beach bums

There's one thing to be said about living in Florida and that is you gotta love the beach! Either way you drive (other then north-ha ha) you are bound to hit sandy goodness. I guess it's only natural that Maribel loves the beach as much as she loves blueberries. I mean she's a Carlberg and it comes with the name.

On Saturday I loaded up the car and my little onion for a little trip to our family favourite, Cocoa Beach. We love this beach with all of it's natural beachy goodness of shells, sea weed, sea foam, jelly fish, crabs and feathers. And I can't forget to mention the perfect sand for turning anyone into mermaids.

Luckily we never got hit with any rain so we were able to catch some decent waves and sand time. Even if it did rain nothing was going to spoil our special mommy/daughter date. We had a nice picnic on our blanket. I filled the Tiffen box with sandwiches, crackers, pretzels and some delicious strawberries and grapes with yogurt for dipping.

My niece Sherry sent me her little Flat Stanley for a little vacation so this is him enjoying what Florida has to offer. So naturally you can't go to Cocoa Beach, Florida without paying a little visit to Ron Jon Surf Shop.
This lucky fella gets to accompany me everywhere I go like the beach,church,  my place of work, I even have a little Disney planned for his visit which will be fun to document.

I only wish that when it came time to send him home that I could go with him. I'm running out of Canadian Smarties and yes, I do eat the red ones last...

a secret wish

I don't keep it a secret that I dislike summers in Florida. What with the intense heat with the humididty making being outside utterly unbearable, but I have to say that I'm kind of wishing that summer wasn't reaching the endline. So to celebrate our final few summer weekends together while Joe is busy entertaining tourists we spent most of Saturday in downtown Winter Park.

We started at the farmer's market for some delicious fruits and vegetables but all Maribel wanted to do was pet every single dog at the market. She would get this look on her face every time she saw a pocket pooch like chihuahuas and poodles.

After getting some pooch lovin in it was snack time. There's plenty of benches to sit and enjoy a little nibble before some shopping...

...and some tree climbing too with some bubble time. But then she saw a giant tree to hide inside versus climbing on the outside. We spend a while there since it was cooler inside the tree then in the blistering heat.

But then we found an ice cream shop which looked too good to pass up. Well, I passed it up but I couldn't deny Maribel the littlest cup of chocolate shade. But it sure did look delicious in the cup and on her dress.

After making a wish or two at the park fountain we decided it was time to head back and escape the heat and head back.

The park is right by an active Amtrak train station and Maribel was so hopeful to see a train but alas, her wishes were not fulfilled, this time.

As far as mommy/daughter dates go, this day has reached the top of my list. The weather was a little warm but with my favourite redhead it was totally bearable.

The official beginning of Autumn is September 23rd and that puts it 92 days until Christmas. Hey it will be here before you know it. It always does that.
>^..^<