More Catch-Up

I have been looking through my photos to see what I've missed telling you, and I discovered this....

...the photo of Poppa's china cabinet/toy drawers with the doors on - isn't it lovely?  When we return to Canada I'll put some nice stuff in there to show it off to its best advantage.  Meanwhile, you're wondering what else we did last week - right?  Well - I'll try to cover some of it.  The weather was perfect - in the 80's and sunny, so.....

...Squeegie and Taffy put their bathing suits on, and.....

....discovered a new pool toy out in the lanai.  That alligator kept them occupied for a long time, while Poppa and I played in the pool.  On our way out to the book store, I stopped briefly to get a picture of the hibiscus bush at the front of the villa........

...it looks lovely this year!  When we stopped the car in the parking lot at the shopping center, we espied this bird in the tree directly in front of us....

...in the process of eating lunch.  There seem to be a lot of birds this year - perhaps because we arrived a couple of weeks early.  Sometimes we can barely hear each other speaking due to the loud twittering of small birds - it is so nice.  We spent one afternoon at the beach on the Gulf side of Florida....

...when we arrived, the parking lot was already quite full, but we lucked out and found a spot.  We stopped at the concession stand.....

...to get a drink, and found it quite busy as well.  However, once we sauntered onto the beach....

....there was lots of open space to stroll.  We spent about three hours there and enjoyed every minute of it - I even managed to get some colour - so I looked less like a snowbird from Canada!  We went for a few long drives to re-acquaint ourselves with the area - and discovered this huge cactus plant just budding out.....

....we're hoping we can find it again and get a picture with all the flowers open.  And we had a fun evening after we had dinner with Poppa's cousins, Denis & Liz.....

....they joined us here at the villa, since usually we seem to end up eating at their place.  Since the table was full.....

...Squeegie and Taffy had their supper on the counter.  It turns out that the rest of Denis and Liz's family are not arriving until after Christmas, so we made plans to get together at their place for Christmas dinner!