Christmas in the Sunshine State

Now that the feast and football of Thanksgiving are over it's time to start thinking about Christmas. Chris and I put out our Christmas decorations today. This is the first year we've ever had a fireplace to hang stockings on! We put in some Christmas music and put up the tree and ornaments and stockings and creche and garland and...and... (it just goes on and on).


We have a new helper for Christmas this year. Her name is Cici and she is a three months old. I managed to capture a brief (and I do mean brief) moment of stillness to capture a picture. She is a little ball of pure energy - in fact I think she's nuclear powered. Sophie isn't so sure about the idea of having a little sister, but we're hoping they will get used to each other eventually.


Other than that, not much new here. I'm having a tough time remembering that it will be December on Monday and I can't believe that we've already had Thanksgiving.

Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving and a wonderful Advent. We're keeping Uncle Bob in our thoughts and prayers as he recovers from his recent surgery and we wish him the best of luck as he struggles to quit smoking.

I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it!

For the non-geek people of the world, the Space Shuttle just went up and.....

I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it!

I know that Cape Canaveral is only a few hours south of us and I knew that my living room faces south, so on the off chance I might see something I went outside to look and

I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it!

It was a bright orange ball flying through the sky - definitely not something that would be normally seen on an average Friday evening.

So, the science geek in me is SUPER excited - and I can't wait until the next launch!!!

November?

I knew that moving south would be a different experience for me - but I didn't realize that it would be such a challenge mentally. It's November (and we'll just ignore the fact that the Red Sox had a bad October) and I'm sitting here with the windows open and the thermometer reads 83 degrees. My struggle here is that I'm not feeling the passage of time. I feel like I'm stuck in a time warp and that August and September keep repeating themselves...it's like Groundhog Day. I knew that I loved the foliage and the change of seasons and I knew the not having that was going to be an adjustment, but I honestly didn't think it would be this hard. I feel like I have reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder in that I'm getting too much sun and warm weather. If I feel like this now - what is February going to feel like?

On another note, now that the election is over we've stopped getting phone calls from Michelle Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s neice (all recorded of course) which is nice. I knew that Florida was a "battleground" state, but this was insane!

Work is going well - the crew from Vermont was in the office this week and it was SO nice to see familiar faces. We caught up on how everyone up there was - there are two new babies coming later this month and early in '09 and the dogs are doing well. I was saddened to learn that Erin's cat Coco died though.

Chris has been busy doing PA at UNF and I'm taking the First Responder class at the community college in January. I'm pretty excited!