We took a ride down to our beach house in Florida to spend a few days before Thanksgiving. It's such a great time to be there...it's not hot but also not cold, there are hardly any crowds but most places haven't completely shut down for the winter yet, and bonus - the outlet mall starts it's Black Friday sales the weekend before so we can knock out some good Christmas shopping.

We're getting pretty good at the drive down there. What we've found works best is to pick the kids up from school/daycare, have a quick dinner, give them baths and put them in pjs, and then hit the road. They usually watch a movie and then are sound asleep until we get to the hotel that's about 2/3 of the way there. They get a little bit riled up when we get to the hotel but within an hour we're all settled down and in bed asleep.

We take our time in the morning getting ready and enjoying breakfast at the hotel. We've even been known to take a dip in the indoor pool before hitting the road. With just three hours left in our drive, we usually roll into town just in time for lunch. This trip was no exception. We stopped in Seaside at Bud & Ally's Pizza and the weather was PERFECT. We sat outside on their patio and had a delicious lunch.

It was a great day to walk around and enjoy the little town.

On vacation, we have ice cream by the pool before taking a nap!

Now, for me, the highlight of this quick trip was the next morning when Mom and I took the kids to Fired Up Seaside to paint some pottery. The guys were playing golf and it was slightly overcast so it seemed like a good way to spend the morning. We were thrilled to have the place to ourselves! I had never done anything like this before and it was right up my alley. I would even go back without the kids somtime! :)

First we had to paint the backgrounds of our pieces three times, drying it with the hairdryer in between coats.

I picked them each a design that was kid-friendly so they could do most of it themselves. For Katie Wynn's platter, we made our family into reindeer using our thumb prints. It was a good thing we had the place to ourselves since Thomas screamed through me dipping his thumb in the paint. Poor guy doesn't like having his hands dirty.

Thomas just had to fill the bottom of his Christmas tree bowl with paint chips that would get melted down once it was fired.

I helped Katie Wynn with the details on the reindeer, but she really did a lot of it herself. She did so great! Later she and I alternated doing polka dots around the edge.

Both kids were proud of their pieces! And I was proud of them!

Here are their pieces before and after going into the kiln and being glazed. I LOVE them and am so excited to have them out every Christmas!

On this trip, we only spent a total of about 15 minutes at the beach.

Other than a pretty full day of shopping, I honestly don't know where the rest of our time on this trip went. It always seems to fly right by! At some point we went swimming...

...and my favorite people did some pretty cute hand holding.

We woke up to a cold snap on our last day there so it was a good thing we had packed our cozy sweatshirts!

Thomas rocked the static look on our journey back home.

Every trip to and from our beach house, we pass this really cool old school house. At least, that's what I call it. I have no idea what it originally was. And every time I ooh and ahh over it and say I want to move it to our town. When we passed it on our drive home, I said, "One of these days I want to stop and look at that building." Matt said, "Why not now?" And so we turned around and did just that. Mark my words, this will be mine one day. (In my dreams, anyway.)

I am so glad we stopped because it is so much cooler and so much BIGGER in person than when just whizzing past in your car. And, it's actually still in use. Some men's prayer group uses it weekly, or at least that's how I interpreted their sign. The doors all have new locks on them (yep, I tried to go in). And because of how it's built up, the windows are way too high to see into. I was able to sit on Matt's shoulders and see inside the windows on the far left (around the corner in the picture above). Gah! I seriously LOVE this building!!

So now I spend a lot of time daydreaming about where I would put the building and what I would do about it. Of course, there are small details to work out like who I could buy it from, how much it would cost, and how the heck I'd move it approximately seven hours away. Like I said, small details. Anyone ever move a building before? How much does that cost? I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of the sign so I could look up some contact info...

We made it back in time for Thanksgiving. I'll be writing an update on the rest of our month of November next!