The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Thanksgiving in the Gump

Happy Monday! Hope everyone is feeling great (and not too stuffed!) after a long holiday weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed our holiday and had a great Thanksgiving day down in Montgomery. Jenny nicely offered to host and cooked up a big feast but I did take the desserts.  I made a pumpkin pie (which I love but Robert thinks is nothing short of a waste of a pie) and a pecan pie.  Both were really good (if I do say so myself!) thanks in part to my kitchen helper…

pie crust

For my memory, I branched out from my mom’s tried and true shortening pie crust recipe and went with an all butter crust from Smitten Kitchen.  Turned out great!

That morning, I actually got to pick out Maxwell’s clothes and had him looking cute and dressed just like Spencey!

tgiving twinkies

Thanksgiving twinkies!  🙂

We got down to Montgomery around noon and Ronnie had ordered this cardboard rocket ship for the kids to color all day – total genius move.

rocket ship

The boys especially loved it! We had a fun day all around watching Ronnie fry the turkey…

turkey fry

feeding the kids an early “feast” of their own…

tgiving

and then letting them have one of the turkey cookies I made along with the pies!  gobble gobble!

turkey cookies

It was a beautiful (albeit chilly!) day and the cousins had a blast running around outside on the golf course.

outside

outside

tgiving

In fact, we all enjoyed the sunshine that day!

tgiving

The meal was fantastic (thank you Jenny!)…

tigivng

and we enjoyed the outdoors just as much after the sun went down…especially with the fun(ny) head lamps and glow sticks for the kids!

head lamp

Let me tell you, you haven’t laughed until you’ve seen Spencer running around with a headlamp on!  ha!

Overall, it was a perfect day that made me realize how thankful I am for my entire extended family and definitely for this guy…

tgiving

and these little turkeys!

tgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Final Soccer Game

Well…3 weeks later I’m finally recapping Maxwell’s final soccer game!  Better late than never!  The game was on the same day we did Spencer’s birthday party and he was pretty worn out so GJ and Daddo stayed home with him but we did get to have 2 other great cheerleaders with us that day – Lulu and Granddad!

final soccer game

This was also picture day and it was as disorganized as always. Like last year, we skipped individual pictures and attempted to get a team photo. I snapped a pic of the boys while we were waiting…

final soccer game

and that was pretty much how all of the team pictures went too!  I didn’t bother ordering one of the “official” photos and just took some with my own camera.  These were the best of them all…

soccer

soccer

soccer

soccer game

All framers!  ha!  Why they had them trying to stare directly into the sun and smile I don’t understand.

I also took a few of my own individual pictures of Maxwell…

soccer

soccer

Cutie.

Once we got through pictures, it was time for the game but our opposing team was still waiting for their pictures so we played some red light/green light instead!

soccer

After a while, we were still waiting on the red team so Coach Robert decided to go on and hand out trophies…

trophies

Awesome!

By the time the games usually end at 4:30, the red team was just making their way over to the field.  Even though some of the blue team members had to leave, we still played a little game with those that were left.

soccer

Maxwell scored a few goals and had fun. That’s what counts!

He was also happy because he saw his best bud, Lila, on the field that day.

maxwell and lila

After a short game, everyone shook hands, had a snack and were on their way!

soccer final

It was a good end to a great season.  I’m so proud of my little soccer player for hustling every game and playing so hard!  Go Maxwell Go!

soccer

Soccer super star!

Weekend

Is it Friday yet? Oh wait, happy Monday! Yep, our weekend was busy busy busy. I think the next few weeks are going to be busy busy busy too! We’re in full swing on all of the new house renovations and it’s not slowing down until we move in. Here’s how our weekend went down…

GJ was here at the end of last week because she and I met with a decorator for a few hours and it was great. We walked away with some really good ideas and PAINT COLORS! hooray! I had a good idea of what I wanted – and had the samples to check out – but the decorator helped us hone in on what will look really good. I can’t wait to see it all transformed.

paint

On Saturday, we picked up some breakfast and headed over to the new house to check things out. We were pleased to see the painters over there!  Gotta meet that deadline!

new house

The painters were pleased to see all the AL hats on my boys’ heads! Roll Tide!

alabama

Later that morning, we headed out to Lowe’s to check out fridges.  The boys had no problems entertaining themselves there!

lowes

The day wasn’t all work though, we managed to find time for a little play…

play

and to cheer Alabama on to a (very stressful!) victory over LSU!

Sunday it was breakfast…

starbucks

and back to the house. I’m so glad to have such good helpers…

new house

and it doesn’t hurt that they’re pretty cute too!  🙂

cute helper

The boys then took their dimples to Sunday school…

dimples

and we all managed to enjoy the BEAUTIFUL fall weather we’re having.  So thankful for that!

It was a busy but great weekend.  Now I’ve got to get back to picking hardware, researching door knobs, finding wallpaper….it’s fun!

The After Party

As much fun as the costumes, parade and trick-or-treating were, the most fun of Halloween was hanging out at home afterward eating chili, checking out the candy, and laughing with my boys!

halloween

after halloween

halloween

halloween

halloween after

That’s my kind of after party!  I sure do love them!

Boo and Brr!

After the parade we hooked up with some friends and decided to just start walking toward the houses to trick-or-treat.  It was still early but there were already some sprinkles coming down and it was getting really cold and windy!  We decided to start early to we could try to get home early!

halloween

halloween

Maxwell knew exactly what was going on and couldn’t wait to hit up the first house!  Spencer was pretty clueless so I helped him along a bit…

trick or treat

trick or treat

He figured out the game pretty quickly and perfected his own version of “titateat!”

trick or treat

Maxwell was a good big brother and had no problem taking Spencer up to houses by themselves…

trick or treat

But, if there was a dog outside the house, Maxwell would quickly say “we’ll just skip that one!”  🙂

trick or treat

Some of the friends we were with had built this Thomas the Train over their wagon and all the kids (and parents!) thought it was the neatest thing ever!

thomas

Spencer just about burst when he actually got to ride in it for a bit!

thomas

Maxwell was continuing on his “serious” streak and couldn’t really be bothered for pictures…

halloween

or to keep up with the group!  🙂

halloween

In his defense, it was a big, slow-moving group all with kids younger than him except for one. It’s tough to be the oldest sometimes!  🙂 He did fine though and loved getting lots of candy and seeing all the cool decorations.

trick or treat

halloween

Spencer was doing so good putting all of his candy in his basket.  He kept bringing me a Blow Pop to open and I would tell him that we weren’t going to eat the candy now and he needed to put it in his basket. After about the 4th time he asked, I finally gave in to my cute little Mickey and let him have the Blow Pop.  He was so happy he even sat in the stroller for a little while!

trick or treat

By this point, it was starting to get really cold and windy.  Just as we were turning down the last street to make the loop back to home, Spencer was walking on the curb and totally bit it scraping his little hand and biting his tongue.  We unfortunately had our first (and thankfully only!) tears of the night.  So pitiful.

crying mickey

After some hugs from Dad, a new sucker and his Mickey sweatshirt to warm up, he was back in business.

mickey

On the home stretch, we ran into 2 of Maxwell’s buds – Ben and James.  That made my little construction worker pretty happy!

trick or treat

It was honestly freezing and really windy by that point so we were more than happy to get home by 6:00, warm up and inspect all of our candy!  Which, let me just say, all that candy and not one single Butterfinger. Humph. Oh well, it was still a really fun night, Butterfinger or not!  🙂

Happy Halloween!