Nora Kate at 8

There is SO much to say about Nora Kate at 8, where to begin!  I’ll just start with a brief recap of all the new, different, or fun things she did over the past year.  Right after she turned 7 last year the school year started and she adjusted well to wear in a mask (thank to the Covid pandemic) in school.  We (last year and this year too) are still hybrid schooling-Athens Renaissance for 3 hours two day a week and then homeschool the rest of the time.  This is working great for Nora Kate.  I was very amazed at how much her reading abilities advanced over the past year.  

Nora Kate has still been taking gymnastics and even asked to be enrolled in classes over the summer.  She’s strong and fast and she likes being able to use the combination of these two things to do flips, bars, and beams! 

Nora Kate still LOVES soccer. She played last fall (her team won the championship!). Then she asked to play spring soccer so we did (her team came in second in the spring championship!). And now here we are starting another soccer season.  Nora Kate ended up playing goalie some in the spring which she was not a fan of, but she would go after the ball and block it when other girls wouldn’t so she got put at this position some.  Fortunately she’s fast and has good ball control so she also got a lot of play time on offense as striker or midfield.  She much preferred these positions.

Nora Kate’s very favorite thing to do when we are just playing at home is to jump and flip on her trampoline.  I can’t even guess how many hours she has spent on the trampoline since we gave it to her at Christmas.  It is one of the most used presents ever, I think.  

Nora Kate also loves swimming.  We have gotten a lot of pool time over the past 3.5 months and she has loved every minute of it.

Nora Kate loves baking with me. I think she would bake every day if I let it be an option.  

She also loves to do art and craft projects-paint, color, beads, you name it-she loves it. 

Nora Kate loves unicorns, mermaids, pink, purple, glitter—-all things girly.  This is so fun though that she loves these things since she’s our only girl!

At 8 Nora Kate always knows what she wants, and she’s not afraid to voice her opinion.  She also tries to take care of her brothers both big and small all the time, which is really sweet.  She’s also our free spirit.  I love that she’s all these things rolled into one sweet, curly headed, blue eyed, girl.  

She says her favorite subject is science because she likes the science experiments that we get to do. I don’t blame her, they are pretty fun!  She also says she wants to be a vet when she grows up so she can help take care of dogs and other small animals.  When I told her about large animal vets, she was not at all interested in that.  

Nora Kate at 8 is very outgoing. I think she knows the names of almost every kid at her school.  She will talk to or play with anyone. She’s the first to just make a friend on the sidelines at soccer or basketball games or at the beach.

Speaking of the beach, this sweet girl completely shares my love of the beach.  She loves the sand and ocean and sun.  She’s counting down the days until our next beach trip (we all are!).  

Nora Kate hasn’t always just completely loved to hike, but she’s gone along with it. However, I think over the past year she has really started to enjoy it more.  She also loves riding her bike…she rides it in the neighborhood a lot and loves it when we load all 6 bikes up to go ride a trail or path.

Other random notes that I want to remember about her as she is turning 8: Nora Kate also enjoys her hoverboard and her scooter.  She likes taking Duke on walks. Despite the fact that the rest of us enjoy fishing, she does not really. She will give it a try each time for a little bit, but she’s just not super entertained by it.  She loves having her nails polished. Nora Kate likes to use hair chalk to color her hair before her soccer games.  She loves the show Lego Masters and Nailed It.  She has gotten into American Girl Dolls and books this past year.  One of her birthday gifts was the American Girl Molly doll that I got when I was little. Nora Kate loves being with her brothers and playing and she’s definitely an extrovert, but then sometimes just likes to go in her room where it’s quiet and have a few minutes to play alone.  She’s also been very proud of her Lego building abilities this past year.  She can now build VERY hard sets all on her own.  

We continue to be amazed at what a wonderful girl our sweet Nora Kate is growing into. I could go on and on, but I want to share a few pictures from over the past year leading up to her 8th birthday and a few pictures from her actual birthday (party pictures and info are in a separate post).

Nora Kate at Dave and Busters with her light up lemonade.

Hiking 5 miles in Bankhead Forrest with Duke.

Swimming with Dawson

She loves being out on a boat!

Indian Pass Raw Bar last fall after a day at the beach.

One of our favorite places.

Our soccer-loving girl!

Nora Kate can get this dreamy look in her eyes sometimes.

I feel like this picture captured at Camp Lolly in July captures that look.

On the scrambler at the Kiddie Carnival in July.

This picture also reminds me to mention one of my very favorite things about Nora Kate-her laugh.  When she gets really tickled by something her laugh just seems to bubble out of her. She has the happiest sounding laugh. 

One more picture from the kiddie carnival.

A summer tradition in Alabama!

When Nora Kate had read 1,000 pages this summer we took her to The Yard for a giant ice cream treat. She picked this mermaid ice cream bowl of course. 

Nora Kate enjoys going to Trash Panda games with our family!

We like to sit on the berm and she loves to walk down to the edge of the field and run the bases after the games.

I can’t believe she’s a THIRD GRADER!

Nora Kate and Grandad at the beach in May.

Back in the summer we let all the kids pick 2 camps.  Nora Kate’s 2 choices were gymnastics camp and soccer camp.  Carter picked soccer camp too, so they were there together. It was neat for me that they did the soccer camp at UAH!

Nora Kate with Lolly in Tennessee in July.

This girl was made for the beach.  She always has the perfect beach hair, even after swimming in the ocean.

Loves digging in the sand.

Now for some pictures from her actual 8th birthday!

She is a LEGO MASTER!  We gave her this set for her birthday (it has lots of tiny details that you can’t see in this picture), and she had built the hundreds of pieces in no time!

Lolly and Nana and Grandad gave her this balance beam for her birthday! She was so surprised and excited! She loves it and has fun practicing her gymnastics on it! 

Happy 8th Birthday, Nora Kate!

Somehow I got this picture really shadowy, but here is Nora Kate on her 8th birthday with her new gymnastics bar from John and I, Lego set, Molly American Girl doll, swimming turtle toy, requested dangly ear rings from her brothers, and lots of little crafts made by her brothers!

On her actually birthday we got her a cookie cake from American Cookie Company. (For her party, I made a unicorn cake)

She was thrilled that we had a little surprise put in the patter and it wasn’t just chocolate chip cookie cake, but m and m’s cookie cake!

See the paper hat she has on? Carter made it for her for her birthday.

And here she is opening the Molly doll!

Heart Shaped Pancakes for breakfast complete with a pink candle!

Sitting under her gymnastics bar from us, opening up a final present from us-Cooking Fever for Nintendo Switch!

I can’t believe Nora Kate is 8, but we love the sweet, free spirited, opinionated, fast, strong, helpful, creative girl she’s growing into!

Nora Kate’s Great 8th Birthday Party

We were so excited to celebrate our sweet girl’s 8th birthday with a big party!  She wanted it to be unicorn themed and after the big boys had inflatable water things for their birthdays, she wanted something similar. We opted to go with the 19 foot tall inflatable double lane water slide.  It was really fun, and the weather was super hot which means perfect for a water slide party.

Splash and Splash at her water slide bash.

She wore a rainbow swim suit because rainbows and unicorns got together, I was informed.

Nora Kate had seen a similar idea for a unicorn cake, so I made this cake for her.

It was sweet how happy she was with her cake!

The invite was all rainbow colors and the back was very colorful too!

We had lots of her friends come party!

And we surprised her with having a piñata.  She had seen this piñata but we didn’t get it. Then in July when she was at Camp Lolly I bought it and filled it with candy, we put it out on the day of the party and she was so excited!

SO BRIGHT! We are squinty, but singing happy birthday to our girl!

TA DA! Nora Kate was thrilled with the water slide.

Slightly out of order, but the back of the invitation.

We had cake, pizza, chips, Kool Aid Jammers, and water.

With at double lane water slide there were LOTS of races!

These unicorn themed items were in the goodie bags!

The kids had fun walking the piñata…it was a surprisingly durable one so it took a while!

Goodie Bags

Nora Kate was so sweet about her party. She loved every minute and she thanked us for having a big party for her afterwards.  So sweet. It made me think that she probably enjoyed it even more since last year we didn’t do any parties because of Covid.  I was so excited to get to celebrate Nora Kate.

I always try to write down who all came to celebrate our kids so I can remember.  At her party she had Madalyn, Mason, Cooper, Baby Charlie, Tiffany, Harper, Bryant, Sutton, Henry, Annie, Ruby, John Thomas, Hannah, Yliannah, an all the parents that went with them. I’m thankful so many people wanted to celebrate with her!