We celebrated Thanksgiving a week after Thanksgiving. My parents and Devin's parents both flew out to Florida for the weekend. Devin's aunt and uncle also joined us
for our Thanksgiving feast. Devin made a turkey, sweet potato soup, roasted vegetables, squash rolls, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, french silk pie, apple pie, and pecan pie. I made the veggie/fruit platter, a gingerbread cake, and I helped my mom make nadifka (czeck version of stuffing). Dinner and dessert were absolutely delicious and I was stuffed. After the dishes were done we went for a nice walk to work o
ff some Thanksgiving dinner calories. After it got dark me, Devin, Mom, Dad, and Devin's dad drove through the Space Coast Lights Festival and then picked out a Christmas tree. Devin's dad spotted the perfect tree with really full branches. I am so happy and thankful to have my family together.
rs work in the nursery with the songbirds and squirrels). I got to carry a pelican outside (which of course pooped on me) and restrain some pelicans as Heida changed the bandages on their wigs. The trick to grabbing pelicans is to wait until after they try to bite you because afterwards they can't bite again right away and you can gra
b their beak. You have to make sure their beak stays open a little bit because that's how they breathe. In addition to pelicans there were also coots, a eastern screech owl, a barred owl, some kind of duck, and terns. The terns were ready for release and at the end of my shift I got to take them to the river and set them free. It was great to see them go back into the wild.
y nice although none of them were just right. I liked a short asymmetrical dress with beading but my mom liked the dress that had a really flowing, dance-like, skirt. We also stopped at Elda's and very briefly at Aurora Unique Bridal Boutique. Dress shopping is exhausting and I wish I could find "the dress".
ht Grant with us and he was not a big fan of having to jump over branches and ducking under logs. It took us much longer than expected but eventually we arrived at hidden pond and set up our campsite. Other than a couple of sand hill cranes who were not very happy about our arrival, we were the only ones there and it was very quiet and relaxing to have the place to ourselves. We explored a little more after the tent was set up and Grant had fun playing in the shallow water of the nearby pond. I got to take some nice pictures of him enjoying the outdoors. We saw hawks and bald eagles flying and a little later we even saw them bathing thems
elves in the water. We build a nice fire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. Both Devin and I slept really well and the sky was filled with stars. In the morning we made so breakfast and hot cocoa using Devin's camp stove. Then we had to pack up camp and hike back to the car. The hike back went much quicker than the hike in and we passed two other sets of campers on the way.
we did a pretty 
good job of keeping it clean. Although, Julie did manage to accidentally pull our curtains down. After the pumpkins were carved I made everyone pose for pictures. We partially watched Night of the Living Dead and read a bunch of scary stories/urban legends that had come
with a CD set Devin has. After that none of us (or at least the girls) wanted to walk outside in the dark alone and we all double checked to make sure our doors were locked. Luckily I have Devin to protect me. Poor Julie came home to all of her fish dead...creepy.
to go ever since I drove past and saw the upside downbuilding. The entire place has different exhibits and games that are science related. It reminds me of a bigger, fancier, and more mainstream version of 
virtual reality game, put our hands in water that was the same temperature as the water Titanic passengers were plunged into, experienced a 5.3 earthquake, stood in hurricane winds, saw how fast we could throw a baseball (Devin is much, much better at this than I am), played virtual air hockey, played mind ball (the person with the calmer brain waves moves a ball toward the other person - you want to push the ball all the way over to them), laid on a bed of nails, played a giant sized piano, made shadows on the wall, put ourselves in giant bubbles, rode in a virtual rolle
r coaster, and climbed through a three story ropes course. The ropes course was my favorite part. I stayed up there running through the different obstacles while Devin took pictures of me. There was an arcade under the ropes course and we played a
couple games of ski ball and wack-a-mole. It was a fun day. 
he wanted to try out. While Devin got our launch site set up I wandered down to the water to see what animals were around (I brought my SLR and telephoto lens). I was getting close to the water when I spotted an alligator. I'm still not used to not being able to wander up the edge of ponds and lakes to look for frogs. There were also a lot of egrets around the lake. Devin had one successful launch but the second time he used a bigger engine and we lost the rocket. We launched so
me of the other rockets before doing a final search for his rocket.