SPB

Irma aftermath

September 12, 2017

Irma was still making herself known around here yesterday. Birmingham was under a Tropical Storm watch so they cancelled school for Monday. We spent the day in the best way possible…

irma

Yep, those positions were assumed by 8am! Around lunchtime we did put on our hurricane gear…

irma

and ventured out for some food, including some gooey brownies! ha!

irma

But then we were back home to assume our positions for the remainder of the day…

irma

Now, it was a bit ridiculous that school was cancelled since it was barely even raining all day with virtually zero wind. They changed the forecast from a Tropical Storm watch to just a wind advisory by mid-day. However, the school system still decided to go with a delayed start today. Better safe than sorry I guess! Bye bye Irma…for good this time!

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Irma

September 11, 2017

Hurricane Irma is not our friend. My parents left Naples Saturday morning to go to my brother’s house in Jupiter to ride out the storm. Thankfully, everyone is ok and my brother’s house sustained minimal damage. We do not yet know about Naples and our house there. I’m writing this Sunday night and the storm surge is still to come.

naples

Unfortunately, Irma is seemingly making its way into Alabama with Tropical Storm force winds. Hopefully nothing bad will make it to Birmingham but we could have trees down and loss of power. I will update as I get more information about my family, our house, and Naples. Go away Irma….and don’t come back!

Monday afternoon update: Our family friend, Marc, was able to check on the house and it looks good! A little damage including roof tiles gone and landscape and screen enclosure damage but it’s all minor and fixable! The storm surges were nowhere near predicted levels and we had no flooding! It’s all pretty unbelievable considering the eye wall of this monster went right over Naples. So thankful our wonderful Naples fared so well! Bye bye Irma…and don’t come back!!

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Spencer’s first day!

September 7, 2017

Spencer and Samantha finally went back to school last week! Spencer’s first day was Monday and he was excited!

spencer first day

spencer

He’s going Monday through Thursday this year in 4K with Mrs. Beard. After a goodbye hug from Samantha (who was sad to see him go!)…

spencer

we were off to school where he walked right into his classroom and quickly found his seat and got to work on his self portrait!

spencer

Pretty good, I’d say!

spencer

It was a good first week with a few rough spots. He got sent to time-out a few times for wrestling and rough-housing on the carpet with his friends. I can’t imagine where he would have learned that behavior?! It’s not like he and Maxwell ever wrestle and “fight” with each other at home?! (is my sarcasm coming through?!). We had lots of talks this past weekend about what is appropriate behavior at school and things seem to be much better now. Hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here on out – full of smiley faces and no more visits to the “stop chair”!

This boy is so smart, so sweet, so funny, and I love him so much.

spencer

Here’s to a great year of 4K for Spencey!!

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The rest of the birthday

September 6, 2017

Maxwell’s never ending birthday finally wrapped up on Wednesday of last week with his real, actual birthday day! He got to celebrate on Tuesday afternoon with Susan who is always so generous on birthdays…

ssan bday

and again on Wednesday morning with the traditional cinnamon roll breakfast of birthday champions…

7 breakfast

and again that afternoon at school when he took football cookies.

football cookies

His class does a “birthday blessing” where each student makes a card for the birthday kid and they go around in a circle and either read their card or say something nice about him. I got to go up there for it and it was pretty sweet to watch. 🙂

class

I then got to have lunch in the cafeteria with my favorite 7 year old!

bday lunch

That night we all went to dinner at Mexico Lindo with GJ and Daddo in tow. We then went home for icebox cake – Maxwell’s choice!!

cake

Pretty much all of Maxwell’s gifts were AL football related, including some cool football player pjs that I got for him and Spence. I realized that morning that I had not gotten anything for Samantha and I knew she needed a present to open too so I sent GJ to Target to find some and, just our luck, these “beautiful” Frozen pjs were on the clearance rack with one size 3T remaining! They sure are ugly…and she sure does love them! ha!

pjs