Another Fun Month

November has been another busy and fun month as usual. Besides the usual - school, work, and play. We managed to get a lot of fun in this month, too. Sydney also got to start piano lessons, which she loves (we just got a used piano in great condition). I've enjoyed playing around on it, too. Her and Jake are just getting ready to wrap up gymnastics (I need to take some pictures of that).

Camping

We went camping at Sebastian Inlet. The kids had fun. We are not the best of campers but we still take the kids at least once a year. They love the fire and sleeping in a tent. Mike and I, however, have had our fix of tent sleeping for a good while. Not much sleep at all! The kids had a good time, though, and Mike had a good time fishing with the kids. This inlet is a popular place for ocean fishing.

Decorating the Tree

We got an early start on setting up the Christmas decor this year. It's been up for a few weeks now. We have a tradition of giving the kids one new ornament every year that they open when we decorate the tree. It is symbolic of a major event in their lives that past year. This year they both got clear balls with sand and sea shells in them since we made our big move here this year.

Thanksgiving in North Carolina and Savannah, Georgia

For Thanksgiving we decided to take a road trip to Wilmington, North Carolina. Mike served as a missionary for our church there 11 or 12 years ago. He has kept in good contact with the Marshall family he met while there and we get to see them quite often. They invited us for Thanksgiving, so we drove about nine hours and had a good time.

On our way back from North Carolina, we decided to stop in Savannah, Georgia and tour around there. It is such a beautiful and historic place. We stayed over night there and did some fun things. We went on a historic tour by carriage ride and did a lot of walking around.

This was an old ship that had free tours. Jake thought he was aboard a read pirate ship and was in pirate character.

While on the ship, we watched a holiday boat parade on the river. Over a hundred boats participated by decorating their boats with lights and decor. It was fun to watch. You can see it just getting lined up behind us but not close by yet.

The kids had a fun time spending the night in the hotel. They were able to swim and play around a bit. It had this huge gingerbread house in the entry way. It had real gingerbread, frosting and candy. Jake was trying to eat it at one point.

Savannah has the most beautiful trees. They are so big and old. You feel like you are taking a step back in time. I wish I would have taken more pictures of the old buildings and streets. We were so excited to see the yellow and orange trees and feel a bit of fall, since we don't get much of that in Florida. The kids couldn't stop commenting on the pretty leaves.