Animal Wednesday - southern animals!

There are LOTS of animals to be seen in Florida this time of year! The weather was a bit cooler and in the early evening we saw deer and owls, snakes and alligators. This doe was just ambling along at the side of the road in a state part and paid us no attention
Her buddy was across the street - neither one bounded off while I snapped away.



In the mornings, these egrets were outside our back lanai - not a bad way to start the day, just watching birds wander around looking for food.


We saw lots of Roseate Spoonbills - but they were far away and it was hard to get a good picture. You can just see the bit of pink on this one.

All of my cousins have boats so we had quite a number of days on the water - it was fun (but they are very inefficient ways of getting around!) and we saw dolphins fooling around in the water one day - this is what I could capture of what we assume was a mother and baby playing around in the water. They were jumping around and twisting and playing - it was joyous to watch.

Scruffy taking a nap on someones lap. He's such a cutie.


This is my cousins dog - Sammi. Scruffy and Sammi were at the shelter together, and he is now Joan's dog - she is the one who brought Scruffy home to mom. She and her husband have always had big dogs but they are in love with this little poodle/shiz-tzu cross.
Here is mom on a boat holding Sammi. Mom was such a sport about going out on the water, but always wore a hat to keep her hair from flying around. Love the hat and sunglasses combo! Joan can be seen at the edge of the photo, holding Gizmo - another cousins dog. At one point, after Thanksgiving dinner - we had 5 very short legged dogs racing around the house.

That's it for the animals - but we took some gorgeous pictures on the way home - out the plane window looking at the sunset......

And flying over New York City - amazing!

I am still recovering after being away for 10 days. I actually began to relax, and forgot to clench my teeth at night, or wake up at 2:00 am in a giant panic about something. But I'm getting back into the groove I guess, and have to start thinking about Christmas. I got my first Christmas letter yesterday - damn efficient people!

Sending many hugs to Teri C who lost her Sunshine this week. Sunshine flew into Teri's life two years ago and has been a pleasure to watch, and a joy to Teri and her DH. Poor little Sunshine died last week, and we are all heartbroken for the family - she was an adorable bird.