Day to Day in November (2015)

Like I've mentioned in previous posts...
Fall is pretty magical in south Florida!
The temps cool down a few degrees from the sweltering summer and the humidity lessons just enough for enjoyment.  Because of this, we spent most of our time at the beach...as usual.

Here are some highlights from our November...
Hanging out at Hollywood beach with Monica and Claire.

Might be a little posed for pictures, but we love seeing Daxton and little Claire hug!

Mandatory super messy ice cream cones post beach play!

It's always fun to see how quickly the kids have to eat before the ice cream melts all over from the heat.  Without fail, they are always covered in melted ice cream!

The main reason why we love Hollywood beach so much...

the splash pad!!  Cleans off all that sand and melted ice cream.  I have no clue why every public beach doesn't also have a splash pad!  Daxton, of course, thought it was extra funny when the water would shoot straight up his shorts...

My week to teach in November was a bit crazy.  I had planned so many fun activities and art projects covering the letter J.  But sadly the day I was to teach Dax started to get really sick.  I still taught the first day (luckily no one else caught anything) but by that night Dax was full blown sick.  So I was only able to teach half of the lessons.  Here's what we accomplished the first day...

We painted our outline of a jellyfish with blue sparkly crayola washable paint.  It was funny how many times I had to reassure the kids that they didn't need to try and stay in the lines.  Each of the kids easily painted their jellyfish and then let them dry over night.  Since we didn't end up meeting again that week, I cut them all out.  I gave each of the parents all the pieces so they only needed to assemble and glue with their kids. 

The kids' favorite project was creating their Jupiters.

They loved being able to paint with marbles!

Before hand I cut a few pieces of white paper into large circles.  Then each child got one piece of white paper, a pie tin, and several marbles.  I poured big globs of red, yellow, and orange paint into their pie tins and then placed several marbles inside.  Then the kids had a blast rolling the marbles from side to side while watching the paint spread throughout their paper.  It took a few practice tries (with paint covered marbles being thrown throughout my kitchen) but the kids got the hang of it and had a blast!

Their little Jupiters turned out SO cute!

Some of the fun books we read along with fun J words we brainstormed together...

Keeping with the space theme, the kids got to decorate their J with all sorts of space stickers.  It was pretty funny to see how intense they were, especially the ones who wanted to cover their entire page.

Like I mentioned above, Dax got pretty sick, so we had to cancel our second day of preschool that week.  Over the weekend, when he started to feel better, Dax and I completed the projects we had planned for preschool.

We made a super cute jellyfish made from a paper plate (cut in half and painted blue), double sided tape, googly eyes, and different colored string for the tentacles.

He also had fun rereading some of the books for the week, especially the Giant Jam Sandwich.  We found some fun stamps and had him practice stamping all the letter Js he could find.

A couple other activities focused more on math and tuning his fine motor skills.  We loved our new muffin match up game and glueing tiny little jewels all over the letter J.  It was really fun to see how determined and focused he was on completing each task.

As per usual...once Dax started feeling better, I got sick.  So he spent the next few days getting into all sorts of clever mischief while I was much too sick to care.  It was pretty cute to see him have so much fun exploring different hiding spots of our house.

Other fun highlights from November included a date night with Jeni and Brian.  We took them to Le Tub, a hole in the wall burger place down in Hollywood with incredible food and hilarious bathroom themed decorating.  We had such a fun night with Brian and Jeni!  

Other fun activities from preschool that month included a really cute Thanksgiving theme at Emily's house, where the kids made cute hand turkey's and learned about the pilgrims.  I may or may not have teared up a bit reading what Dax was thankful for...

We also had an impromptu visit to IKEA with buddies after park group one day.  Us moms dropped all of them off at the daycare center and shopped around for a bit while the kids played.  It was very needed for both us and the kiddos.  After shopping we picked up the kids and bought yummy ice cream cones as a treat before heading home.  It was a fun day with friends for sure.

Other happenings from November...

Hanging out at Monica's house while mom and dad were on date nights.  Dax loved their kitty and Claire's toys.

We also finally got around to painting our downstairs!

Dallas worked hard to get it all finished before the holidays.  It turned out so great and I finally felt like we had settled into our home...only took us over a year :)

More babysitting swap with Monica's family and snuggle time from Daxton.

The day before Thanksgiving we had a big Pie night with friends.  We all met up at the church, brought and ate tons of pies, and played volleyball.  The kids ended up rolling and tossing around basketballs while the adults played volleyball, which was pretty funny when they collided.  The next day, for Thanksgiving, we ate at Auntie DeeDee and Uncle Jim's house.  We always LOVE getting together with them and celebrating as a family.  We always have so much fun with them!  I have no clue how I managed to not take a single picture on Thanksgiving though!

The day after Thanksgiving I convinced Dallas it was time for Holiday decorations to come out!  There are few things I love more than holiday decorations and celebrating the holiday season.  It was fun to have Daxton help with decorating the tree (thanks to shatterproof ornaments!)

I loved being able to add more and more interesting ornaments from our adventures that year, especially our shell ornaments from Sanibel Island.  Also...we did all decorating pantless :)

I made these cute boys put on pants for the picture.

It was pretty cute to look over and see the EXACT same determined and focused look on their faces...

It's pretty clear he takes after his father in many ways!

Just a few of our Christmas decorations

To close out the month, we set up a tripod in our backyard and took a few quick pictures for our Christmas cards.  It was VERY last minute and barely made it before the light went down, but they turned out fine.

Dallas took a few silly pics of Daxton while I was setting up the tripod...

Our little family

Sure do love these two men of mine!