Author: laurie

We worked on finalizing out insect collections. I hung out with my new friend, G. We saw the Brotherhood Motorcycle Toy Run. It was loud. We scored amazing tickets to Trans Siberian Orchestra. I absolutely LOVED them! Pyrotechnics, lasers, electric violins… so awesome! 

We went and sat with Miss Gail near her house for the Dunedin Holiday Parade. We had a great spot as always. I raked in the candy canes! I loved all the floats. I really liked the bag pipe bands! There were so many this year! Santa came in on the Dunedin Fire Rescue truck. The next night our 4-H club went caroling at Largo Central park amongst their light walk. We had a blast. We sang loud and were even directed by Darth Vader.

We went back to Busch Gardens after PE this week. We got in a lot of rides before out commitment. We went to a Conservation Connection presentation about tropical aquaculture. It was really interesting and made B and I want to start trying to raise and breed tropical fish.

Mom and Dad surprised us with season passes to Busch Gardens. We picked a day that was so empty and the weather was beautiful. We had zero lines on all the rides, got to see tons of animals. I rode lots of rides I would never ride before. I loved Cheetah Hunt!  I loved the kangaroo sign. They were so lazy in the cold weather. We even got to go on a safari tour. The best part of the tour was feeding the giraffes. This was just a young one, named Cupid.  We rode the sky buckets later int he afternoon. They were closed all day because of the winds. At 5pm the safari train turned into a Christmas Sing A. Long train! SO MUCH FUN! Ended the night looking at the lights on the way out of the park! What a great day!

We opted for a weeklong getaway to Paynes Prairie just south of Gainesville. We got settled in at the campsite and found an AWESOME rotting log right next to the campsite. We changed our April reservation site to be in this same site! We found lots of cool insects to observe.  We went to the Hippodrome for a hillarious holiday play called : Every Christmas Story Ever Told and then Some. We laughed so hard! I loved the entrance way to the building. The next day we went to the Santa Fe Teaching Zoo. It was cold out! Luckily the animals were really active since it was feeding time. Up next was the Florida Natural History Museum to look at the butterflies and collections room (through the window). We checked out the traveling exhibit on dinosaurs and ran into our photographer friend, Mr. Tedd. He told us a lot of great information and we chatted about our travels to make different geological sites around the country. No trip into Gainesville is complete without some time in the NATL. It was chilly so it was not a productive time. Back at PP we found some really cool frogs on the same plant we always find them on! We look every visit! We think we finally saw a bison. It may have been a huge wild boar. We stopped off to see Aunt Kim and B and I needed to get the wiggles out so we walked to the playground. Mom found a last minute field-trip to the UF Entomology building. We happily joined in to boost their numbers and enjoyed seeing some of our favorite sites. The red room at the new bee building finally had a hive in it. Mr. Clayton was the outreach coordinator for the event so it was nice to see a familiar face. Holding a vingaroon. We even had time to hunt in the NATL. As usual I spent the time helping others and what I did catch I ended up releasing. I did find this cool caterpillar of a greater purple hairstreak. But we had no way to rear it due to lack of a proper food source so I released it back where I found it, after I watched it wander around the table for a while. The indoor archery tournament wrapped up our little vacation. I shout amazingly well. I got a 220/300! I ended with first place but I was sad because there was no-one else in my bow class so I felt I didn’t earn it. Mom said if I had shot in the unsighted class I would have won that based on my score. So my goal is to outshoot the unsighted recurves, which I did. So I was happy after that. 

We headed to Gainesville to Aunt Kim’s for Thanksgiving. We stopped at Bass Pro Shop to stretch our legs a little. We loved the race cars, seeing Santa and playing a Wii shooting game. When we got to Kim’s house we played some games with Cousin Anna while the adults worked on some chores. After we ate we took a long walk at the park and played on the swings for a while. We had a great holiday and wish someone actually took photos! Oops!

When came home to the silly elves! They are back!!!

They are already up to no good!  Oh I also have been working on my art project for the Insectathon in January. THe twisting of the paper is called quilling.