Moni and I celebrate our
birthdays in February and when you get our age, you need the whole month to
celebrate. We’ve really had a great time
with our friends here. We have taken
several dinghy rides on the Gulf and Atlantic sides of the Keys. The highest danger of exploring the Keys in a
dinghy is running aground. The water is
very shallow until you get a quarter mile off shore in most places.
Our
nephew Ollee is in the second grade and has asked us to be a part of his Flat
Stanley Project. Flat Stanley is a book
by Jeff Brown and according to the book, Stanley was a normal boy, but one
night a bulletin board fell on him while he was sleeping. When he woke up, he realized he was flat as a
pancake. Since Stanley is flat enough to
be sent in an envelope, he is mailed to places all over the country, so Stanley
traveled from Indiana to Key West to see new places and report back to Ollee’s
second grade class, with pictures and stories about his adventure.
We
have had a lot of fun with Flat Stanley and were surprised how many people we
have met that knew all about him. The
project was started in 1995 by a third grade teacher in Canada and features
paper cut-outs based on the title character of the 1964 children’s book.
We
are quickly approaching the end of our stay here, and will be heading north
around the first of March. This year,
instead of heading up the rivers to Grand Rivers, Kentucky, we are traveling
across Florida, up the east coast and exploring the Chesapeake Bay this summer.
