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We kept up with our tradition of the Dunedin Holiday parade complete with candy canes, bagpipes and Santa! 

Good-bye shaggy for a little while.

Mom and Dad surprised us with season passes to Busch Gardens. They got a great deal on Black Friday. We had a blast visiting the animals and riding rides. I was super brave and rode most fo the roller coasters!

The kangaroos were awesomely lazy.
We also got a Black Friday deal on a safari. We got to go out in the Savanah in a huge truck and feed giraffes.  The train turns into the Holiday Sing-a-long Train in the evening. We rode and sang. The lights all over the park were really beautiful!

I look forward to make happy memories with the family.

It was a quick turnaround after Thanksgiving and we headed back to Gainesville for a week of camping and cookies. E and I got right to work on the log by the campsite. We found all sorts of insects.  We went to the Hippodrome to see a holiday play called “Every Christmas Story Ever Told…and then Some.” It was hilarious. We laughed and laughed.  We also discovered a place called Midnight Cookie. They open at 6pm and make fresh to order cookies. We had a few evening  runs for cookies! We visited the Santa Fe Teaching Zoo in the cold cold morning. We finally bought a pass so we can come back often. The animals that were out were really active trying to stay warm. The rest were holed up in their warming boxes.

Up next was the Florida Natural History Museum. The traveling exhibit is on dinosaurs. We had a lot of fun. We ran into Mr. Tedd from the bug photography class we took. We chatted for a while as he gave us a lot of info on the Dinos. 
We brought our bug stuff but the NATL was quiet so no hunting today. We took a few shorted hikes at Paynes Prairie. We found frogs in the normal hiding place! We think we saw the bison out of the prairie. We stopped at Aunt Kim’s for dad to do a project. We went to the swings because we needed to be outside. Mom found an open field-trip to the UF Entomology Department. We joined 25 other homeschoolers. We got to see an active hive in the red room. I thought that extraction room was awesome! We got to hold a vinegaroon. We even got a little NATL time. The weather was a little warmer than the other day but still pretty quiet for bug hunting. Saturday we had our 4-H Indoor archery tournament.  It was just Maleah and I in the intermediate sighted recurve this year. I beat her but just barely. I have a feeling that won’t last too long!

When we got back from camping I dove straight into my insect collections for serval days. I had to relabel and reorganize all the boxes. How many entomologists use 7 pinning blocks at a time. It was easier to cut 7 labels, pin 7, cut 7 and pin 7. Seemed to go faster than one and one and one and one. 

We ran u for the day to Gainesville for Thanksgiving. We arrived a little early and stopped at Bass Pro since they were open.  They had all sorts of fun displays of toys. I set the alarm off on the Nintendo Wii Hunting game and the staff had to come shut it off. How embarrassing! Mom also made us take a photo with Santa! We had fun at Kim’s house. Cousin Anna bought some games To play. This one was funny. You had to stay calm while other people tried to get your pulse to raise. Weird. 

We got Grandpa Howie to try the head thing. It went right off because he was laughing so hard.We took a walk to the park after food and had fun playing at the playground.

When we got home our elves arrived!