January 2019

In January we worked really hard and were busy with fun activities as well!  I tried to use every spare minute to unpack us in our new home.  The majority of our things had been packed up in boxes since June!!!!  When we moved into the small rental house in the summer, we decided NOT to unpack anything we didn't have to have.  So I would estimate we left 60-70% of our things packed!  This worked out great when it was time to move again from the rental into our home after construction was complete, but we were so ready to be unpacked and settled after saying "it's packed!" to many requests since June when someone would be looking for something.  We did pretty well actually not unpacking any more than we really needed.  So I spent every spare minute-nap times, early morning, late evenings unpacking!  It was exciting and that's what it took to have the energy to keep it going.  Moving is tough work especially when it's 2 adults with 4 kids trying to unpack!  But it was fun.  Clayton made me laugh time and time again, as we would pull something out of a box he would squeal and say, "OH! REMEMBER THIS THINGY!?" even if he didn't know what it was or even remember it himself!

John was off on New Years Day and of course the big boys were out of school.  We all donned our 2019 hats and went to Let's Play as a special New Year's Day treat!

2019 hats

I never end up with great pics at Let's Play because the kids are on the move...but here was Clayton happily scaling one of the play areas!

Lolly gave the boys chess and checker sets for Christmas, and we have LOVED teaching them to play over Christmas break.

One chilly morning over Christmas break we decided to bundle up and take the gator and princess car on a neighborhood walk.  So fun!  We are like our own little parade! Haha

Clayton likes to "drive" the Gator...and by drive, we actually mean sit in the drivers seat with his hands on the steering wheel while someone from the passenger seat (like Carter) pushes the gas pedal.  He can reach it, he just doesn't like having to push it to make it go! HAHA

This month I realized that the Wade genes have some strong eyebrow genes!  I was looking at this picture I took of Clayton and noticing his eyebrows and how they reminded me of Pop's.  Then I saw a picture of Papaw (Pop's dad) and the eyebrow resemblance is so strong!

Oh, more basketball!  We have been all-consumed with basketball this month.

Dawson practices Mondays. Carter practices Thursdays.  Sometimes there's a Friday practice added in there for Dawson.  Then both boys have games in various locations on Saturday.  We've enjoyed watching them play more competitive basketball this year.  Carter has LOVED the competitiveness of it, and Dawson has become more confident with the more serious and competitive nature of ELAA basketball too!  I'm proud of them for jumping right in!

We officially said goodbye to our Neptune house (the rental).

This house was so funny to us because it reminded us SO much of the very first house John and I ever purchased.  It was on a small little hill, in a culdesac, really just so many similar things.  It was funny because everyone who came to our house -friends and family-without use telling them we thought that, would tell us the same thing.  For this house to have been a little bit of a tight fit for all six of us, we really do have wonderful memories of living here even if it was for a short time.

I asked the kids their favorite things about living in the this house and they said: walking around the neighborhood lake (which we did at least once almost every day-no exaggeration), riding bikes in the flat neighborhood, playing in the culdesac, riding toys down the little hill in the back, having water wars in the backyard when it was so hot, eating dinner on the patio.  For me it is our memories of getting settled into everything new (again) to us in Alabama and discovering all of that together as a family.

And we said hello to our new home!

I hope the kids will remember all the fun things they got to be a part of as we were building this home for our family (I hope to do a post on that eventually), but things like having a pizza party on the slab when it was a million degrees in August and we were so excited to have a slab that we ate dinner there!  Then having another pizza party in the kitchen when the house was only framed in.  Going upstairs before their were walls!  Getting to write their names and Bible verses on the frame of the house-and the boys snuck and wrote "poop" on the concrete slab in the bathroom.

I hope they all remember these things and that all these fun and special memories help make this feel like home to them very quickly!

Since part of our neighborhood is still under construction there are always gravel piles to climb!

During the move I had kind of allowed the kids to fall off the wagon on doing their chores, but now that we are settled chores are back on 100percent.  Clayton even loves doing his chores!  Here he's putting away his laundry (I give a little help on this).

Our first lunch on the patio!  They were pretty pumped!

As we clear out the moving boxes the kids HAVE to play in all of them.

When you get a hoverboard for Christmas, taking the trash to the street gets a lot easier!

Clayton is obsessed with wearing his monkey slippers this month.

SO cute, and I think he looks way to big in the picture for some reason!

We had lunch with Carter at school this month.

And we decided to see what life with seven kids would be like and we invited Henry, Annie, and Ruby over for a sleepover one Friday night.  There was a lot of energy and volume, and the kids had SO much fun! Here are Clayton and Ruby.

All seven kids at dinner.

I baked with the girls.

And then John made balloon animals for all the kids.

Then pajamas and watching a bit of Toy Story.

Annie got to sleep in Nora Kate's room.

Henry in Dawson and Carter's room.

And Ruby in Clayton's room.  She slept in her pack and play and Clayton slept in his bed, but he thought her pack and play was so neat he begged to climb in when he woke up on Saturday morning.

All three boys in this picture had basketball games on Saturday, so we played a little while before it was time for them to go home so everyone could go to their games.

That night we took the kids to their first Huntsville Havoc Hockey game, and they LOVED it!  I couldn't believe that even Clayton was REALLY into it!

We were playing in the playroom one morning, and NK was tickling Clayton and saying, "I'm giving you a Chinese assortment treatment like Grandad!" I thought this was absolutely hilarious-she was obviously meaning Chinese Torture Treatment, but to think she thought Grandad was saying "assortment treatment" just made me laugh.  You can tell Clayton is VERY ticklish!

Just watching it rain one day.

Annie and Ruby came to play one morning.  We polished nails for the girls.

I can't remember if I've every noted this on our blog or not, but last March when John and I came down to Alabama for his interview on the way home we saw a BEAUTIFUL bright, bright rainbow (and, how crazy is this, when we got off the interstate when we got back to Maryville the car right in front of us had a Huntsville, Alabama license plate).  John and I joked that the rainbow and the license plate were signs.  Then when we came down to AL to meet our realtor and see houses it POURED the rain, and we saw another rainbow.  The last night the kids and I slept ever in our Tennessee house it poured down rain and then we saw a full arch rainbow.  The day our movers arrived to our Alabama rental house with our tractor trailer full of boxes, we were headed out to eat dinner and we saw a beautiful rainbow right outside our neighborhood.

WELL, this month (I never think of seeing a rainbow in January) only a few days after moving in our new home, we looked out the playroom window, to see this beautiful rainbow!

(As you can see our neighborhood has lots of construction too)

So this month we had two sick kiddos!  Clayton started coughing terribly and running a fever one night.  We ended up being up most of the night with him.  The next day I took him to the doctor and couldn't believe he had pneumonia! Poor guy.  I've never seen him lay around like he did.  THEN the next day Carter woke up feeling bad, John took him to the doctor for me and he had the flu!  YUCK YUCK YUCK!  Thankfully neither boy shared their germs, but we stayed home for many days while getting through all of this.  They were both good about resting though, and thankfully recovered well!

Dawson on the 100th day of school!

Carter was so sad to miss school on this day because he had the flu.

John and his friend Steven drove up to Nashville one afternoon to watch TN play basketball.

John and I enjoyed a date night!  Mom gave John tickets to Stand Up Live for his birthday, and we used them this month.  The comedian we saw was hilarious, and the whole experience was fun. Here we are freezing standing the line outside to get in!

Carter with two front teeth

Carter after loosing one front tooth!

The kids got a "snow day" from school because they were calling for snow, but we didn't end up seeing a single flake.  We still lit the fire and drank hot chocolate in our pjs though!