What's even harder to believe is that tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of our retirement! It has sped by. We've done a lot and seen a lot this year. In a way we are starting and ending our first year in the same place. We started our first year journey on April 5, 2010, and headed to Goose Island State Park. By April 11th we were here in the Valley staying in Mission. We'll be leaving the Valley April 1, 2011, to go back home.
The Refuge staff had a wonderful volunteer appreciation dinner for us. There are quite a few volunteers here and everyone was recognized individually and given parting gifts. The gifts were determined by the total volunteer hours (all years combined) each individual had here at Santa Ana.
Mark and I have almost the same number of hours so we both received:
A license plate frame, a wooden keychain with Volunteer US Fish and Wildlife, lasered on it and a 250 hour pen.
Everyone got these great canvas bags.
In addition to our volunteer gifts, there were also lots of door prizes.
Mark got this birdhouse for his door prize.
My door prize was this beautiful Santa Ana t-shirt with a Great Blue Heron.
How nice that they appreciate their volunteers so much. I like the birdhouse -- I have collected several from our vacations in the NE -- that little one Mark has is so cute!
ReplyDeleteTeri, you're swimming in that t-shirt -- don't they have a small size? The picture on it is pretty.
Happy 1 year retirement anniversary. I guess what you thought you wanted to do in retirement turned out to be what you really enjoyed. How cool.