February

February was a really happy month for us--we finally moved into our house that we had been renovating for 6 months!

 

This was the before on the outside...

 

The after!

We LOVE the house. It's perfect for us and fits our needs and wants so much more than before. I could go on and on about the neighborhood too. Our boys come home from school and play with the neighbors until dark most nights. A lot of nights we have extras for dinner too! You just never know. This is the reason why we moved though and it's been great. The inside is still a work in progress. Maybe I'll do an inside tour at some point!

On moving day, the boys ran in the Mercedes Kids Marathon. This is one of Hudson's favorite things to do and Harrison finally go to experience it this year. Both boys crushed the race and finished in times that I thought were pretty ridiculous for kindergarten and 3rd graders! I can't remember the exact times, but Hudson was in the low 7's and Harrison was right at 8 minutes. I can't run a mile that fast!

 I didn't mention that it was pouring down rain! What a great moving day it was too! Yuck!

We celebrated Valentine's Day! Parties with both classes...

 Hudson had a big Pioneer Day project due in February...this was the picture that was on the cover of his project...

Hudson got his braces off! Woo hoo!!! He looks so good. Braces were NO big deal at all for this boy. Never complained one bit. I'm so glad we went ahead and fixed some issues that he had. Of course, round 2 will come in a few years, but hopefully won't be too bad!

 They had Pioneer Days at school, which was such a fun day to wrap up their big project and studies.

 And of course baseball got started...

It was a good month!

January

I'm working on catching up! January was filled with basketball for both boys, birthday parties, and a cub scout night on the battleship in Mobile.

 

Hudson was matched up against this sweet child that was probably twice the size of Hudson. They were trying to psych each other out before the game started and we were getting a pretty big laugh out of it! I'm happy to say that speed won out and Hudson dominated! :)

 

Harrison is a total animal on the court too. I felt bad for any child matched up against him. He is so calm and sweet most of the time, but on the basketball court he turns into crazy. Hands up all the time and moving all over the place. He loves basketball just like Hudson. They are both fun to watch.

Poor girl didn't stand a chance!

 Our elementary school had their annual bowling fundraiser and most of our boys and husbands had gone down to Mobile for the night to sleep on the battleship with the cub scouts, so we got us a girls team together and had so much fun! We weren't so great at bowling, but we did make it to the championship! There were only 2 girls teams haha! :)

Sleepy headed boys at sunrise on the battleship! They didn't get much sleep and were on the road back to Birmingham by 7 am! They had so much fun though and it was a neat experience!

 

More basketball...

 

We celebrated Joel's birthday!

 And Lilla's 2nd birthday!

Peach Bowl

When Hudson found out Auburn was going to the Peach Bowl, he started asking if we could go. He even went so far as to ask Big Daddy (my dad) if he would buy us tickets...like we can't buy our own, but oh well! Haha. Well, Big Daddy is a big sucker when it comes to his kids and grandkids and the grandkids' big surprise at Christmas was tickets to the Peach Bowl. Of course Hudson was down for the count sick and missed the big surprise, but he was looking forward to being better in time to go.

 

The game was early on New Year's Day so we had gotten a hotel room in Atlanta the night before to make a little mini trip out of it. We had taken Hudson to the doctor as soon as we could the day after Christmas (Tuesday maybe?) and they tested him for everything and nothing came back positive so we were told it was probably just a virus. Then, we went back on Friday when things weren't improving and he got a chest xray this time, which revealed pneumonia, probably because he had not been out of the bed since Sunday! We were happy because that meant an antibiotic could treat it and that hopefully he would still be able to go to Atlanta the following Sunday. Well, Sunday came and the fever was STILL at 102...I had wanted to just scrap the whole trip because it wasn't fair that Hudson was really the one that was begging to go and if he couldn't go, we wouldn't have fun...and then we decided we would just take him and he could stick it out...and then we decided we needed to leave him. There were LOTS of tears from all parties. I know, I know, over a football game...but it was so sad for him and that made my mama heart sad. It was hard to leave him, but Joel quickly reminded me that we do have another child and it wouldn't be fair to HIM if we didn't go. And he was exactly right.

 

So Harrison got to go with us and we really did have a fun time. It's amazing how different our kids are when they get some alone time with mom and dad! We had fun spoiling that little monster for a day!

 

We met my parents and Trey, Shondra and Morgan at dinner on New Year's Eve in Atlanta. We had a fabulous dinner and I was definitely happy that we did not scrap the trip. We needed that little getaway, as short as it was! We had literally not left the house in 7 days by that point except to go to the doctor!

 Look at this painted dog!!!!

Morgan had to get a picture with him!

 We determined that we REALLY made the right decision to leave Hudson behind when it was time to go into the game. The day was FREEZING. Like 10 degrees with a wind chill. It was ridiculous. Dad had bought us these awesome parking spots right next to the stadium so we parked super close to the Mercedes stadium, however, everyone entering the stadium had to go through metal detectors, which meant standing in a mosh pit of people for 45 minutes in the freezing cold. We were miserable.

 None of us could feel our bodies when we finally got inside the stadium. It really took a bit for the numbness to wear off, but we were so thankful to have finally made it inside and to our seats! The stadium was amazing!

 I had a fun time with my littlest buddy!

The game itself was not so great, but the experience was fun! That was until we got almost out of Atlanta and Harrison asked where his BRAND NEW 7 day old Ipad was...and we realized it had gotten left in the hotel. We immediately changed courses and headed back to the hotel and of course, no one had seen an ipad, even though the room had been cleaned. Yeah right...I really just lose all faith in humans when this kind of thing happens. Fortunately for us, the manager of the hotel was able to reimburse us for the cost of the ipad, so I was very thankful that they did the right thing.

Christmas 2017

We started on Christmas Eve Eve with the Reed's. Since we were living with the Reed's at the time, the boys had been so anxious to open all their gifts! They couldn't hardly stand it. We had a great dinner and then enjoyed gifts.

 

 It's hard getting an almost 2 year old to smile! We tried our best.

 

 Harrison wanted a picture of Sam and Sam was definitely all about it!

 Don't we look cute with a little girl haha?!!? :) Lilla wanted to be a part of our family picture!

 The present opening didn't take long when it looked like this...

I could hardly get them to stop! Harrison asked everyone in the family to get him a nerf gun, so as you can imagine, we now have 10 and I swear I spend half my life picking up nerf bullets! Oh and Harrison got a pack of 500 nerf bullets so there is never a shortage! :)

 Christmas Eve we had lunch at the Birmingham Country Club, which was our annual tradition. That was the very last one though because my parents decided to drop their membership. So sad...but we'll just have to make more memories and start new traditions somewhere else!

 Rooney's dress was amazing!!!

 We went to church that evening and it was wonderful!

 Lilla sat in everyone's lap during the service and made us all so happy!

 We headed to my parent's condo after that and even said on the way there that it was so awesome that we made it through Christmas with no sickness this year...famous last words.

My dad gave us a good laugh when we got there. He's always up to something! And yes, those are icicle lights...LED style.  I wasn't quite sure where we were haha!

 The boys were being so silly and funny...so excited!

That was the last happy picture out of Hudson. About 5 minutes after this was taken, he was laying on the floor with a fever of 103 degrees...that did not leave him for TEN DAYS. We almost had to hospitalize him because it was so bad. So, he went to bed in one of the bedrooms and the rest of us tried to have fun opening presents.

Harrison got a book about needing a new butt! :)

 My parents really spoiled us this year and we were so thankful for that!

Santa found us at the Reed's house this year!

 We had one happy boy...

 And one sick little boy...

He tried to rally, but you can see his rosy cheeks. He was downstairs for about 5 minutes before heading right back up to bed. Christmas as no fun for him.

Harrison got an ipad! He was so excited about it...until he left it in an Atlanta hotel room a week later and it was stolen. Grr!!!!

 And he almost killed us with a new bat.

We were supposed to do other things that day and spend Christmas with the family, but due to Hudson being sick, we were home bound. Which wasn't all that bad, but we did feel so very sorry for him. We were planning to go to Atlanta the next weekend to watch Auburn play in the Peach Bowl, so we kept saying we were glad that he was going to be well by then to go. Ha...little did we know!