We enjoyed another Advent service at Big Pine UMC this morning. The sermon was about Joseph and how little is written about him, but what an important part he played in the life of Jesus. Interestingly, one of our team devotions this week was about the same thing. After the service we had some fellowship time with our new team members, Steve and Glenita. It was great to learn more about them. The rest of the day was spent walking and getting ready for tonight’s team meeting.
We walked past the Monroe County Fire Department Big Pine Key station which is just a block or so from the church. We found this beautiful mural painted on the side of the station. Look closely and you can see the flag is made up of firefighters in SCBA’s. Beautiful.
Our newest members of the team, Glenita and Steve arrived about 6:30 tonight. Thankful for their safe arrival and safety parking after dark. So now all our team is in place again. We can relax a little.
The rest of the day today we did some serious walking (wind only 26 mph sustained wind today but it still shakes FRED at times). We have discovered we really like the ability to walk anywhere we need to go on Big Pine. We walk across the street the grocery store, across the highway to the flea market, down the highway a ways to one of many restaurant choices. One of the places we walked today was to a new seafood and produce stand that was having it’s grand opening today. We met the two owners earlier this week and promised them we would visit today. We bought some key lime pie, fresh salsa, grapefruit and oranges. We tried some fresh watermelon juice, fresh guacamole, and fresh shrimp ceviche which were all excellent and will be on our list for next visit. As a lot of you know, we frequently prepare snow crab legs for our Christmas dinner along with some other not so traditional but favorite items. This little market has stone crab claws. Since we are in the Keys, we decided to go local and they will be steaming us some fresh stone crab claws for our 2019 Christmas dinner. We came home and looked up stone crab since we have never eaten it and found that when they catch the crab, they harvest one of the claws, release the crab and when the crab molts it grows another claw. Who knew? Certainly not us. We had another great day in the Keys. Hope everyone has finished their shopping and is ready to concentrate on the real reason for Christmas. Stay safe.
Generations Seafood also has a produce section.
The owner told us many of the items in the gift shop were made by locals.
FIVE days till Christmas!! Hope you are all ready to celebrate the birth of our Savior.
Today we slept in. Yea!! We were up in time to get our hugs and say our “see you down the road” to Mary and Ron who had their motorhome packed and pulled out a little after 9:00. We so enjoyed working with them again. We wish them safe travels to their next project. A little later in the day we took a long walk. We also spent time reorganizing our tools and truck and meeting with Jim, the construction coordinator, about next week. The weather is quite brisk for Florida and we have winds 28-32 MPH. We had to weight down our carpet outside the door with large rocks, and we might still have to go look for it in the morning. It was a quiet but busy day.
Campground sign that was just installed. Jim says they are preparing for a dedication ceremony sometime soon.
I think the entire team is glad it’s NOMADS Friday. (Thursday for folks not fortunate enough to enjoy our four day work weeks.) It’s been a physically tiring week. It rained almost all day today and when it wasn’t raining it was misty and the wind was blowing 29-32 MPH. It would have been a good day to stay at home and sleep. We didn’t of course and Elaine led devotion for us and read a piece on the childhood of Jesus. Interesting to think about what Jesus was like when he was two or three or six, etc. He was fully human, yet fully God. He had to learn to walk and talk just like we all did. Thanks, Elaine!
Repair of a hole made to access some plumbing
After devotion and planning tonight’s dinner, Max, Kathy and Larry drove back to Sugarloaf Key to a new to us house. Bob’s house is almost completed and they went there to work the punch list. There was some touch up painting, installing trim, and cabinet parts, repairing “plumber’s” hole in drywall and caulking. They will have to return on Monday to continue working the list. The rest of the team went back to Dennis’s house and were joined by the team of college students who worked at the Sugarloaf Key house yesterday. The students joined in sanding drywall in the back bedroom and then in the living room. They seemed to be a good group and we enjoyed having them join us. While the students were sanding, our team textured the kitchen ceiling. Dennis made the final decision to texture the walls too so guess we will work on that next week.
Room ready for texture to be sprayed on ceiling
Mary and Ron spraying texture on ceiling
Dennis spraying the kitchen ceiling
We will loose Mary and Ron tomorrow as they drive back north to the mainland. We have really enjoyed seeing them again and wish them safe travels.
The team went to Big Pine Rooster again for our Thursday night team dinner. We enjoyed the relaxing time to visit outside of work.
