January (first half) 2011 Life is GREAT!!!

I think I posted this already.  

Christmas snow in Florida!!!  haha

Kim Eubanks, Lacy Lloyd, Sister Draper, Sherry Buck

Kim and Sherry are sisters, investigating &

Lacy is a less active member.

They live on the same street and are good friends!!

Sorry Katie - another sunset

I can't help myself, I love the sun!!

This is in a higher class neighbourhood than we work in.

Notice all the screened in swimming pools. 

 They must be screened in to keep the alligators out!!

Sunrise!!

Christmas decorations

Interesting, don't you think?

This is advertisement for an RV lot.

I'm not sure how they did this but I thought it was funny!!

Take another look!

Wild turkeys just outside our home.

We got a video of one of them running across the lawn.  So funny!!

Just after a big rain storm, the moss looks more green than gray.

I like it!!

One of our investigators lives here.

She lives in this little cottage with a HUGE swimming pool.

This is at a nursery and it is beautiful!!

Some of the nursery.

I love these palm trees.  They are being watered right now.

A better shot of the being watered. 

 Each tree has it's own sprinkler head.

Sun dogs.  

Dad didn't get the car stopped soon enough to get the really good picture.

They were so bright and the rainbow in it was beautiful!

Zoomed out picture.

You can see the sun dogs way to the side by the tree. 

It was so colourful just moments before this.

Orlando Temple

We went with some senior couples.

One of the couples were escorts for new patrons.

I'm lucky to get this shot.  

Look at that bottom branch!! 

These are such great climbing trees.

The Tampa Bay!

I love this!!

The courtyard of our hotel in Sarasota.

See the Manatee?

Just his head poking out.

There are several Manatees in this picture.

Some of their backs are showing above water.

Can you enlarge this picture?  I don't know.

This shows the nostrils poking out.

The back of the Manatee.

You can see the body shape beneath the water.

We enjoyed talking to Laila and Sadie and Elizabeth.

What little beauties!!!

These are factory stacks where the Manatees come.  

I thought the billowing smoke was beautiful.

I also made Dad take a video of this.

Isn't it beautiful against that sky?

This is a good picture for people to guess:

What is this??

What are your guesses?

Barnacles on the bridge

Way cool!!

You can see the Manatee body under water at the top

and the string rays at the bottom.

There were also many sharks here and other fish.

I loved it!!

More smoke stacks

You can tell when I like something can't you??

There I am on the dock out over the water where the Manatees are.

They hand out all these pirate necklaces and stuff.

We went to an Amish restaurant for dinner.

The food was fabulous.

This is President Summerhays.

This is one of our tables.

On left:  Motts, Chambers, Whites & Tufts

Our table:  Drapers, Summerhays and Leavitts in front.

Sis. Leavitt isn't in the photo.

Then we went to the Amish quilt store.

Elder Mott says he just loves this store.

This is why!!  Great chairs for waiting!!!

Elder Mott, left and Elder Chambers, right

They are office missionaries.

This is in the Amish neighbourhood.

It is the bicycle parking lot.

They don't have the Amish horse and buggies but they ride bicycles and lots of large tricycles.

I'd like to bring a tricycle home.

This is our Zone just before transfers.

Our Cowboy Hat elder wore it to transfer day with his suit and I think President took it from him.

He wore it all the time!!!  Not any more.

Me with Elders Wright & Rhodes

Elder Rhodes is transferred to Naples and we'll sure miss him!!

I told Sister Summerhays that transfers are going to be hard on me.

We love our missionaries we work with.  

These two were such a good team too.  They worked so hard.

Christmas in Florida - Merry Christmas to y'all!!!!

This is a sunrise over Engineers Lake.

The same sunrise but you can see how curly the Spanish moss is.

This is part way through our walk. 

What a beautiful sun it was that morning!

I may have sent this before but you know me ..... I can't remember.

These are banana trees that have been killed in the frost.

They will come back again next year. 

They always grow up from the root each year.

What a big beautiful Oak tree.

I don't know why the moss grows in some places and not others.

Macadamia Nuts

This is the Macadamia Nut Tree.

Small but it will grow.

These are the flowers that we got from Sherwoods for Christmas.

I love them!!!

This is Sister Summerhays (President's wife) and Elder Mott (office Senior Elder)

Relatives!!

Elder and Sister Leavitt

They are here with CES.

These are Elders that were with us on Christmas Eve

The Elder on the left is Tongan and he sang.  What a beautiful voice he has.

The other Elder is the one that had his Stake President ask him what he wanted to be blessed with when setting him apart and he asked him to bless him to not be afraid.

He sang and accompanied himself.  He's good!

He sang "O Lord, My Redeemer"

He couldn't get the last chorus in because he was weeping but he played through to the end.

It was a spiritual moment for sure.

From the Left:  Elder LaHoyas (AP), E/S Chambers, S/E Mott (both office couples), I don't know his name and Elder Johnson (AP)

President Summerhays with his gag gift from Elder Mott.  Elder Mott is so funny.  Sister Summerhays is laughing at the side.

These are pictures on Christmas Eve of a community in Tampa that get together

 and decorate the whole 3 or 4 blocks.  

They have little brown bags with candles in them to light the sidewalks and driveways.

Notice how they decorate the tree trunks.  

What else can you do with a palm tree?

 

Here they have done the trunks of a deciduous tree.

I liked the little gifts on the far side of the house.   

I liked the nativity on this side of the house too.

Here is that nativity up close.  Lots of people have these.

Here are the little deer.  

Some people have a herd of deer on their lawns.

A cute little Toy Train.

I thought the children would like this one.

You can see the brown paper bags in this picture.  

Elder Draper wanted his picture taken by Frosty.

Notice the ornaments hanging from the tree.

More lights.  This is taken from the car so those are our headlights making the bright light.

Otherwise those paper bags look beautiful.

This is the moon on Christmas Eve.

We had an eclipse.

You can see the earth's shadow across the top of the moon.

I was trying to take a picture of Christmas lights but Dad slowed down just as much as he usually does.

I snapped the shot and then realized I still had it on 'night' so it took forever for the shutter to close and this was the result.  It's quite good.

The colors of the brick are the focus for this house.  

There are lots of house with this kind of brick 

but they are in all kinds of colors and some of them are so strange. 

Like green and pink, or navy and red.

Sunset just outside our house.

The sun is almost gone here.  I love the color of the sky.

Their sunsets are beautiful!!

This is a decoration on a ward members step.  They put the white sheet down for snow here.

Sometimes they'll stretch a white sheet across the front of the fence for a snow scene.

These are our new friends.  From the left is,

Kim, Lacy, me & Sherry

Sherry and Kim are sisters.

Oops - forgot to rotate this picture.

Dad says that this is the first robin of the season.  Dec 30th

More sunset

I just kept taking the pictures as the sun moved down towards the horizon.

This is a hedge, I guess you could say.

It is made out of bushes from the palm tree family.

Pretty skimpy, eh?

This is our church building we attend.

More of the Sherwood's flowers.  

They lasted for over 2 weeks and we sure did enjoy them!

They opened up so beautifully!

These elders came for Christmas morning breakfast.  We had fun and a delicious breakfast.

They wanted to keep the Christmas tradition of wearing PJ's for breakfast, except for Elder Rhodes.

He has a little more class than that.

From left to right:  Elders Navarrette (he wasn't feeling very well), Talbot, Rhodes, Wright and us.

Around the breakfast table in our Florida room.  

Down here you call a sun room a Florida room.

Elders Wright and Rhodes are in our ward and 

Elders Talbot and Navarrette are serving in the dependent Spanish branch.

Elder Rhodes gets transferred on Tuesday and we're so sad to see him go.

He and Elder Wright are GREAT missionaries!!

He is going to Naples where Gordon Greene spends his winters.

Gordon already said that he would come up and visit us here.

This is our visit with Elizabeth and Levi on Christmas day on Facetime.

Christmas dinner at the Bishop's house.

Bishop Hopkins is on the right side of the tree.  He is a cousin to President Steve Miller.  The bishop's wife's brother, sitting just in front of me on the couch, served his mission in Brazil with President Miller.  He was an AP and really thought highly of President Miller. The Bishop's wife is in the red sweater kneeling.

The Lamb of God CD is what Dad gave to me for Christmas and the Elders (Rhodes and Wright) gave us the candy Christmas tree.  The toiletries were given to us by Melissa Alcantar.  Her parents who are Jehovah's Witnesses bought it for us.  That's one for the record.

We had a wonderful Christmas here and felt so close to the Savior.  I will treasure the memory of it forever and hope that it may repeat again next year.  We are feeling such love for these people.  The ward is getting the vision and are really beginning to help.  Our new bishop has a great vision and we are going to be so successful here.  It's too exciting!!!!

We missed y'all and are happy to know your Christmases were good too.

Happy New Year to y'all!!!