Christmas in Florida – all part of the adventure

 

We have all agreed that the holiday season does not seem quite as festive without the snow. Having said that, Tim and I are NOT missing the snow 🙂 Having a different Christmas this year is just one more piece of our 8 month adventure. The important part was that we were with family and friends – oh, and that Santa found us…

Hunter has been sleeping in every morning until 9:30 or 10:00, at which point in time we go and actually wake him up. With that in mind, we figured it would be safe to assume the pattern would be consistent for Christmas morning. With a house full of adults (Grandpa Bob, Grandma Liz, Aunt Shannon, Uncle Andy + Andy’s mom Otti), it was suggested that present opening start at 9:30. Hunter agreed and even asked me to come and wake him up at 9:15 so he could get his stuffies organized… Well – he ended up waking up at 4:30 and was so excited that he couldn’t go back to sleep. He was wide awake when Grandpa got up at 7:00 so he got hauled out for a bike ride to kill some time (this is when we round the firetrucks Christmas morning).

Once we got the rest of the adults up and moving, we launched into PRESENTS… Santa came yet again this year and brought a new skate park/trick bike, some Star Wars action figures and some movies for the road. Hunter also pitched in and helped everyone else with their present opening.

Other fun gifts were the annual Hess Truck from Grandma & Grandpa and the pogo stick from Mom & Dad.

At home we have a tradition of going outside to play between presents and Christmas dinner. It stated with running the dogs and then evolved to just “playing”. Keeping with that theme, this year we went Gator Hunting in the everglades with Grandpa Bob and Uncle Andy. Referred to as “Gator Dynasty”, Hunter got in the spirit by dressing in some of his new camouflage wear and bringing his new binoculars from Santa.

 

We paddled for two and a half hours and saw well over 20 alligators, ranging from 18 inches to 10 feet in size. The 10 foot ones are really LARGE – especially when they charge you from the bank and come much to close to your boat (referred to as the LEE screaming incident). I have a 5 foot gator-free comfort zone and there were a few times when this was violated. The scream came when a large alligator charged off the bank just as Bob & Andy’s went by. It dove into the water and came up to the surface, somewhat agitated, just to the left of me in the front of our boat. I screamed which caused Hunter to scream 🙂

Boxing day was family “cut down a tree” day to help work off all the turkey and sweets. Andy had a large tree in his front yard that needed to come down and it turned into a full family project to cut it down, cut it up and get it to the curb in time for the large hauler truck to come and pick it up.

In between all this fun, we have been playing in the pool and having fun with the local wildlife…

While we didn’t have snow, a big tree and hot chocolate this year, we still had family and cheer and never ending food and fun. Thanks to everyone for a memorable Christmas in South Florida!