It’s been a LONG time since I have spent Christmas anywhere warm, and I have some cute stuff to show you about Christmas in Florida. But first, a little catching up.

I found the Christmas cards!!! I seriously looked everywhere twice, with no luck. They turned up in the most obvious place – my day timer!!!! I didn’t even think to look there because I probably put them there thinking I would obviously see them while I was working, but NO. Guess I’m not working enough LOL. Now Holly will get her $$$$ Christmas card!

After Shyla left, us ladies decided it was time for some pizza and another whiskey tasting. It’s Friday night….it takes us forever to choose a pizza place…….We are all in our comfies (I know, party animals, right?) ….. we decide to pick up the pizza – in our jammies

That’s either laziness or we are just too old to care! For those of you who thought Melanie and I had a good whiskey tasting, you should see how Janet rolls. I swear we had at least 10 flavors to sample – that included 3 different Crowns! It was crazy. I thought I took a picture, but it looks like I failed. If one of the girls sends it to me by the time I finish typing, I’ll pop it in.

Janet and I wandered into Dunedin the next day. I had completely forgot about the Farmers Market I saw last week, so I was happy to stumble on it. We really wanted a treat, but didn’t want to decide until we saw all the booths. THAT was a mistake! By the time we circled back to what we wanted, the booth was gone! It happened 3 times!! We started running around trying to find a vendor who wasn’t skipping out early. Maybe I wasn’t suppose to eat that cookie that looked so delicious. Oh well, I did finally find some fantastic sourdough, and Janet really wanted some oatmeal raisin cookies. She had one vendor unpack a box, felt obligated to buy the 6 cookies (for $9!!!!), and they were horrible! Turns out they were gluten free – I am not a fan. She threw them away.

Can you believe this place still has crossing guards? I can’t remember the last time I saw one. I think I was a kid myself. It was kinda cool.

Every time I go into Dunedin, the town gets more and more Christmasy. I decided to get my spirit on and go to the local parade. I’ve explained that this is a cute little town, so you would expect them to have a hokey little parade – am I right? Well the parade WAS pretty hokey, but it wasn’t little! One HOUR and 45 MINUTES!!! Is Macy’s parade that long? I was exhausted!

Tons of people.

Three Celtic bands. There is a heavy Scottish influence here.

Santa was of course last.

What I thought was funny about Christmas in Florida was the other activities for the kids… They tried so hard. I’ll share three.

If you look REALLY close, it looks like it is snowing! On one corner at least. They were blowing some soapy kind of stuff that vaguely looked like snow.

You should have seen the line for this sled ‘hill’. Any guesses on how they created this? Did they truck in snow from the Great White North? Nope! Wood chipper. They threw blocks of ice into a wood chipper to create snow. Now THAT’s creative.

The best for last. Did they actually fill a rink up with water and freeze it so the kids could ice skate in 70 degree weather? No. It should actually be called Plastic Skating. They are using real ice skates on hard plastic. Amazing. Looks authentic in the picture though.

Other than Christmasy stuff, I’ve been having a blast playing volleyball and seeing more SOBers.

This is Dave and Janet. I’ve been adopted as one of his ‘volleyball wives’ because he has the coolest wife who doesn’t play. We played on the beach Friday, and yesterday, we played at Steve’s and there were actually four other people from Colorado!

Steve’s court is so nice and fun to play on!

Whiskey pic! I miss Melanie. She always remembers to take pictures. We did have 10 bottles but ‘only’ tried 7.

Christmas update – Remember I was going to St Louis for Christmas? Doesn’t look like it’s happening because now St Louis is coming to me!! My friends had some unexpected time on their hands, and thought the warmth of Florida sounded better than the cold of Missouri, so we are having Christmas in Florida! It will be fun, a good break for Stacey, and Jeff will get to play golf, so even though I’m itching to get back on the road, it looks like I’m here until the 26th. I’m going to take a mini road trip just to leave Clearwater for a couple days.

I promise, Elaine – some day I will write shorter blogs.

Time for bed!

Tip of the day: Car top carriers are nice, but they DO negatively effect your gas mileage, so be prepared for this if you get one. I sold mine to the nicest, non-English speaking person who showed up on a scooter to buy it. Baffling