Catching Up...Again

The blog continues to die a slow death! I just cannot keep it updated like I used to! Anyway, here's what we have been up to the past few weeks:

 

I had a work trip to Chicago a few weeks ago. We ate some of the best food I have ever had, including this fabulous bacon appetizer at David Burke's Primehouse. My mouth is still watering over this! And the very expensive steak was amazing too. We worked some too, don't worry!

 

 

Our Sunday school class had an ice cream social at Serendipity Sweets. It was such fun! Here are some of the sweet kiddos...

 

Harrison has been riding this tricycle like crazy. Loves it. I believe it is time for him to have a bike! Good thing his birthday is in a couple of weeks!

 For Labor Day weekend, we went up to the cabin for a few days. Fresh mountain air and very little cell phone service makes for one relaxed vacation! Hudson rode his bike in circles for HOURS.

 And Harrison tried to mow him down with the John Deere. Typical Harrison fashion!

 We hiked one day and had a great time, except for the fact that I was terrified of seeing a snake the whole time! It was still a little warm for me to enjoy a good hike!

 Lunch at The Wildflower was a must!

 Of course we had to watch our Auburn Tigers play that afternoon. We are so glad football season is back even though our team hasn't figured that out yet.

 The flag on the mountain as about as flat as our football team, but still a pretty view!

 This was the next morning...

 We went down to the lake on Sunday for the day and of course the boys had to fish again. Joel bought the most disgusting worms (they were small snakes I think!). :)

 The boys hit the jackpot again on the fish and caught a bunch.

 We got one long boat ride in before the boat had some issues and had to be taken out of the water. No hot doggin' this trip! The boys were sad, but we'll have to wait until next summer!

 Crazy hair!

 

Hudson even got to paddle board with Allison! He loved it and she was a rockstar for not falling off with all his moving and shaking!

 

 We went to Nolan's 2nd birthday party on Saturday. It was so cute! It was construction themed and Abbey had gone all out! Our boys loved it. It was such a beautiful day to be outside!

 Yesterday it was back to the baseball field! Hudson is doing fall ball this year and it is the first time to hit from the pitching machine. They practiced for most of the time and then played an inning against the other team and Hudson got a hit! He was so proud of himself! It's definitely an adjustment. I was just happy he made contact with the ball! He sure does look cute!

This little boy told us that his girlfriend's name is Celia and she talks like Fruit Loops. Whatever that means! Ha! We have been proud of this little guy at his new school. He seems to be adjusting nicely and already has some  good buddies. He refuses to take a nap at school and already got his lovey sent home and asked not to return...but they say he is sweet and follows directions and is learning his letters, and he says he has fun everyday, so we are happy! He starts soccer on Thursday and absolutely cannot wait!

Happy Monday! Hopefully I'll be back soon!

It's a Girl! (And it's NOT mine!)

We learned last weekend that it IS possible that a Reed boy can produce a girl! Ha! After 3 Reed boys and then our 2 boys, none of us really thought it could happen! We headed over to the Reed's last Saturday afternoon to find out the news. As you can see, our boys wore blue...however I wore my lucky pink shirt that I wore at Carrie's reveal! Joel wore blue of course too!

 

 We took shots of the family members who thought it was a boy and who thought it was a girl, and the boy group was definitely the winner by a landslide!

 IT'S A GIRL!!!!!

 Anna was thrilled, Jordan was scared to death, and Joel's parents were squealing as loud as can be! Finally some pink in this all blue family!

 We are so excited for them and cannot wait to meet this sweet baby girl in February!

 Hudson has told everyone he knows that he has another cousin on the way. He cannot wait to hold her!

Congrats to Jordan and Anna!

Back to School!

Well the kids are back in school and life is getting back to normal for us! We had a great summer and are excited for a new school year. Last Wednesday, Hudson had "meet the teacher day" at his school. He has Mrs. Dennis for first grade. He was so excited to meet her and walked right up to her, gave her a hug, and said, "I'm just so excited to be here!" And then picked a seat closest to the teacher's desk. Teacher's pet anyone?!?! Ha! He cracked us up, but hey, we are all about first impressions in this family and I would say that was a good one!

 

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Then Thursday was the first day! We decided to have some first day fun and meet at the Kincaid's house where the boys could walk to school on the first day. He was so excited to do that! And I was so excited to not have to sit in the carpool line! :)

 

Hudson was SO mad at the outfit I made him wear on the first day. He is in full on Under Armour mode and looking cute just wasn't "cool." Oh well...we had to look cute the first day! You better believe that Friday he was in Under Armour head to toe!

They were so ready to go! They didn't even look back and hardly said a goodbye. I was planning to walk Hudson to the door, but he told me I didn't need come close to the school. Well, ok then! Glad he is so independent! He had a great first day. Loved every second, and met new friends. His school has 11 first grade classes and while we feel like we know a ton of people in his school, there was only 3 girls and 1 boy that he knew in his class, and no one from his kindergarten class. He's adapted well though and already has a sweet buddy that actually lives in our neighborhood, which is awesome!

 

 Harrison had meet the teacher day on Wednesday as well at his new school, our church. We moved him over there this year which is allowing me to get about an hour back in my day in drive time! It is amazing so far! We were nervous though. We loved his old school. They were great and loved our sweet boys, so it was definitely bittersweet to leave. However, being at the church will allow him to be with kids that will be going to kindergarten with him and that is huge. And it's our church...and the main thing is that is where Hudson goes to after care and I will pick up in one place! Woo hoo!

Here he is on his first day of school, which was Monday! He was so cute.

 He is our shy one, although a lot of people may not know that! He is a lot more clingy and nervous than Hudson. He had a little bit of a hard time letting me go on Monday, but he was a big boy and didn't cry. When I picked him up, he was so happy and said he loved it. I asked him who he sat next to at lunch and he said, "All my girlfriends of course!" I think he's going to be just fine! We are 3 days in now and he's still a little unsure in the mornings, but he's definitely not upset. We love his teachers, Mrs. Nancy and Mrs. Beebe, so I think he's going to have a great year!

Hudson came home with his first homework project and we worked on it this weekend. An "All About Me" poster. He went through our pictures and decided which ones to put on there and then placed him and wrote what they all were. Obviously I helped a bit, but this was his thing! He had so much fun doing it and I was proud of him.

 Backwords letters and all...(obviously we needed to do a little practicing this summer!)

 The scene from my first day driving carpool! Crazy boys! As a side note, this was when we were just about at the school and I let them go ahead and take their seatbelts off so they would be ready!

 Back to school bash on Friday night!

 

So far, so good! Everyone is happy and that's all we can ask for! Happy new school year!

 

One Last Weekend Hurrah!

We decided to do one more weekend getaway on our last weekend before school starts back up. We headed up to the cabin last Thursday afternoon. My parents left me a cookie cake up there so we celebrated my birthday again!

 

 It was actually cool up there Thursday night so we had a fire! It was SO nice!!! We can't wait for fall!

 On Friday, we drove to the middle of nowhere Tennessee and went to Cumberland Caverns. Joel remembered a cave there from his boy scout days and thought the boys might like to see that. It was a bit farther away from the cabin than we had anticipated, but we had a great day!

 Here we are about to go in the cave!

 The tour of the cave was almost 2 hours long. We got there at 1, so Harrison was already starting to fade when we arrived...so imagine 2 hours of walking and listening to our guide talk and it got a little dicey at the end, but we made it! Harrison was totally starting to lose it and had hit crazy, destructive kid mode, so we were pretty glad to get out of there! Ha!

 It was a really neat experience though and something completely different to do. Hudson loved it and asked literally 18 million questions. Our poor guide. :)

 At one point they turned off all the lights inside the cave and you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. It was terrifying and spectacular all at once.

We made it back to the cabin late afternoon and played outside until dark. What a fun, fun day!

 Saturday, we drove the 30 minutes down to the lake to spend the day there. Harrison finally decided that he wanted to ride on the hot dog and he loved it!

 Harrison really wanted to fish, so we found the cane poles and Pops went and got some bait, and we headed out to fish. We all had placed bets as to how long it was going to last. No one with the last name Reed has any patience whatsoever. They sure did look cute!

 Well wouldn't you know it, they both caught fish within 5 minutes of being out there. Hudson caught a huge catfish and Harrison caught a little brim...it happened at the same time and that just made their day!

 Little did we know, we would catch 10 more fish in the span of an hour! It was a good fishing day!

 This might be my favorite picture of the weekend below. You can just see the excitement in Hudson's face! Both boys just LOVED fishing. We will definitely do it again...and hope and pray the fish are biting like they were Saturday!

 And of course my child that isn't afraid of anything loved the worms! Gross!

 Hudson convinced Migi to ride the hot dog with him, which provided some hilarious entertainment. We could have made some money from America's Funniest Home Videos had we videoed her trying to get on the hot dog the first time around. Let's just say it wasn't pretty and she did not make it! Ha! Thankfully she tried again and was good to go! Hudson could not stop laughing the whole ride because he said Migi was screaming the whole time! So funny!

 Hudson also tried to knee board this trip and on his third try he was going pretty good! He lost his balance though and the board hit him in the face and that was the end of that! We were proud of him though!

We headed back up to the cabin that night, and then spent all Sunday morning playing outside. It was a beautiful day. None of us wanted to pack our things up...we just wanted summer to just keep going on!

What a great last weekend of summer we had!

Meet the teacher day is TOMORROW for both boys, and then 1st grade starts on Thursday for Hudson. Harrison will start 3K on Monday. Both boys are super excited to get back to school! And I'm so happy that I don't have a kindergartener this year and have to go through those emotions again! That was hard! This year is good!

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