'Twas the Day Before...

"Twas the night before Christmas. The Day before Christmas. Christmas Eve Day. Followed by Christmas Eve. Whatever you like to call it- tomorrow is Christmas. We made our family calls tonight from the coach. We reached most but I guess some are on the road or whatever and to them- sorry we missed you. At least we tried.
We had an incredibly exciting day today. Started off with a drive from Malabar to Melbourne, the closest location of a Bed, Bath, and Beyond Store. There we purchased "space bags" which we took back to the coach and shrink wrapped all the clothes and bedding and such that we are not using right now. Presto-chango: lots more room in the closets. What! You think that isn't exciting! By coach standards our closets and storage spaces are enormous, but by all other standards they are downright inadequate. Not to worry; organization conquers most problems caused in part by the lack of same. Whilst I worked on the closets Marilyn soaked corn husks and whipped up a steamer full of tamales which we enjoyed as our Christmas eve dinner. Our Christmas dinner will be a pot luck with the other campers here at Camelot RV in Malabar on the Indian River. The campground will provide turkeys and hams and the campers will bring the rest. It should be a great experience. We'll let you know.
A word about this morning. The sun rose over the river sometime after 7:oo. An osprey sat on the pole in front of the coach. Rafts of ducks bobbed up and down in the light swells of the river and a pod of dolphins jumped and chased fish and just generally played around for a half hour or so. For me, days don't ever start any better than that. We wrapped up our outside activities for the day just at dusk. Abby put on her Santa hat (well, OK, I put it on her, but she really does love it) and we took a walk by the river and then back through the campground. Lots of people have told Abby they love her hat! One guy even asked if he could take her picture wearing the hat. He did. She decided that was the perfect time to relieve herself of "excess weight", so I hope that shot doesn't find its way onto the internet. Still, a dog's gotta do what a dog's gotta do and sometimes that's a do do!
We did all our Christmas shopping this year at the grocery store. So we will either eat or drink all our presents this year. We did each buy a lotto ticket but that turned out to be nothing more than a charitable contribution to whomever did win it,'cause we didn't.
This will be our first Christmas away from home, but also in our home. Like most of our experiences in the coach, this will be another first. We both feel very content about things for now. What is new is seldom old; but things old can be made new.