November 2020 feels like a complete blur! It was a fun blur though. This month was a collision of basketball season and soccer. Usually soccer and basketball season are separated by one weekend...one relaxing weekend-hah! But this year at the end of the regular soccer season Carter received a message that he, along with 9 other boys, had been invited to play on the Athens All Star Soccer team. They would practice three times a week in November and then play others across the state at a tournament down in Dothan. How could we not let him play!? This boy loves soccer so much, and we love watching him. He was so excited. So part of the blur of this month was that Dawson and Carter both had basketball practices starting up (2 a week for each boy) and then Carter had 3 soccer practices a week. Then we ended up traveling twice--it ended up being only 4 days apart too. We went to Dothan for the tournament then up to Tennessee for Thanksgiving.
We managed to squeeze more fun than just travel and basketball and soccer into the month though too...
We hiked a new trail. It was a 2.6 mile hike to a waterfall and cave along Alum Hollow Trail
Here's the waterfall.
This cave was so neat. Native Americans used to use it for shelter when out hunting.
Waterfall
After the hike we were so near the loop around the lake on Green Mountain that we headed over there for a picnic. It's always such a pretty area that we can't resist taking a few pictures.
Green Mountain
One more of the waterfall...Clayton cracks me up.
We took Duke on this hike to the waterfall and cave..he did great!
We have a neighbor down the street named Kipton who has a dirt bike. Clayton thinks this kid is SO cool. He rides by and says hi to the kids wearing a blue helment. One morning Clayton brought me this Lego guy he built. He said that it was Kipton going by on his dirt bike. I think he nailed it!
John and I both voted on election day obviously. Had to take a picture to document though. Hopefully this is the first and LAST time we ever have to vote in masks!
One afternoon we were in the office trying to wrap up school for the day and looked over to see Duke peeking in the office like this! HAH! I think he was ready for everyone to be done and PLAY!
Every time we do french braids she wants to document with a picture.
Basketball practice for Carter
Basketball practice for Dawson
We biked a few miles on the always beautiful Rails to Trails in Athens on the second Sunday of the month.
Biking Rails to Trails.
Clayton drew this guy one day and said, "Here look at his beard. He's walking, and he has eyebrows!"
I just loved this so I had to take a picture!
Dawson and Carter (and John) went golfing with friend Henry (and Steven).
Clayton has loved getting to practice some of his writing on the dry erase board to mix things up.
Dawson's boy scout troop did a 3.5 mile hike around Cane Creek Canyon near Muscle Shoals and the whole family got to tag along. It had a cool cave (pictured above), though the picture doesn't do it justice.
The kids and I down in the canyon. The hike down and back up was SUPER steep...like climbing rocks...and we saw a snake! Yikes! But it was easy and beautiful while you were down in the canyon.
Here's a view looking down a little at the cave.
View from the top. There aren't really many views like this in Alabama. Obviously we were in NW Alabama.
There was a little pond with a bench out near where you parked so we stopped there to look for fish before and after our hike.
Carter was super proud of himself because he finished his longest book to date this month. It was The Mysterious Benedict Society book 1 at 485 pages!!
As I mentioned, Carter was selected to play on the All Star Team. They made a big special deal (love it!) about presenting the players with their jerseys. The coach talked about how they had earned it, how well they played, how coachable they were, etc. It made it very special. Here's Carter receiving his jersey after the final All Stars practice before heading into the tournament.
Here's the All Star Team after their final practice before heading down to Dothan!
We made water bottles for the team, and good thing because it was SUPER hot for the end of November!
Here is a picture of the All Star Team in their jerseys from the season. As you can see the All Star team was made up of 10 boys who played for 4 different teams this season. They all played against each other all season long, but then quickly turned from opponents to team mates and played together REALLY impressively well.
In order to go to Dothan, we would have to board Duke. This would be his first time being boarded. The kids were extra dramatic about this...they knew they would miss him so much! They requested this picture with him before we took him to drop him off for being boarded (which by the way Duke did great!).
When in Dothan!
We drive through Dothan every time we go to the beach, but we have never stopped. We always drive by the giant peanut and home of the national peanut festival and say, "hey kids look at the giant peanut!" and that's the extent of that so I wanted to stop by and look at the site for this festival and of course snap a picture with the big peanut! We arrived in Dothan on Friday night. Took a swim in the hotel pool. Then early Saturday morning we went to see the peanut before the tournament.
This is out of order but this was swimming Friday night.
Go Athens All Stars!!
Carter had the best little cheering section! I love how these siblings support each other and hope they always will.
GO ALL STAR CARTER!
After playing two games in the heat and playing as hard as they could, what do these boys do with their free time!? Play soccer! Haha
The team played amazing! They lost one game and one one game, so unfortunately they didn't move on to the championship game on Sunday. They were so sad, but we couldn't have been more proud. Carter even scored TWO goals in one game. I thought he did great in the first game, but then the second game he somehow found more energy and fight! They only had an hour break in between the two games.
It was SO much fun cheering them on. I've always kind of been baffled at the concept of a traveling team thinking why would you want to spend you weekends traveling to different places when there are plenty of kids in your own town for your kid to play against, but this definitely changed my mind. It was so fun watching and cheering for this team and the traveling part too! I wish we could do it all over again! The team celebrated with chickfila eaten outside on the soccer field and purchased by Athens, and then a long swim in the hotel pool.
We celebrated Carter and his cheerleaders/siblings by driving bumper boats at Adventure Land!
and playing putt putt!
and Carter got a hole in one!
We really liked Dothan, it was warm, had palm trees, was only an hour and a half from the beach...ahhh! It drove me crazy to be so near the beach and not go, but John had to work Monday and we knew we had to drive to Tennessee Thursday for Thanksgiving...so we resisted the urge to drive a little further and put our toes in the sand.
I can't remember exactly what got them on the kick, but the kids were on a big kick talking about candy apples. So we let them make their own. Here are 3 of the ones they made. They had so much fun and thoroughly enjoyed their apples.
My Christmas cactus started blooming right after Halloween and has bloomed beautifully all November long.
Nora Kate has been SUPER into making these baking shows which we have been posting privately to youtube for friends and family to watch. She really loves to bake and she gets so excited about having her own cooking show! So fun. Here are the cookies she baked on her "show" for thanksgiving!
After Halloween we saved a pumpkin we didn't carve. Every day in November we added things to the pumpkin that we were thankful for. I am sure I missed someone/something, but at the end of the month our pumpkin has the following on it: bike, family, golf, fire, outside, God, water, house, Polaris, kind words, gymnastics, coloring, pets, clothes, PSJ, cupcakes, soccer, Daddy and Mommy, Clayton, Nora Kate, Carter, Dawson, cars, art, homeschool, paint, All Star Soccer team, my backpack, beds, candy, pumpkins, traveling, hotels, Kylo Ren, school friends, grandparents, Blankey, Lovie, the beach, cake, love, TV, toys, basketball, and food.
We were very nervous about covid and traveling to Tennessee for Thanksgiving since Tennessee is having a crazy increase in their case numbers, and I was inclined to stay home and have a relaxing Thanksgiving Day (which was also my birthday) at home where we could stay healthy and celebrate, but in the end we ended up traveling to Tennessee on Thanksgiving morning. We didn't do the big celebration with all of the Wades we just did a smaller get together with just my mom and brother on Thanksgiving evening, and then with Nana and Grandad, Em, Eric, Zoe, Zach for lunch on Thanksgiving. It was a fun visit so we are glad we ended up going. We are far enough out from our trip now that we knew we did not get covid while up there, so for that we are thankful! It's always weird when my birthday is on Thanksgiving, but traveling up to TN on the day of my bday made it even weirder...it didn't really feel like a birthday packing and rushing everyone into the car, but we are so thankful that we traveled on Thanksgiving day instead of the night before like we have done in the past because we made it up there in 4 hours-there was no traffic on Thanksgiving Day. We celebrated my birthday with a cake at the Zorios for lunch, and then for dinner we celebrated my birthday and Logan's at Lollys. I did a horrible job of taking pictures. I'm not sure why!?
Lolly did get the picture above of us on Thanksgiving.
Me and Logan with Mom.
My birthday cake a Mom's.
Logan's birthday is 11/24 and mine is 11/26.
Life has been so, so busy lately some with fun things we can control (soccer, basketball, gymnastics, etc.) and some with things completely out of our control (work schedule), so I was extra thankful when John and I had our babysitter come over one evening to celebrate my birthday (after my bday since we were in Tennessee). We took advantage of the beautiful Christmas lights downtown and walked around talking and looking at the Christmas lights. It was nice to get out of the house and spend adult time together. I had a nice birthday celebration in Tennessee and before we went the kids and John gave me my birthday gifts, and then got a date after we went to Tennessee too so all in all good birthday!
November was such a whirlwind, and while I really do enjoy staying busy and active, I REALLY hope we can slow things down in December...although I'm pretty sure that's just a wish! Oh well, at least there's plenty of fun we can enjoy mixed in with the busyness!
