m sitting here now on my laptop while I have the Symantec rep reinstall my Norton antivirus on the desktop.

The good news is that Windows 7 seems to be working properly. I also now have an upgrade disk for Windows 7 that I can use on my laptop if I choose to go that route.

I’ll be loading software onto the laptop on and off for the rest of this week as well as putting up decorations. We are also going to go enjoy Christmas lights when we get feeling better.

A Moving Weekend

We are back from a weekend in Jacksonville. The primary reason for the trip was to go see the radio play of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Karen and Tim treated us. It was a fun night. I haven’t seen the movie in a few years so I had forgotten much of the plot fine points. The play was great and the actors were into their parts 100%.

Saturday saw us going to see Santa with Lucy and Sophie. Sophie stayed clear of Santa and Lucy is also afraid of Santa. I don’t know what K&T will do next year.

We had lunch at an Irish Pub. I had fish and chips—rather good ones too.

Then my tummy started acting up and I didn’t do much for the rest of the visit.

Because I was going to drive down to High Springs on Sunday to get some stuff to C&C but couldn’t because of my tummy, C&C came up to see us. So the whole family got together for our “Christmas” get together. Tim put Christmas lights on his house just for Sophie and I’m sure the smile she gave him when she saw them made it worthwhile.

We had a nice spaghetti and meatballs dinner, which I was able to eat, and after dinner we found out that Lucy knows how to say hello on the telephone. Here is the video.






We drove back today (monday) in an icy cold North Florida.  We will be seeing at least the low 20's tonight and maybe the teens.  B-r-r-r-r-r-r

Winter Sets In

It was freezing here last night and it will be 26-degrees tonight. I know that is not real cold by most standards but it is cold for us. Except for some wind it’s quiet outside. The birds aren’t even hitting the feeder.

I made a sheltered area for the outside cats and Marmalade and Buzz used it last night.

Christy’s plant is in full bloom. It is usually full of bees when it blooms but not a buzz is to be heard out there. It’s too cold for the bees.

I missed a couple significant Thanksgiving pictures in my picture essay so here is an update:



Lucy likes blueberries

 

she would have eaten a whole container if we let her



Penny worked her magic in putting Lucy to sleep

Keep warm everybody!

I’m Still Growing

Yes it’s true. But it’s my waist that continues to grow. We’ve taken advantage of the Christmas sales to replace most of my slacks and jeans. Today we got some good buys at Belks. I also replaced my ageing beige jacket. I’m bagging up all my tight slacks with a small hope to get back into them someday. Every time I’ve done this in the past except for one I’ve never gotten back down. I’m fighting heredity and medicine now. The Lyrica I’m taking has lost much of its effectiveness and caused such a slew of side effects (appetite, weight gain and lethargy among them) that I’m trying to stop taking it. I can’t do that cold turkey so I’m on a gradual reduction until I stop. I’m hoping to pick up some energy when I get to zero Lyrica. Until then it’s both a physical and mental battle to try to keep from growing.

We also took advantage of the beautiful day to go to Harbordocks.

I took this picture with my Nuvi GPS so it's not the greatest.  You can see a heron in the left center of the picture.  It was all wrapped up in its wings when we arrived. It was cold today. As we ate it gradually woke up.  It scratched its beak, it stretched and finally, after preening for a while stood on 1 foot in the normal heron manner.  It was a nice day to be there and enjoy the view.  The food was great and I got to eat Penny's bread pudding.  The eating continues!

Thanksgiving

It's been a week since Thanksgiving and I'm just getting to writting about it.  We did all our usual things--the meal, the beach, Black Friday, Harbordocks and Slick Micks.  The high point for me was walking by the kitchen and seeing Penny and Lucy standing side by side spinning (dancing) around at the same slow speed.  It was precious.  We had a great family holiday and this was the first Thanksgiving that Christian was officially part of the family.

Instaead of trying to remember and write everything I've put together a picture summary of the weekend.

 

The traditional meal

Sophie loves playing in the sand



see my toes?

Lucy after a nose-dive into the sand

Sophie and Tim "getting crazy"

Lucy and Christian

C&C&S&L



Sisters playing together



all of us--who took this picture?



Lucy stacking blocks

Sophie kissing Kermit in the Macy's Parade

Sophie making her voice wiggly in the fan

Lucy tickling the keys

sisters playing

Sophie in her Dorothy dress

a funny moment



making cookies (don't know why it's stretched)



Lucy couldn't make cookies so GrandPaul kept her company

The guys share in the family time

Tim helped Sophie play the wheel of fortune game.

Sisters

Sophie gives Mom a high-five

Tim pulls (pushes) double duty

Christian helps Sophie slide the rail

Christian slides the rail

Lucy insisted on climbing the stairs and sliding down unassisted.



Sophie and Christian balancing



Karen gets a big hug

So that was the holiday.  Watching everyone leave to go home was sad.  Walking back into the quiet house made me miss everyone.

I can't not include this video of Sophie and Tim dancing.  Sophie initiates the getting crazy by the way:

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Crusin—5-7 Nov

The 5th of Nov began with rough seas on our way to Cozumel. It’s been a month now since the cruise and many details are gone from my memory. We were supposed to dock at 11AM but it was not to be. The wind and sea state were not favorable for our ship to make it into the harbor. The primary reason we booked this cruise was to see ruins in Mexico and now that was gone. It was disappointing but we made the best of it.
As soon as we got the news I booked lunch in the 5-star restaurant to give us something special to do today. The ship also was offering BOGO on their lemon drop bar drink. Penny set her sights on that, too. After lunch we went back to the cabin. We got out a couple books from the ship library. Instead of reading them we ended up napping. It seemed everyone took a nap that afternoon. Maybe they put something in the food. I actually fell asleep out on our verandah. The rough seas were affecting Penny more than me. She opted out of dinner but tried to take in that evening’s show. She had to leave the theater and go back to the cabin before the show really got rolling.

The boat rock and rolled all night but settled down some for the 6th, our at-sea day. It was time to pack up our stuff. We did take in a talk by the ship comedian about the secrets of comedy. It actually was a good talk.

Each morning I woke up to take pictures of the sunrise. We were already well into Tampa bay when I woke on this Sunday and I didn’t try for any sunrise pictures. After breakfast it was time to deboard. The whole process went smoothly and customs was only a short stop to check what we were declaring. We had 4 bottles of rum. We think only 2 were allowed but the customs agent just said, “Welcome back” and passed us on.

our cruise

All in all a nice cruise and now we have to go on another to see some ruins.

Crusin -- Nov 4 - Grand Cayman

This day would not be over until we went to Hell and back.

The area we went ashore at on Grand Cayman was more along the lines of what I expected the Caribbean to look like. We found ourselves in an upscale shopping area with a decent waiting area where we waited to board our bus. This time our driver was also the narrator for the drive.

Hell was our first stop on today’s shore excursion. Hell is a little tourist trap built in front of an unusual rock formation. Since it was labeled Hell the little shop there sells every kind of Hell memorabilia you can think of. It’s not that special that it warrants a trip to Cayman to see but we did go to Hell and back and we have pictures to prove it.

The next stop was a rum and cake factory store. This was a relatively tiny building that was packed with tourists from every bus tour on the island. Inside there was a crush of people all clamoring for the free samples of rum cake and rum that were being passed out. There were many flavors of each to taste and even with the crush it was still possible to get a taste of whatever you wanted. We ended up buying some rum for K&T and C&C.

The final stop of the day and the day’s highlight was the turtle farm. Our bus driver was our tour guide through this facility. It raises turtles for commercial sale and releases some to the wild. The first stop inside is the breeding tank. It is full of adult turtles and has a patch of sandy beach for the turtles to lay eggs in.

the breeding tank

Next was the tank with young turtles in it that were just the right size to hold. If the turtle begins flapping its fins while you hold it you literally have your hands full. You can’t drop it and it’s not light. We all took turns holding turtles and then wandered through the rest of the facility. Penny bought some food and fed turtles.

Penny feeds turtles

I like the color and pattern on these turtles

penny holding a turle-doesn' she look happy?

hatchlings

On the way out we spotted an iguana in one of the bushes.

.We got back to the boat and dressed for dinner.

After dinner it was show time and then that evening it was the special chocolate night on the lido deck. The most interesting piece of chocolate to me was this dragon.

an edible dragon