Mummy comes to visit!

OK.. for those of you who haven't been concentrating... I'm English but I live in sunny Florida. Whilst I miss my family and friends, I was born to live in the sun and purposefully sort out a Floridian to marry (that's a joke by the way!).

Funnily enough people love coming to visit to.. including my Mother, who likes to leave my Dad for a week each year and come and do my gardening spend some time with her daughter...

She complained constantly that her face was not going brown (I did explain that normally wearing a hat will have this effect) but apart from that was a perfect guest... me doing the hard labour, her potting the plants, me making lunch, her loading the dishwasher, me grilling at night, her keeping hubby awake!..

I try and organise some nice weather for her, and this years visit last week was no exception. Over 80f most days, we spent time gardening, reading and generally relaxing...and as it was so gorgeous I decided to reward her gardening efforts with trips out and to the beach for the weekend. I've not been to Clearwater since moving to Florida and got one of my fantastic hotel deals, so booked us two hotels rooms at a stupid price, packed Gary off to doggy daycare and we sped of Saturday morning.

We spent the day catching some rays and then after a few Margaritas by the pool, went for dinner at Columbia restaurant. After a few more drinks my Mother was very 'amusing' and we had to make sure she got back safely to her room, if you get my drift!

The following day we took her to Crabby Bills in Indian Rocks beach and got her a big breakfast to make her feel a little more 'normal' and then it was off for some more sun at the locals beach.... She promptly fell asleep.. combination of hangover and food coma me thinks!

It was great to see her, and of course she is welcome back anytime she likes..preferably this time next year when the plants need cutting :-)

Enjoy the pics... tomorrow my journey fiasco getting to Australia... oh did I mention I'm in Australia at the moment?

Lunch in Winter Park.. cheers

Every feel like you are being watched

Spring gardens

View from Mom's room

View from our room

Where is my cocktail!?

Like Mother like Daughter



Margaritas!!!!



Winding Dad up on the phone!

Dinner at Columbia!

Cheers... again!

Our view over the pool and bay!

Soaking up the previous night at Crabby Bills

Snooze time

80f and hardly anyone on the beach!



Gary... did you have a nice weekend.. we did!



Birthdays, Beaches, Secret Shopping and Skunks!

Today was a busy day - hubby's birthday and secret shopping...hmmm ' Hubby, I'm taking you out for nice steak dinner.' don't tell him I'm getting reimbursed for it and we will be timing everything ;-) He was supposed to have the whole day off today, but worked from 7 - 1 so got home about 1.30pm...and then told me we had to go to the driving licencing office to replace his licence as it ran out today!...hmmm..how exciting!

We went for a spot of lunch at Moe's Southwest Grill, which my friend Anne would love has she is 'jalapeno' head and they'll pile them high for you.. and then programmed the Tom Tom to take us to the DL office...big mistake. We had the choice of 3 main offices and the closest one to us was the only one that took non-US citizen license applications...fine for me, but for hubby we did not need to wait 1 1/2 hours in the queue! Fortunately the nice lady on the reception desk pointed is in the direction of the tax collector offices which can also renew licenses. We scanned the page of locations she gave us and saw one was in Neptune Beach ...hmmm, that sound nice we thought lets go there..

Well for anyone needing to renew their licence then this is the office to go to. Clean, welcoming efficient staff, perfect in fact. We were in and out in 7 mins! and then decided as we were nearly by the sea that we'd take a drive from Neptune Beach up the coast a little to see what was there.
Firstly we'll be back to Neptune beach as the little restaurants and boardwalks look super cute,

but today we were in the mood for a nose past all the great beach houses on the coast here.

We drove slowly up the coast towards Atlantic Beach and passed the most gorgeous places (reminder to self ..buy lottery ticket!), lots of the houses covered in cedar shingle on the outsides, making them look old world (most of them are very modern though!) mixed in with more modern designed property. We drove past a house for sale..pretty innocuous from the road side....I thought...hmm that looks nice (daydreaming about living at the beach) so this morning I tracked it down on the Internet! My innocuous little house is actually a mansion and nearly $4.5 million! It seams that the roadside is the 'crappy' part and it goes all the way back to the beach... 6500 sq ft, with a guest house and of course a gorgeous pool...hmmm, lets do the calculations...our house wouldn't even cover the deposit, and then we'd have a $20K mortgage a month...hmmm how the other half live!..but nice to dream!

The road we were on was Beach Avenue - it's beautiful with lots of gorgeous over hanging trees, and beautiful flowers. We saw a parking area with beach access and decided to stop..I'm glad we did as the beach was nearly empty, the sun was blazing down and the sea was super warm.

Beach both ways nearly empty..probably an easy day for the life guards!

We walked along the beach for about a mile...it's long beautifully clean sand and it's great to look at all the expensive houses backing up to the beach...the only time I wouldn't want one of these is during a hurricane, its a fab place to live.

Hubby enjoying the warm water

Hubby getting hit by a big wave!

But all good things must come to an end, we still had secret shopping to do tonight and Gary was at home and he was going to mad at us when he smelt the beach...he loves the beach! (Incidentally he can go to the beach here, we just need a tag for him - I am investigating how to get one now)

We arrived back at the apartment, Gary went crazy of course so I took him for a walk to calm him down...we were just rounding the corner when I spotted a skunk...it was one of those 'wish i had a camera' moments, he also spotted us and slopped off into the undergrowth by the woods..I wondered whether Gary would be able to pick his scent up... well I was very proud of our hairy son..he was on it nearly immediately and with bum in the air and nose to the ground, tail wagging furiously, he took us to all the places the skunk had been ( fortunately not to the skunk itself!)..I had to drag him back to the apartment...at least we know his nose works now!

Then it was off secret shopping...a nice steak restaurant in Jax beach. The food was good, our waitress excellent, the hostess was useless...guess she won't be getting too many Brownie points on my report...!! The best bit, it will be free when I submit my report, which is what I'm off to do now.