Our Little Thomas Edison Turns EIGHT!

Hudson turned 8 on March 1st! I can't believe Joel and I have been parents for 8 years. It still literally feels like yesterday that he was born.

 

His class had their "Living Museum" presentations on his birthday, so for Hudson, that was extra fun! He picked Thomas Edison, which turned out to be perfect for him. I think he and Thomas Edison would have been great friends! They definitely have similar "engineer" brains! Ha! Hudson did all the research though which included reading multiple books, wrote a 2 page paper, and wrote a speech. It was a lot of work for him.

 

On the day of his birthday, he was up bright and early and ready to be Thomas Edison for the day! We even sprayed his hair gray although you can't really tell in the picture below.

 

 

He had a donut tower for breakfast...this was all I could come up with. Joel was out of town and having to get everyone ready that morning to drive carpool was pretty much chaos. But, we did sing to him and let him blow out the candle! He opened one present too!

 

Parents were invited to attend the Living Museum and watch the kids do their speeches. It was great! I was SO proud of Hudson! His speech was hilarious and he had so much inflection in his voice while he was saying it that it was just perfect! All of the kids did great! I definitely learned a lot about some famous Americans!

When we got home that evening, Hudson begged to open another gift! Joel didn't want him opening everything without him being home, but I just couldn't say no when he wanted to open "just one more!" We ended up celebrating the big 8 for several days!

The Reed's took the boys and me to Johnny Rockets that night. It's sort of turned into a birthday tradition. They love that place! Anna and Lilla joined us too, so that was extra fun!

 Joel got home the next day, so we celebrated that night again with more gifts, open house at school, pizza, and cake!

 This is a little hard to read, but one of my favorites from open house! I love the little picture too!

 The birthday boy requested strawberry cake! I'm glad he doesn't care a lick about it being pink...he wanted what he wanted!

 

Happy Birthday sweet Hudson! We are so proud of the big boy you are becoming!!!

Stone Mountain Weekend

Hudson decided this year for his birthday that he wanted to go somewhere as a family instead of having a party. I love it when he makes these decisions! :) We could not go far because I couldn't miss too much work and Joel had to leave to drive to Virginia from wherever we went that weekend, so we decided that Stone Mountain right outside of Atlanta would be a fun little weekend getaway.

 

We got over there Friday afternoon and went straight to Snow Mountain. This was so fun! We had 2 hours to go tubing as much as we wanted. It was not crowded at all, so honestly we did not make it the full 2 hours. Our buddies were there too and enjoyed Snow Mountain with us!

 

 I thought this was a neat view riding up the incline to the top of the snow mountain.

 They also had a little snow area where the kids could play in the snow. I was prepared for this and brought the kids gloves, however, they got left in the car. Fail. It did not stop the kids though! Their hands were blue when we left!

It was actually pretty remarkable to me that they were able to keep the snow frozen. On that particular day, it was 70 degrees and sunny outside!

 We checked into our hotel, the Marriott at Stone Mountain, later that evening and the boys immediately wanted to go swimming. By the way, this hotel was awesome! Our kids get pretty pumped about staying in hotels in general, and the fact that this one had an outdoor AND an indoor pool blew their minds! Ha! The outdoor pool was NOT heated by the way. We have crazies on our hands!

It was so pretty that night!

While the kids were swimming, Joel and I were sipping on cocktails by the fire pit trying to stay warm!

It was supposed to rain for a few hours the next day, so we got up and went on a quick little hike before the rain got there.

It started raining as we finished, so we went back to our hotel because the kids wanted to try out the indoor pool this time. It ended up working out perfectly. The boys swam while it rained and then we grabbed lunch at the golf course at Stone Mountain, and by the time we finished, the sun was starting to come out. We headed to hike up to the top of Stone Mountain.

This hike was tough. I think it's only a mile or so up to the top, but since it had rained, it was super slippery. People were busting all over the place. We had to be extremely careful.

I'm not going to lie, the last little bit is straight up and it was hard! This is Harrison and I taking a break. We weren't even to the real top yet!

We finally made it!

It was a fun hike for sure. I was proud of little Harrison for making it. Going down was a lot easier though!

After the hike, we headed to see a little 3D Yogi Bear movie. It was really cute! The boys loved it.

Then we went and played mini golf!

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the park. This was a really neat water wheel!

The boys swam yet again that night. I think they spent a little more time in the hot tub because it was literally freezing, but they weren't the only crazy ones out there. We ordered a pizza from the hotel restaurant and watched a movie. The boys were exhausted! We had a fun day.

The next morning we ate a big breakfast and then headed to take the Sky Ride up the top of Stone Mountain. It was neat getting to the top this way! I'm glad we hiked up too though. This was the view looking down on Snow Mountain.

After spending a little bit at the top, we headed back down, said our goodbyes to Joel for 2 weeks, let the boys go buy something, and then started our drive back to Birmingham. It was such a fun little getaway weekend!