September Update

September was filled with extracurricular activities! We were super busy all of the time. Harrison played fall ball in the 6 year old coach pitch league. He did great and hit lots of home runs. It was exciting!

 

Hudson got his 3rd grade Bible at church. It was a special day.

 More baseball. Both boys were fun to watch this fall!

 I got to sneak away for a little weekend at the beach and it was glorious!!!

 

Harrison played flag football this fall in addition to baseball. It made for a crazy schedule for him, but he LOVED it. His team went undefeated! They were the Vikings and each week, one player got the "Viking of the Week" award. Harrison scored a touchdown and pulled several flags on his week. He was so excited.

Hudson is doing Cub Scouts again this year and one weekend, Joel and Hudson had a camp out in Mentone. We got up there in time to eat lunch at The Wildflower before Joel and Hudson headed to the camp out, and Harrison and I went to hang with Big Mama and Big Daddy at the cabin for a night! Win win for all!!!

 Lilla won for biggest cheerleader this fall!

Hudson had several friends this year play tackle football and so we went and watched a game. His best buddy Wyatt was there too and they had on matching Cam jerseys! Of course now Hudson wants to play tackle football, but that's a battle we'll fight another day!

Harrison had a very special Mystery Reader one day...his big brother! What a fun time we all had! Hudson did a great job reading to the Kindergarteners!

August and Labor Day

I'm going to try to play catch up during Christmas break. We've done so many fun things recently that I need to get this up to date so I can post our holiday activities!

 

Anyway, back in August when it was blazing HOT, baseball started and my big boy took the mound for the first time. Kid pitch was interesting to say the least and we had a lot of bumps and bruises from getting hit with balls, but Hudson enjoyed it.

 

We went out to Oak Mountain one day to try out the bike park. The boys loved it!

Harrison really couldn't even ride a bike without training wheels, but was up and going over the small hills. We were pretty shocked to say the least. He just seems to catch on to things really quickly!

We watched the solar eclipse! It was a whole lot of hype for nothing to me, but I did learn that Hudson is a lover of all things science and while I did not let him skip school to potentially burn his eyes watching the eclipse, he was ALL into it and enjoyed watching at school. I did bring home the special glasses and they thought just wearing them was cool! Hudson is already talking about the next one and how he's definitely missing school for it!  

 

 

We spent Labor Day at the cabin with my parents and Carrie and Rooney. We had such a good time, none of us wanted to leave!

 

Dad surprised the kids with an Auburn mask and they thought it was the greatest thing in the world. He was pretty pumped about his Walmart find. Ha!

Look at those happy kids!

We headed to the lake for one day and rode the boat, did a little hot dogging, and rode all over the farm in the gator. Boys dream!

I decided on the boat ride that I would try to take a selfie with Chloe because she was being so sweet and clinging to me all day. Well, little did I know that she would pass away 2 days later. So, this is the last picture we have of our first fur baby. We miss her like crazy and it was a very sad time for all of us. We still don't know what happened, but the vet thinks it was some sort of brain bleed. She's buried in her happy place at the cabin and we'll remember her always!

We came home from Labor Day weekend and promptly bought Harrison a spanking spoon that he happily painted. We were having some behavior issues with him and just chalked it up to a lot of change (house, school, etc.), but as it turns out, it was an ear infection that he had for probably 6 weeks. Whoops! Soon as we got that cleared up, he was back to happy Harrison!

Back to School!

The baby headed off to Kindergarten this fall! He was SO ready (academically) to be in Kindergarten, but so not excited about actually going. The PTO puts these cute superhero capes on all the new Kindergartener's mailboxes a few days before school and I thought this would be the thing that got Harrison excited, but man, this picture below is the result of a major bribe. He did not even want to get out of the car to get the cape, and threw a big fit! 

 

We had a back to school dinner at Joel's parent's house and his Aunt Gail made the cutest cookies!

Hudson started 3rd grade this year! He was so excited to FINALLY have buddies in his class this year.

He got Ms. Pennington for 3rd grade and to be honest, this was the one teacher I was hoping to avoid. Doesn't that always happen?!!? Well, I'm truly eating my words because this is one of the BEST teachers we have had to date and Hudson just loves her. It has been such a great year so far!

Harrison got Mrs. Chavers for kindergarten and had several buddies in his class too. For that, I was thankful because there are 11 kindergarten classes I think, so to have buddies was HUGE. He was a lot more excited after Meet the Teacher day. I think he just had some nerves!

Harrison was invited to a little kindergarten get together right after he met his teacher. It was good for him to meet up with some friends that would all be starting together the next day.

 

And then it was finally his turn! All smiles!

 

 I'm so thankful that he has one year at this school with his big brother. Hudson took Harrison to his class for at least the first week until he got the hang of it. He was so sweet!

With Hudson, I remember going through the carpool line on his first day and basically throwing him out the door when we pulled up. It was pretty terrible. All I remember is him looking back at me helpless because he didn't know where to go, and I was forced to drive on! Bad memories! So, with Harrison, I walked him to the door on the first day and said our goodbyes. That was much better!

Harrison had a great first day and has loved Kindergarten ever since! I knew he would. Now if we can just get him to start showing some self control in class, we'd be doing really good! :)

The Rest of July and a New House!

I don't have many pictures from the rest of July because on a whim, Joel and I decided to put our house on the market, and it sold that day! And we closed 3 weeks later! There's not a whole lot I remember about July. It was a whirlwind.

 

Finding a new house proved to be difficult. And, it was made even more difficult due to the fact that we couldn't just move into an apartment for the time being because there really aren't any decent ones in our school district. There were a few stressful weeks trying to figure out what to do and in the end, the easiest thing to do was to move in with Joel's parents because they were zoned for our school. There was really nothing on the market that we were interested in at the time. We decided that we weren't going to settle for just anything and we would take our time to find the right house this time, in the neighborhood we wanted.

 

Some of our friends alerted us to a few houses in the neighborhood that potentially may be looking to sell, and so we put some letters in mailboxes to see if we could get any hits. We actually had a couple of calls and one of them worked out! We ended up putting that letter in the mailbox at the perfect time. The previous owners had built the house and actually passed away (they were in their 80s) 6 months apart from each other, and the son was putting the house on the market with an agent the next week. We convinced him to sell us the house without an agent and he took the agent fee out of the price, and we think we got a great deal! It definitely needed a lot of TLC - it had not been renovated since it was built in the 1980s I don't think! But, the bones were good and we could see ourselves there! We have never met sweeter people that we bought this house from, and it's a home that has been well loved for a long time. There are even bible verses written in between the walls when the house was built! We really think it was meant to be ours. So anyway, here is our project house (before anything had been done!):



 

We are currently mid-renovation. I was hoping we would be in the house by Christmas, but it's not looking so hot. I still have a sliver of hope though. We moved some walls around, new kitchen, new bathroom, new flooring and paint everywhere, added a dormer window to the front of the house and are going to paint the outside of the house too. It's been a lot of work, but I know it will be so worth it in the end! 

 

Below are some pictures from the rest of July. Clearly, we did not do a whole lot but pack up the house, and nobody wants to see that mess! :)

 

 These pictures are from the 4th of July. We shot fireworks with some friends that night!

We also watched Thunder on the Mountain late that night! Oh and unbeknownst to us, right next to that golf cart below was a copperhead! Eeekkkk!!!!

 

The people buying our house literally brought a thousand people over to the house to give them estimates throughout the inspection period and prior to close (it got SO ridiculous!!), but it did give us some time to make early morning runs to get donuts while we had people in the house! There's a bright side to everything!

 Joel's cousin is a firefighter in Vestavia and brought over the emergency vehicle one night when we were all having dinner. It was such a fun, impromptu visit, and the kids loved it. Thank you John!

 Boys in stripes are always cute! :)

Poor Harrison never gets any play dates, so we did venture out to the zoo one hot July day with his buddy David. We had such a fun afternoon and ended up in the splash pad because it was way too hot!

 More swimming to end our summer!

Back to school post coming next! And more house updates to come as well!

Camp Winnataska

A couple of days after we got back from the Grand Hotel, Hudson headed off for his second year at Camp Winnataska! He was SO excited! This year, his buddy Wyatt joined him and they had a bunch of other buddies in their cabin so it was super fun.

 

Camp Winnataska is still the hottest place on earth, but the kids didn't seem to notice nearly as badly as the adults. Whew...not sure how they do it, but there was some rain while they were there so I can only hope that cooled things off a bit!

 

Drop off went well! Hudson was ready for me to leave in about 5 minutes! It was much easier to leave the second time around, and thankfully, it was easier while he was gone too. Not that I didn't miss him, but I think I knew more about what to expect. However, Hudson definitely avoided the camera this year because he was only in a couple of camp pictures. Last year, he was in so many! Oh well, I knew he was having fun so it didn't matter as much!

 Harrison can't wait until it is his turn to go!

 All of these boys are Vestavia boys. I love for Hudson to make friends at camp that aren't from where we live, but it is nice to know that he has familiar faces to be around as well!

So, letters home from camp are one of THE BEST things about camp! Hudson only went for 3 nights this year (next year is full week), so our letters home actually didn't arrive until after I had picked him up, so he did warn me about this one before I actually saw it (which sort of makes it funnier because he felt bad!). I thought I read somewhere that letters only were to be given the first full day, and then care packages the second full day. I still think that's right, but clearly the other parents aren't like this rule abiding parent and sent their kids care packages the first day and Hudson only got a letter from me. This was what he wrote:

"Dear Mom, Why didn't you get me anything from the camp store. From Hudson."

Well...glad to know I was missed! :)

And then he got his big ole' care package the next day with lots of goodies and all was right in the world. But, he must have hated me for a whole day! Live and learn!

He did send another letter too (I was shocked I got two!) and it was really sweet and I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. He was definitely having a good time though.

He can't wait for next year. I'm glad to know that he loves camp. I think it's good for him to spend some time away from home having new adventures! The homecoming is always pretty sweet too!