A few more home improvements

Last week we had our Bressler Family Christmas at Ralph and Chris's house. We had Chris's famous lasagna for dinner and then opened presents. At the end of the evening Brad and I took the kids outside to throw "snaps", those little fireworks that you throw on the ground to make a flash and snap. We had a great time with them and they enjoyed it, too. Here you can see the The Blue-Eyes (Chase and Brad) after the presents were opened.

We've been working in the garage getting it organized. We found plans online (at Better Living Through Handymanlyness- ha!) for a workbench and made two small ones for the garage. We also rigged up some pegboard and one wall is looking go-od. Brad nearly cried when we finished as he finally has a suitable workplace. We still need to put things away and finish organizing the shelves along the side walls of the garage, but the building part is done. Yay! We're quite proud, and had so much fun working together.


Oh, and we went dumpster diving to get some of the 2x4s and plywood since there are so many half-finished houses around with dumpsters and piles of trash.

And today I learned another good thing about winter in Florida-- January is strawberry season! There were huge, beautiful strawberries at the market today.

For the past week or so we've had cooler weather and we refuse to turn the heat on in the house. It's gotten down to 64 inside in the morning and we finally put on the flannel sheets on the bed. I've also been wearing a sweatshirt and fuzzy socks in addition to long pants and a t-shirt. I'm pretty sure our blood is thinning and we're becoming official Floridians. I'm getting cold pretty easily.

Today I'll head to Chicago for a visit and to celebrate Steph and Mom's birthdays. Brad will come up on Friday night. We're not looking forward to the cold, but we are desperate to see our friends and family. It has been truly painful to be away from them, especially given what whom we have met down here. To be fair, many people have been pretty nice, but we'll just say it's been really difficult to be away from our friends. We're in the Bible belt and we can tell-- lots of shallow, fakey Christianity and ultra-traditional husband/wife role expectations. We're not enjoying being put in a box and we really miss real-ness. Can't WAIT to get home.