We spent Christmas in the sunshine. It seemed like the best decision since Mark was taking the boards right before Christmas, we wanted to save money, and it was our last Christmas in Florida. Although we missed seeing our families, we had a lot of fun here in Florida.
The break started off with lunch at a park with some ward friends that were in our same boat.
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| I ate way too much because of the amazing food everyone brought. I wish I could eat lunch like that everyday! |
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Mark brought his Bocci set and had a lot of fun playing with the guys there. |
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| Later that night we checked out this spectacular house full of Christmas lights with our friends the Pessoas. I was blown away at the number of lights this house had. It was like battle of the bulbs! It included a dancing Santa, carolers singing, a ferris wheel, Santa's workshop, and a Christmas movie on an outdoor projector. It was so nice to have our Christmas light outing fulfilled this year without even having to be cold! |
We also made a trip out to the beach of course. What would a break in Florida be like without a trip to the beach?!
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| Even though it was beautiful, I thought it was a little chilly that day as you can tell. I cuddled up under a blanket to stay warm. I heard a group of boys laughing at me saying,"Look at that girl! It's like 72 degrees out here!", but I didn't care. I huddled up in the fetal position with pride--I was warm! |
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| Lucy was loving life just sitting and feeling the sand. |
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| Then she started a mini marathon where she would crawl up a little sand hill to me and back down over and over again. No wonder she wasn't cold--she was getting a workout! |
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One of the highlights of the break was going to Butterfly World with our friends Heidi and Alex. We walked through a garden with tons of butterflies flying and landing around us. I loved seeing the uniqueness and beauty of each one.
Not everything we saw was beautiful and small however. We went into a museum and saw some really creepy bugs. Take a look at this one! The crazy thing is that I saw a dragonfly just a couple of weeks ago on the outside of our condo wall that was the same size as this one. I can't believe bugs this big really exist!
Luckily the big attractions at the park weren't all so creepy. We got to see these big beautiful tropical flowers too.
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The last things we saw were birds. We walked through a hummingbird garden...
Saw a couple of parrots....
...and were entertained by Alex and Greyson feeding parakeets.
Mark and I spent Christmas Eve helping with a dinner for some of the young men and members that wouldn't have much of a Christmas. It felt great spending some time doing service that hopefully brightened someone's holiday. On Christmas morning, Lucy did what she does best--made a mess by pulling things out. It was really cute watching her find her little "goodies" in her stocking.
Then came the family presents after church. Lucy was in heaven because among all the wrapping paper to play with, she also got a walking puppy!
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The day after Christmas we drove to Sawgrass Recreation Park to use up some free passes.
We were greeted by a large peacock as we got out of the car.
We made the rounds through the Florida wildlife portion and saw a couple of wild hogs...
...an alligator...
...a jaguar...
...a panther...
...a pack of wolves...
...a great blue heron...
...turtles...
and a group of parrots. Little did we know that these were friendly parrots who could talk. I kept looking around to see who kept saying hello to me until I realized the bird was talking. It sounded just like a real person!
We made it just in time to take the last air boat ride of the day.
We had reason to be worried as it started. As you can tell in the next picture, Lucy was not loving life. I kept trying to block her ears so the loud noise wouldn't bother her.
Here she is a little later much happier. Turns out she was perfectly fine with the noise, she was just annoyed that I was covering her ears. :)
While we were stopped looking for gators, we saw a big one swim out of the grass towards us.
It was definitely not afraid of us because it swam right up to the edge of the boat and just sat there looking at us. I have never been so close to a gator the whole time we've lived in Florida. I could have reached down a foot and touched it if I had wanted (which of course I didn't want to do :)).
He swam beneath the boat and went to the other side and sat there before he swam back into the grass. It was so neat to see!
We had an extra bonus on our air boat ride because we were able to see the sunset on the way back. It was beautiful!
The saying "last the best of all the game" rings true to our Christmas break. On January 3, we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. I feel like the past 5 years have been such a fun adventure together. I have loved living in Florida with Mark for four of those years. Our relationship has grown so much since we have been here and I can't wait to see what the next chapter in our life will bring. We went to Carraba's for dinner to celebrate.
Since Lucy was our chaperone at dinner, we figured we'd might as well include her in a picture too.
