First Half of November!

We started off the month of November with sun and sand with another morning at Mission Bay to run and play.  

Continuing to be quite the engineer with the imagination this month.

Sweet kiddos!  They are still so good to one another and play so well.  I have had to laugh though because there have been a few times this month where Joseph will get upset/frustrated at Ella and his go-to line is, "Ella, you can't come to birthday!"

Hanging at one of the parks in the area on November 2nd.

The curls are really growing which are too cute!

We met the Ozecks at the zoo on November 3rd.  The gorillas were so fun and active this morning although Julia was the only one of our monkeys that had any interest in them-the other 4 were running and dancing around in the background.

They are so great together!

It doesn't get much cuter than this!  

We signed Joseph up for Little Rookies which is a "skills and drills" type of class for baseball. It meets once a week for an hour and he loves it!  The class goes through different stations of pitching, fielding, batting and base running and we've been really impressed with the coaches and the program.  They have them hitting off of the pitching machine which is definitely Joseph's favorite part and the coaches really take the time to work on form and show proper technique.  After our first, less than impressive experience with t-ball in Texas, this is super impressive.  

The practices are at a park about ten minutes from the condo with a great play area, so the girls are happy and busy during the hour.

Julia is totally into shoes and really wanted to wear Joseph's sneaker
November 5th

This picture makes me laugh!!

We're in a good routine in the condo where every night we eat dinner and then the girls take a bath and then Joseph follows after them. The girls are having fun just the two of them and Joseph doesn't seem to mind having the tub to himself!   Although, Julia never wants to get out espeically when she sees Joseph getting ready to go in.  It's so hard to believe that Julia turned 14 months this month!  A few fun things about her from this month so far:
-One of her new tricks is walking backwards and she totally cracks up any time we make a big deal out of it.
-She knows her nose, hair, ears, eyes, head, cheeks and teeth. She makes the sound of a dog (not a bark though, but, rather a pant thanks to Cali!), an elephant with the hand motion, a monkey and a tiger/lion ("rawrr!")  She's saying "ma ma, da da, ba ba" (bye bye), and has started trying to say Ella with her tongue moving back and forth and out of her mouth which we all just love!
-Since the time change, she has been pretty consistent at waking up at 5:00 a.m., which is a little too early to my liking, but most days I can get her back to sleep in our bed until 6:00 when the other two come in.  Early birds in this house!
-She continues to love to give raspberries (I think I've said this every  month for the past 6 months!)
-She wants a duck book and Eight Little Monkeys read to her on repeat!! And will moan/grunt until you read it again.  Same thing goes with Five Little Pumpkins and Six Little Ducks in the car on the cd player.  She's a funny one!!

On November 7th we went for a hike/bike ride at Lake Hodges (well, the dried up portion of Lake Hodges.)  Joseph has gotten so confident on his bike that it is so fun to watch.  It was a beautiful day!

Just a little Sunday morning workout on the 8th with the resistance bands.

Later that morning, we went to downtown to the gaslamp quarter where they blocked off three streets for a Fallback Festival.  They had some fun activities for the kids to learn about the history of San Diego.  Joseph and Cole liked the jail!

One of the activities was shopping for penny candy where they each received five pennies and could buy five pieces of penny candy.  Pretty sweet!

Joseph asked for his picture to be taken in front of another jail set up.

How cute is this!!  They had a photo booth with all sorts of fun (and I'm sure very dirty) costumes to wear for the picture.  Joseph requested a gun for the picture and Sydney, Cole and Ella wanted horses.

Back at home that afternoon they were entertaining themselves in the kitchen while dinner was being prepared.

Rich and I went to the Chargers game on November 9th for a fun night out.  It is too bad that they lost again but it was a good game until the end, and actually, due to Rich having to drive to Bakersfield that night, we ended up leaving in the 4th quarter before they started losing so everything that we saw was a good game. Thanks to Nani for babysitting and for putting up with Ella's MAJOR meltdown about the sock in the bathtub!!

Is it a Ninja or Joseph?  It has seriously been so awesome watching him and Ella keep themselves so busy with so little here in the condo.  Every day we are cutting, stapling, taping, drawing numerous times!  

Ella and Julia wanted their picture taken after I took Joseph's.

Watching Joseph at baseball practice.  It was a little chilly this afternoon! Since all of our things are still in our house in Texas we've been thankful for hand me downs from Rich's co-worker's daughter and from Sydney and Cole.

On Veteran's Day, Rich had to work, unfortunately, but he did send me this picture from a run he took that day.  This flag is at the top of a mountain that we can see from our condo and sure enough he ran to to the top to see it.

The view from the top

We talked about wearing red, white and blue to the Veteran's Day parade and Ella took it literally wanting to incorporate every one of the colors....well, except for the sock, of course!  Big, almost 3 year old here!  

And, then she changed before it was time to go so she ended up in purple with a pink and brown skirt, but still with the sock.  She is so spunky!

Watching the parade!

They both sat like this for the entire parade.

Back at the safari park on November 12th.  Julia was so happy to get out and walk with the big girls and they are so cute with her.

Robert, the interactive zebra, is such a hit with the kids.

Another creation on November 13th.  Talk about tape!

And, a few days later they created a ball game where they had to get the ball through the ring that we made out of Costco box.  

Fun in the sand on November 16th, at one of our favorite parks-it is about a mile away from us and Joseph rides his bike and I run/walk with the girls.  Joseph mastered the monkey bars here last month!

Looking forward to kicking off the holidays during the second half of the month!