Friendly Faces

Here are the faces of the women I spent an entire week with......laughing, crying and just plain being silly.

Friends

They boys and I had a good time with firneds at the beach. We stayed a week with four other moms and their crew. In total there were eleven children(2yr - 8yr). I have never been to the Bradenton area so the boys and I enjoyed exploring. We went to the pier and ate ice cream, putt-putt golf was fun, a sunset beach trip was the perfect spot for photos, a small inlet area at the end of our neighborhood provided some fun, a walk through a nature preserve near the beach allowed the kiddies to see sea life and let's not forget the beach most mornings and the pool in the afternoons.
All in all a good week for the Hydock clan.

Leffis Key Preserve
















Exploring the waters at the end of our neighborhood



















Sunset with friends


















The Bradenton Pier at sunset

Welcome Home To Me!

UPDATE: It seems my neighbor boy and a neighborhood delinquent female teenager went on a spray painting spree while I was gone. Two other people in the surrounding neighborhoods reported their cars vandalized with spray paint....all the same gold color. Coincidence? I think not!






So the boys and I are home from the beach. It was fun. I will post pics and talk about that another day. For now I want to share with all my devoted readers my lovely surprise when I returned home.



Do you see it? On my garage door!! A horrible word! I am shocked! I had an altercation with my neighbor a few weeks back. I am pretty sure this is my punishment from my teenage neighbor kid. Yes the police were called and a report filed BUT they can do nothing without evidence.

Soooooo......I was left to discuss the awful word with my oldest and why this has occurred. Then I had to comfort him when bedtime came and he felt unsafe.

I can promise you all I will not be pushed around. I will not be intimidated by these thugs. I will prevail!!!

Beach Week with Friends

The boys returned from Georgia on thursday afternoon. Now we are off again. This time to the Anna Maria area for a beach week with four other families minus the daddies. Whew...the boys sure are busy fellows.

Green

I have a new projecting brewing. I went to a free compost class today with Scarlett put on by Hillsborough County Extension Services. They actually gave everyone who attended a free starter compost bin. So starting this week(when DH puts it all together) the Hydock clan will be composting. I am so excited. My plants should be looking their best by Christmas. Thanks to Julie who turned me onto composting. She has a small garden in her backyard where she and her DH compost and grow organic veggies. Julie is definitely green.

So some of you may be asking......why composting? Our household is slowly going green through organic foods, conserving energy in the household, recycling, green paper products and hopefully in the near future green household chemicals. It is easy going green but the extra expense needs to be a slow progression for me and the household budget. But the extra money is so worth the end result which is teaching my children to value the land and animals or else they will go extinct.

Being green is nothing new to me because I get so many wonderful ideas and resources from my friends. We have so many local organic farms around the area that I can buy produce at a lesser cost. Check out this site "Where To Find Local Farms". This is also a wonderful website "The Daily Green". Both these sites I took from Andrea. She is a very green gal. Julie has "The Treehugger" on her blog.


So keep checking back to see how composting is going.

Today

Check out my friends blogs to the right ............>

Melodie, Andrea for sure and hopefully Holly and Karlise by tomorrow to see what we did today. Pool playdates are always so much fun. Moms get to talk while the kiddies wear themselves down swimming around us and having a blast.






















Switching topics(stay with me folks)........Evan and Trey are gone for six days to Georgia. I know they are safe and they are making memories with my family BUT I am sad and lonely they are gone. I feel sorta empty without them. :(

Zoo Day #6

The boys and I went to the zoo with a friend, Amy and her two daughters Hannah and Chloe. They enjoyed the water...it was a hot monday! Trey loved the baby Warthog piggies. They were so cute running around.

















Up close and personal with the giraffe




















Evan and Hannah

















Chloe and Zane

















The kiddies squirting Amy

4th of July

Since we were at the beach for the 4Th of July I wanted to make it a special day for the boys. Back at home we would have gone to the town parade and then shuffle off to my moms house for a family dinner gathering and watch the firework display by my uncle. So what crazy idea did I come up with..........4Th of July bags. My boys love bags to put things in and tote around so I thought this was a perfect idea. I even bought and extra bag for our new beach friend Patrick. Since Zane was napping during craft time I(his wonderful mommy) made his bag and presented it to him upon waking. He was thrilled.





















Later that night we went down to the beach and watched fireworks. Do you notice the shirts? They were made with my moms group a few years ago. The boys still love them and they got rave reviews this year by the people at the beach.














Zane was more interested in the sand than the fireworks. Oh well...at least he was not scared.

Putt Putt

One evening during our beach vacation my Mil and I took the boys to play Putt Putt golf. This was their first time playing the game. They all loved trying to get the ball inot the hole. They also loved all the different themes for each putt putt hole.

Blast Off

The boys loved jumping in the pool. Some of the pics came out blurry but the action shots were too cute to delete. Enjoy!

Zane
















Zane and Caleb!
















Trey!


















Evan!

Beach Life

The boys and I got home today from Treasure Island beach. My MIL has a time share(on the beach) that we use with her every year. My hubby and his family have been going to Treasure Island since he was about ten years old. Now my boys get to make beach memories year after year. And this year was no excpetion for the wonderful memories. This was the first year we got to go during the Fourth of July holiday. We met other families/people using the time share units. They were mostly from S.C. and Tennessee. And they were in much the party mood for the whole week but hey they were on vacation. Right? Their accents were quite the thrill for me and my boys. I found myself using a southern drawl the more I spent time with them. And we think we have a southern twang to us in Florida....compared to them we speak chinese. Evan and Trey made friends with a 7 year old boy named Patrick from S.C. We all made friends with a twelve year old boy from Tennessee named Caleb.

So what did we do the whole week. Swimming in the pool, going to the beach and repeat every few hours. DH was able to come for a few days. We love having daddy around so that was enjoyable for us all. I will post pics over the next few days as I have alot and I really want to showcase what we did for the week.