The Beach

New Symrna

I've been on Vacation this week. So we decided to pack up the car and head out to the beach Saturday. Veronica grabbed a friend and we ended up going to New Smyrna. It's just south of Daytona. It has that same powder white sand as Daytona and we like it better. It's less crowded and cleaner.



We usually see more surfers in New Smyrna but this day everyone seemed to have a surf board or boogie board, including us. We all had a great time riding the waves. The surf was kind of ruff. I'd say we had about 4 to 6 foot waves. They kept dragging us down the beach. The kids rode their boogie boards all the way in a couple of times.
Storm clouds started to gather so we figured it was a good time to get dinner. We always enjoy Manny's pizza and Greek salad. Of course we were all freezing from being wet. But the pizza was just as good.

Chris is a good cook.

Last night Chris made this yummy desert. We had a granny smith apple and some blueberries. What he did was make a bowl with the apple then filled it with butter brown sugar and blue berries. Then he baked it in the oven at 350 for around 20 minutes. It was sooooo.... yummy.

Stuffed Apple before it was cooked.

He was a busy guy that day. He moved some logs that he had for the fire pit and found these weird worms underneath.

So far it's been a very slow summer.

The 4th.

We had a great time for the fourth of July. We decided to stay home and bar-b-q. We made these bar-b-q fries. Everyone always loves them and they are really easy to make. Here is the recipe:

Potatoes

onion

salt

garlic

oregano

Parmesan

Italian dressing.

Peel potatoes then place in a pot of water to prevent browning. Julian potatoes into small fries. Dice onions finely. Just before grilling tear off foil in a square. Grease with butter. Place potatoes on buttered area sprinkle with onions and seasonings. Top with dressing and Parmesan. Fold foil into a pouch place on medium coals for half hour to forty five minutes. Until done.

I usually do one potato per person.

Chris had fun lighting fire crackers and later rockets. We sat around a fire we built in the back yard and lit off our fireworks and watched the neighbors fireworks. Some of them had big mortars. It was really nice except for the mosquitoes. I heard there is some kind of bush you can get that chases off mosquitoes. When I find out what it is I'm going to invest in a few of them to plant around the house.

Veronica had fun lighting off smoke bombs.

There's a black bear in the neighborhood.

This is not the bear.

I borrowed this picture from naturalflorida.blogspot.com another site. This is a good example of what our bear would look like.

This morning our dog went crazy barking and biting at the sliding glass door in the back yard. It took me a while to get over and look out and what ever it was, was gone. I thought maybe it was someone trying to break in our house. I've never seen him freak out that way. Then when I got to work, a friend who lives a couple of blocks away said he saw a black bear that morning and it looked like it was headed toward us. His dogs had been spooked really badly the day before but they assumed it was from all the lightning we've been having lately. The dogs were found a couple of houses away. There is a reserve not to far from us between our house and theirs and also a large lake near by but I didn't think it would be enough to support a bear. We had heard there were coyotes around this area, so we've been keeping an eye on the dog when he goes out at night. We will have to keep an extra eye out now.

Luckily Florida black bears are not known to be aggressive. They are laid back and easy going like everyone in Florida. A few years ago on a camping trip we encountered a bear. It wondered right into our camp. We were sitting around the fire in the dark. We did all the wrong things. Chris took off running. The kids were sleeping in the tent and I jumped up and stood in front of the tent trying to look big ready to fight a bear in the dark. Finally Chris regained his senses and came back with a light and a guy with a gun. The bear had stood there the whole time looking at me like I was crazy. Turned out the bear had two little cubs following her. We all shouted and shooed them back into the woods where they had come from. But if that had been another type of bear no doubt we'd have all been goners, as I have heard horror story's about grizzly bear attacks my whole life.

Another rainy day

It rained all day again. When I got home from work we went out and bought some fireworks. We didn't get up to the firework factory like we wanted and for some reason you can't buy fire works that go up around here so we had to travel to the next county. So this is our stash. Not as much as usual but it'll do. If I can keep Chris from lighting them all off before the 4th. We are looking forward to it. Yeah a day off.