The Last Hurrah!

That's all folks...with this photo marks the final shin-dig of the season! We had an Epiphany party at my co-workers house in Tampa. Our first excursion really outside Orlando. A quick hour and a half away and we were in a beautiful neighborhood with huge old trees with Spanish moss dripping from them. It looked like the old south that only existed in my mind with such names as Savannah, Biloxi and Augusta. Never really thought of Tampa having a deep south sort of feel about it. However we were sheltered by the shade of those trees and their massive arms as we drove to my supervisor's house. When we got there we were met with open arms and a lot of love. We spent the evening reveling in friendship. We talked (a lot) and ate yummy lasagna (which rivaled any lasagna my Italian family could cook) and exchanged gift. It was great time! Maybe you could say that we saved the best for last. The last hurrah!

Everyone asks how was our first Christmas in Orlando. Overall it was great.

It takes a different sort of mindset to tackle the 80+ degree weather in December, which initially I wasn't sure I would be able to muster up. However after my short weekend trip to Michigan dealing with the icy air for only 72 hours i was more than ready to look at things differently. Just after I got back from Michigan Ella and I went on one of our usual bike rides around the neighborhood. People already had some Christmas lights up. I found it quite funny to be bike riding and looking at christmas lights and also quite enjoyable. After that my mindset was stuck on just sheer joy and delight in enjoying the season without battling frostbite!

Since we were all alone, I made it a point to fill our time with activities. There is a great web site called icflorida.com which had a whole holiday page with all the holiday activites border to blorder and sometimes beyond of this massive city. So we set our sights on singlehandedly attending all of it. We went to the malls and people watched or played at their inside play parks with Ella. We went to Almonte Springs for their treelighting cermony which involved firworks, fake snow and thousands upon thousands of twinkeling lights! We went to Celebration, a city formerly owned by Disney for horse drawn carriage rides, cotton candy, and old twon square with a lake and tons of old white wooden rocking chairs lining the pathway and of course more fake snow. Campus Crusade put on quite a party with free family portraits, puppet shows, dickens carolers lots of food, and yet again fake snow. (come to think about it - it probly snowed more here than anywhere else in the Usa)! The month seemed so long since it was so filled with activites, that I can't forget that for two weeks up untill Dec. 19 my mom was even with us from Michigan! While she was here we went to Downtown Disney scoped out their santa (he passed the test - he was a good one!) and watched the Sweet Adelines perform on stage before taking a serene boat ride on the lake to cap off our time there! Wheew....it was a lot and it was fun, so you see we had a great time. I think the wonderlust in both Binyam and I gets the best of and Orlando satisfies that need to wander. It was a good time. It is a good time. We are enjoying exploring and being a family!