Merry Christmas

Devin and I spent Christmas morning volunteering at the Florida Wildlife Hospital. They had a shortage of volunteers and since neither of us has family in the area I though it would be a nice thing to do on Christmas. Devin and I were the only ones in the nursery and between the two of us we fed all of the squirrels, bunnies, tortoises, turtles, and Devin also took all of the tortoises for walks and sharpened all of the knives in the kitchen. It was a nice but very busy way to spend the morning.In the afternoon we took Grant to the beach to enjoy the warm weather and waves. BothDevin and I had a lotof fun running Grant up and down the beach and Grant had a big smile on his face. While Grant and Devin were playing I made a sand/snowman. There were a lot less shells on the beach than last year and it was much harder to find buttons for him. Both Grant and I were completely soaked by the time we headed home so we gave Grant a shower as soon as we got home. After the beach we took a nap and spent some time relaxing and reading.

In the evening Cate and Andy came over and we played my new

Nightmare Before Christmas Jenga. Andy was really good and kept making the stack really unstable. They are both doing

very well and I w

as really interested in hearing about how grad school was going for Cate. At the end of the night we were all tuckered out and I slept really well.

Trimming the Tree

Devin and I are finally getting around to putting ornaments on the tree we've had up for over a week now and have already started putting presents under. School finals had postponed all of our holiday decorating. We put on some holiday music and brought out our two boxes of ornaments.

We wish you a Merry Christmas...

...and a happy New Year! I still had some packing and wrapping to do so I worked on that first thing in the morning. Devin made German chocolate pound cake for breakfast which is a tradition for his family. He used the castle mold that he got me for Christmas and it turned out really well. After we had cake we headed to the beach with Grant. It was Grant's first trip to the beach ever. He had a lot of fun walking at the water's edge and then running away from the waves. I wrote Merry Christmas in the sand so I could send out pictures to make everyone in the snow jealous.
We headed back home and had some lunch and then it was off to the airport. My flight was delayed, of course, but not too long. There were quite a few frusterated people in the airport that didn't seem like they were going to their destination for Christmas so I consider myself lucky.
To be continued...