Our Family Group did a service project of feeding the homeless in downtown Gainesville. We made 100 ham and cheese sandwiches.

Here are Zach and Sean helping to fill the bags. In each bag we put a hard boiled egg, a banana, and a bottle of water.

I loved this sign hanging up in Caleb and Emily's kitchen so I had to take a picture of it.

Everyone brought plastic containers to take home all the leftovers. Enjoy!

Back row from left to right - Matt and Christen, Bob and Lisa, Karl and Jenny, Scott and Lindsay, Caleb, Sean, Lucy and Dustyn, Rich & Brianna & Kim
Front row from left to right - Kristy and Zach and Evie, Emily, Amy and Tom, Josie, Jenn, Laura

Zach and his daughter Evie Kate.

Matt and I
Tom and Amy

We had our Family Group Christmas party at Caleb and Emily's house. There were so many goodies for dessert. The night was full of laughter and fun.

We began the night with singing praise songs and Christmas carols. Laura and Bob led the singing. Afterwards we ate lots of sweet treats. Then we drew numbers for the famous White Elephant game. The While elephant gifts were once again hilarious. Some of the funniest ones included cologne from Turkmenistan, a book on how to grow marijuana, a singing tie, and needle point. After the game some of us stayed around to play a serious game of charades - guys vs. girls. The game was Christmas phrases. The girls won the game with the winning phrase - Feliz Navidad.

Our friends ... Karl and Jenny.

Emily and Caleb with Amy in the background.

Dustyn and Lucy

Scott and Lindsay with their White Elephant treasures - giant fish serving platter and a Napoleon Dynamite bobble-head doll (which was a hot commodity).

Jenn, Lisa and Josie

This Christmas I decided that I would make chocolates for everyone like Aunt Flo-Flo does. Over the summer I spent time with Flo learning how to make the different types of candy. Here I am melting the chocolate in the double boiler. This was actually the first time I had used our double boiler.

After the chocolate was melted I spooned it into the molds. Then I put the molds in the freezer for a while so the chocolate could get nice and hard.

Here are some of the finished products. I tasted one of the peanut butter cups to make sure they were good. Ok. So I did not have only one, but who is counting!

While I was making my chocolates, Amy was making her famous caramel popcorm! The kitchen smelled amazing. Sarah and Becky helped make the chocolate covered pretzle clusters. Aunt Flo-Flo would have been proud of us. We even added a little of our own creation by putting Christmas colored sprinkles on them. After I made all the chocolate I bagged them to pass out to our friends for Christmas. What a great tradition Aunt Flo. I am so thankful that you shared it with me and gave me all the molds. It is really fun, yummy, and easy to do. Although just after I made them Aunt Flo sent me a box of chocolate Christmas trees which she had painted all the bulbs on. She is amazing at making candy.

We moved furniture all day long. Our friends were so great to help us move and let us borrow things such as a truck to move the furniture in, tarps, stools, etc. Once we got all the pieces of furniture in the house we began rearranging. Between my ideas and Matt's ideas I think we must have moved the couches around 15 different times. My arms were so sore. We finally left the furniture alone and went to a friend's house to watch the SEC championship game between Florida and Arkansas. After the Gators won we were pretty excited and got a second wind. So we went home and moved the furniture some more. Finally we came up with an arrangement that we liked. We were exhausted and went to bed at 1:30 AM.

OK. SO here are the long awaited pictures of our "new" furniture and living room arrangement. You can also see our Christmas decorations. It was so much fun to have a house to decorate this year. I love the cozy feeling of just having the Christmas lights on in the house.

Wow, that sure is a BIG mirror. It is 5 feet by 6 feet to be exact. Man was it heavy too.

Here is the moving of the HEAVY T.V. Matt and Fitz would carry it a little way and then I would quick stick this stool underneath it so they could take a quick break. It sure is bigger than the condo's TV.

One of our favorite things to do when we are in San Diego is to run along the beach. We were able to go to the beach 3 of the days and we ran right at sunset. It was gorgeous!

One of the things that Matt was very excited about doing this trip was visiting the Stone Brewery with his brother Mark. Stone makes his FAVORITE beer. They just opened a new brewery and brew pub. The ambiance is incredible and suits the name Stone.

Here is the rock garden out back.

Mark and Julie, his fiance, joined us for lunch and beer.

Daniela and Christian ate lunch too. They had more fun though walking and playing in the rock garden.

Christian took this picture of us. Pretty good for a 4 year old.

Here is my sexy husband in the eucalyptus leaves.

Don't mess with this guy, king of the jungle.

We went to a bird show and an elephant show. Did you know that a male elephant weighs about 12,000 pounds? We also learned that the elephants feet have to be checked everyday for rocks or other things that can get stuck in their feet and cause pain and get infected. They are such large animals.

They are not able to look down at their feet and one of the most difficult tricks that an elephant can do is walk on a balance beam because they cannot see where they are going.

One of our favorite exhibits to watch were the gorillas. They were very playful and creative. There was always a crowd of people gathered around them.

Here is me in among the flower called the Bird of Paradise. They were in full bloom. Matt's Dad always jokes and says "may the bird of paradise fly up your nose." Actually that would be pretty painful.

Have you ever wondered why flamingos stand on one leg? And NO Matt it is not because if they lifted that one up they would fall over. LOL. We learned that flamingos stand on one leg to conserve body heat.

On Friday after Thanksgiving, Matt and I went to Wild Animal Park, while everyone else went to Sea World. It was very nice to get away and spend a day together. The park is amazing and we had a blast. This was my first time visiting.

The first thing we did in the park was ride the train that takes you around the outside of the park. This way we were able to see how big the park really is. We got a great view of all the animals. It was so neat to see the animals and there were no fences blocking your view. We were thankful that we took the train first because later that afternoon the line for the train was at least an hour long. We did not have a wait.

Here is a mother rhinoceros and her baby.

For Thanksgiving there were 43 people at Grandma Buman's house. It was so much fun. There was enough food to feed an army of people, with plenty of leftovers for days to come. It was so yummy. After dinner Matt and I hid the contents of a scavenger hunt that Aunt Ruthie had invented for the kids in the backyard. Later that night the nieces and nephews had fun wrestling their newest uncle, Steve. I am not sure who had more fun!

This year we went to San Diego for Thanksgiving. We enjoyed gorgeous weather. Our friends Matt and Becca Ellis picked us up from the airport. We stayed at their house in Temecula and talked until 4:30 AM Florida time, catching up on life.

On Thanksgiving morning, following Buman tradition, we ran a 10K race (6 miles) through downtown San Diego with Matt and Becca. It was so much fun to run through Matt's favorite city. The course finished right by PetCo Park, where the Padres play.