Merry Christmas!

Christmas was a little different for us this year – it was my first Christmas spent without any extended family, for one, it was 78 degrees for another.  Even though I have lived in Florida and Hawaii for the past 7 years, I’ve always spent Christmas in either Connecticut or Idaho – cold and (usually) snowy places.  But this year our little Charlie Brown Christmas tree was fully appreciated!  (and not left behind like every other year).    

On Christmas Eve we went orange picking,

 

and floated the Ocklawaha River on our kayak

On Christmas day we went to Little River Spring and grilled some steaks my dad sent us for Christmas, went swimming.  We had breakfast in the morning with some fresh-squeezed OJ (yum!) and burnt eggs, toast, and bacon (don’t ask, I don’t know.  I DO know, however, that our smoke detector DEFINITELY works).

Florida is beautiful!!  As our time here gets shorter (and Dusty’s graduation closer!) we are realizing that more and more, and trying to take full advantage of every moment we have work off together to explore and enjoy the nature around here.

When we got home we made sticky buns, a favorite of Dusty’s family (cinnamon/brown sugar/butterscotch buttery goodness) – but we made 18 buns and ate them all.  By ourselves.  Needless to say, we both were feeling sick on Sunday night.

Overall, a very merry Christmas! 

And…

this was almost 2 weeks ago (34 weeks), so I’m a bit bigger now, but this is a better picture!