Birthday Party Filled Weekend

We had a super busy weekend. First of all, Hudson had to write his first apology note to Big Momma for breaking her window...her stained glass window to be exact. You know, the one that was CUSTOM made. And it is costing us a small fortune to have fixed. We are grateful though to have found someone to fix it because most of the people we called said they would have to replace the whole thing, which would have really cost us a fortune.

My mom came into town Thursday and we kept Morgan Thursday night, which was really fun. We've seen a lot of Morgan lately and it has been awesome! Friday, we went swimming at Old Overton and then mom decided all on her own that we should go to Chuck E Cheese! I had actually been wanting to go, but not by myself so I was glad she wanted to do this. It was a huge hit. We went to the one on 280, which is pretty new, so it was very clean, the pizza was decent, and was not expensive at all. The kids had a blast!

 

Saturday morning started with Ella's 5th birthday at The Egg & I. It was a pajama party and they ate pancakes and had a magician. It was so cute! Hudson is still talking about how they made the rabbit appear.

 



 

 We had some errands to run, which included haircuts and then we went and saw Mama Jean. She's at Lakeshore right now getting some rehab. The boys were really, really sweet with her and gave her a lot of attention.

 After naps, we headed to the Barons game for Cooper's 5th birthday party. We have been wanting to get out there this year, but had not made it yet. We had a blast! Of course all Harrison wanted to do was the jumpies and slides! I did not see one pitch of the game, nor could I tell you who was winning when we left, but I know we all had a good time regardless!

Hudson literally ran laps in the grass, wrestled, and played the entire night with his buddies. I have never seen a kid so tired (and so sweaty!). And by the way, if you are planning a birthday party at the Barons game, the cupcakes are Dreamcakes. It was worth the trip just for the cupcake! Ha!

 Right after the picture below, it started raining and we RAN out as fast as we could! Ha! We were pretty soaked by the time we got to the car. What a fun night it was though!

 And now we are here...

 In paradise!

I brought the boys down yesterday and we are having some mommy/son time for a few days before Joel gets here for the long weekend. We are SO glad to be here. The trip down was surprisingly easy even though the boys only slept from Clanton to Montgomery (about 30 minutes!). They were troopers!

We started the day out today with a trip down to Alys Beach for some donuts!

 

Excited for a fun week!

Moving, Father's Day, and a Gender Reveal!

Where to begin...well, two weeks ago, we moved out of our house that we had lived in for over 7 years. We brought two babies into that house. It was a great house, lots of space, one we thought when we bought it that we would be in forever. Ha! Funny how life does that to you. I was fully expecting to be sad when it was all said and done, but I was so not. Actually, I was really surprised at how non-attached I was, which totally reaffirmed our decision to move! I was just ready to move on and so was Joel! And we really have not looked back. The boys have taken the adjustment right in stride. We seriously have the best two little boys in the world (and I am still saying that after a certain 5 year old kicked in a window at my parent's house this morning after throwing a fit because I turned the TV off!).

 

After looking at houses for a couple of months with no luck (well we did have one under contract, but found out it had mold in the inspection so we walked), we moved in with my parents. The following Monday we found a house! And it was not on the market, so there wasn't any competing, no going above asking price, no having to make split second decisions, and it is not a teeny tiny house that needs a complete overhaul--woo hoo! It really is the perfect house for us and we are SO anxious to get in it and be settled! And we are thankful that we were patient through the process. It was stressful at times, and having our rowdy family of 4 move in with my parents in their little garden home is not necessarily ideal (even though they jumped ship and we have the house to ourselves!), but we will survive it!  

 

The move took two full days. It was hot, and exhausting. And clearly we have accumulated way too much stuff over these past 7 years. Everything is in storage right now and we are really enjoying living with less. We had the moving truck come Saturday and at 8 pm Saturday night, they took a final truck load. We just decided we would handle the rest at that point. It took all day Sunday. On Father's Day unfortunately. I'm quite certain it will not go down in history as one of the best Father's Days Joel has ever had!

 

We did manage to have dinner with the boys at the Reed's that night. We were thankful that my mom handled the boys on Saturday, and his parents handled them Sunday.

 

 With all the moving talk, Hudson loaded up all the furniture in my old doll house at my parent's house and put it on the "moving truck" and put it all in "storage" under the chair. Too funny!

 So we put the contract on the new house on Monday, heard back that they accepted it Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Carrie and Andres were coming into town for her best friend's wedding. Which meant mom and dad came back in town too, and our little family of 4 was kindly asked to relocate to the Reed's for the long weekend. :) We knew this going into it, but packing bags again was such a pain!

Since Carrie and Andres were coming into town, right about the time she was 20 weeks pregnant, she decided to wait and find out the gender with all of us! We were so happy she did this! She sent me this envelope a week before she got in town with the results. I'm not quite sure why she trusted me with this sensitive information (I am the queen of snooping!), but I was good and did not look. And she had like tripled enveloped it so you couldn't see through it or open it unless you wanted to open all of them! I didn't want to get in trouble! Ha!

 She invited all of the family over for dinner and asked everyone to wear pink or blue.

 Of course the majority of us wore pink. Morgan was the last girl born and that was 11 years ago! It was high time for another girl!

 And the blue team...mom couldn't decide so she wore pink AND blue.

 Carrie was so sweet and let Hudson sit in her lap for the reveal. He felt so included! He really wanted a girl cousin!

 Andres skyped with his family, who also had a cake to cut into! I thought that was such a good idea to include both the families.

 It's a GIRL!!!!!!!!!

 Harrison was super excited too!

 We cannot wait for this baby girl to join the family in early November. Carrie has had a really tough few years and has been very patiently waiting on this baby for quite some time now, so this is a really happy time for our entire family! I'm seeing lots of trips to Cali for me in the near future! Carrie always said she wanted to be the crazy aunt in California, so now I get to be the crazy aunt from Alabama!

 That was Thursday night. On Friday, I was off work and the boys and I went to the zoo. Life has been so crazy lately that we haven't had a whole lot of time to just have fun with the boys and do what they wanted to do. The zoo is one of our happy places! We had a great time and finished it off with a long time spent at the splash pad to cool off!

 The boys literally took 4 hour naps Friday afternoon. They were worn out. Joel and I took naps too...every day this past weekend! It was glorious!

Saturday, we decided we would try out the new Red Mountain Park and go on a hike. Not sure what we were thinking with the heat, but we had a fun time. The boys (the 3 of them) love them some woods. All I could think about was please don't step on a snake. :)

 After looonng naps again, we went to La Paz for dinner and then came back and caught lightning bugs in the back yard. So fun and such a summer thing to do!

We very much enjoyed our weekend of no agenda. It's been a while since that has happened! We focused on having fun and sleeping a lot! Now we are back and settled at my parent's house and counting down the days until we move again, hopefully, for the last time EVER! Moving stinks!

So there's life over the past couple of weeks!

Just a Little Update on Life

It is sad that I have not done one single update since Disney World. We have been SO busy though. We are moving on Saturday! You sure wouldn't know it if you came to our house though. Wow, we have a lot to do. And I'm sitting here blogging. It's a lot more fun than packing. Plus, I'm not all that excited about moving. Well, I was excited about moving to our perfect dream house in our dream location, but as it turns out, it doesn't exist. So, we are moving in with my parents instead! For now. Very temporarily...I hope. :) Thankfully, they are using our moving in with them as an excuse to go live in Mentone for a while! It's a win win! Ha!

 

So anyway, here's an update on the past month or so....

 

After we got back from Disney World, the following Monday I had to go to Vegas for a week for a conference. It was an ok conference, but we had a fun time while we were there and even went and saw One (the Michael Jackson show). I was so glad to be home at the end of the week though. Two weeks gone was enough!

 

T-ball ended with their best game yet. Isn't it sad that the season always ends when they finally start to "get it"? It was a great year and Hudson really liked it.

 

 We had a little team party after our last game.

 Coach Tim saved a game ball from each game and gave one to each kid. It was so special! And of course Hudson was thrilled to have earned his 4th trophy! I'm not sure how he does it, but somehow each trophy ends up in his pillow case nightly. How does one sleep with trophies in their pillow? I have no idea.

 Sweet buddies!

My friend Megan and I played in the Vestavia Country Club Member/Guest tennis tournament and we won it! Megan and I grew up playing sports so it was fun to get together again...we've still got it! I could not move the next day, however! Ha!

We went to the lake for Memorial Day weekend. The guys worked all weekend on the farm, so there wasn't a whole lot of play time, but we did squeeze in a little swimming.

 The boys loved swimming under the dock to the other side. I would never do that...you know that's where all the snakes live! :)

 We found a puppy on the farm! His name is Sam and he's currently living with the Reed's. He's a german shepard mix and is SO cute. It is really a shame that someone would just dump this little guy. I think he lucked out though!

 Harrison rode all over the farm on the 4 wheeler. He was in heaven!

 I realized that most of these pictures are of Harrison. Well, I hardly saw Hudson. He was always off doing something! I had a glimpse of life of when he's 12 I think. Not sure I like it!

 Then he came back to age 5 and here he is with his helmet on riding home. We are all about safety first!

 We've had a lot (I mean, A LOT) of nights looking at houses, therefore, lots of trips to the grandparents for these guys. They have been troopers so far. We are thankful for our village.

 We had a garage sale and I was pretty bummed that my old Justin Timberlake bobblehead didn't sell. Ha! Actually, I found this while we were going through stuff that day and decided to hold it back for a dirty Santa party or something like that. Actually, I checked Ebay first to see how much it was worth because clearly it is a collectible, but these one of a kind special edition bobblehead was only worth about $10. Bummer. Unfortunately, I dropped it and it broke in a million pieces. Sorry Justin.

 Vodka and diaper boxes...story of my life! Ha! I thought it was pretty ironic that Hudson picked these two boxes to play with! He has been such a sweet helper. I'm not sure he really realizes that we are leaving this house forever.

 Check out Harrison's form! He's going to be a baller I think. We've been playing a lot of basketball lately. We might have to try it for Hudson in the fall/winter!

 Saturday we went to Home Depot. On the first Saturday of every month, they have a kids day and they build something. This weekend it was a riding tractor. The boys loved it! And that is my niece Morgan, who we were watching that morning. We sure were happy to have some extra hands around!

 And we had to visit Coach Mike! He is the kids' Playball instructor at school and they just love him!

On Sunday, baby Nolan got baptized at church! I wish I had taken a picture of that sweet baby, but I didn't. He was well loved on though! We had lunch at Gail and Ted's afterwards and I tried to get a picture of the boys in front of their pretty flowers. It turned out really well. Ha!

So there's life over the past month! Once we get this weekend over with, Carrie is coming into town the next weekend (and I will have some very exciting news to share!!!), and then hopefully we can slip off to the beach at some point! We could definitely use some vacation! Oh and maybe at some point we will buy our dream house before my parents kick us out. :)