weekend scenes

Saturday morning I walked onto the beach to meet the Huzz and kiddos.  Thankfully I had my camera ready as this is the sight I saw within minutes of stepping onto the sand.  We've seen dolphin fins in the sea here before, but seeing this frisky one jumping out was amazing.

Pretty pink hut at the Postcard Inn.

8.30am doughnut breakfast on the beach after an early morning swim.

Great way to start a Sunday morning.

1, 2, 3..... 'Jump'.

Dolphin art display at Pier 60, Clearwater, FLA.

Hope you had a great weekend.

collecting shells

'Our' beach on this lovely spot of the Gulf of Mexico has so many pretty shells.

When we aren't bobbing around in the sea, which is the temperature of a relaxing warm bath,

we are all wandering along searching for perfect shells.

Along the way we find broken shells so thick you cannot imagine how big the whole shell would have originally been.  We find crabs, little shrimps, coral and pretty pebbles, and we're on the look out for a fossilised shark's tooth which are apparently in abundance around here (but not to us yet!).  

(Update on shark's teeth - we have 25+ now!!!!)

Our luggage will be a lot heavier for the home trip for sure!

end of a day on the beach

Lots of swim suits drying on the little white fence around our blue and white beach cottage.

Always the sign of a good day spent at the beach.

Hope your summer is going well.

More updates from ours coming soon!

smile please

Ruby has a toy camera.

She takes a photograph.

She turns the camera around for you to see yourself in the viewer.

You will either be a Princess, Boy, Monkey or Dog !

Don't be offended if you are the dog or monkey!  Its not personal.

lookouts

The best view on the beach!

Florida and Hawaii

little girl after sunset

Covered in sand and smudges of orange ice-cream.

Enjoying the beach for as long as possible after sunset.

airstream

We've driven past the Airstream Ranch many-a-time.  This time we stopped to get some long overdue photographs.  Not only are there these old Airstreams, half buried in the ground, and an 'Airstream Village' of lovely used ones, but they also sell brand new shiny Airstreams too.  If I had a 'caravan' of any type it would have to be one of these.

Unfortunately, the usual gorgeous Florida blue skies were missing at the time and the biggest storm was rolling in and pelted us for the next hour as we drove back to Orlando airport for our (delayed by 4 hours) flight home.  Anyhow, photographs were made and that was a great end to the vacation.

breakfast, home & away

Breakfast at our house is either toast with butter and Marmite, a bowl of breakfast cereal or fruit and yoghurt, followed by a cup of Yorkshire tea or Illy coffee.

However, these past couple of weeks we've been having a little vacation indulgence! There have been a lot of breakfast trips to our favourite donut and coffee shop - Lighthouse Donuts. Luca and my favourite is the maple glazed.  Ruby loves the chocolate glaze with sprinkles.  Huzz goes for a breakfast bagel - filled with egg, bacon and cheese. Yum!

All my pre-vacation fitness classes and cutting back on the calories now need to be trebled!!

Do you have a favourite glaze on your donut?  

front row

Another perfect end to a perfect day, and front row seats to enjoy the view.  

beach info

Yesterday, after a day at one of our favourite beaches, we stopped by the Postcard Inn for dinner at Wildwood BBQ & Burger.  Deeeelicious!

This huge floor to ceiling chalk board in the hotel lobby caught my eye (as well as loads of other cool elements about this hotel which I'll post another time).

All the info you need for a day at the beach.

Surfs up....  must go!

beach feet / corner view

Oooohhhh, those little chubby feet.  So cute in her new beach footwear.

And I've just realised that this can also be my Corner View 'By the Sea' contribution for this week too!  Two posts in one - lovely!

Thanks to Lise for this week's theme.  For more Corner View's 'By the Sea', stop by Francesca's blog.

Street light

We wandered through Naples, Florida on Thursday evening.  It was a street entertainment evening with bands playing (some good, some quite comical, some men in gold lamé jackets!).   The air was oh so warm.  We stopped for Italian food and sat on the terrace watching the world go by.   Afterwards the kiddos had icecreams, almost a big as their heads!

Down a little side street I saw these lanterns strung across the road.  They looked so pretty against the dark blue evening sky.

Vacation, vacation, vacation

You know you're in Florida when...

• In place of an afternoon cup of tea and slice of cake you're drinking icy cold Corona and eating chips with a spicy mango salsa!

• Instead of next doors cat walking up your garden path, you find a beautiful white Egret with yellow feet and a black and yellow bill.

• As soon as you jump out of bed, you put on a bikini and a good slathering of sun lotion, instead of your usual bathrobe and slippers!

• A black snake slithers past you as you walk down the sandy path to the beach.

• The kiddos are eating Alligator nuggets and coconut shrimp instead of fish fingers.

• You find yourself very easily saying "I'll have another Margarita" before the usual 'beer o'clock'.

• This is the view when you step outside the front door.

I'm finding it a little hard to blog right now as I'm sure you can imagine!

Legless

No not me - its not quite wine o'clock yet!

I've just been looking back at photographs
from our last vacation in Florida.

Couldn't resist posting these.

Thankfully, Starfish grow back their legs!

Wishing you a great weekend.

Favourite photos in our 2009 collection Nr.4

Today I have some more photos to share from our 2009 collection. I see there's plenty of chat around about favourite photos right now and how hard it is to pick just one, especially when you have kiddies and just adore every picture taken of them. I'm steering away from family pictures as I'd be here forever otherwise.

So, here's the next series of fav pics in our house. Our vacation to Florida was one of the highlights on my 2009. I love the laid back relaxed atmosphere, sun, warmth, light, beaches and sea and ... actually just about everything. Huzz takes hundreds of photos on vacation - loads of birds and wildlife (occasionally some of me and kiddos). Here's a little view of the amazing wild life on the Gulf Coast - all just steps from our beachhouse rental.

Horseshoe crab found on our first day

Black headed gulls with unknown boy

American White Ibis

Osprey with catch of the day

Juvenile Pellican

Dreaming of the next vacation already!