The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Golf

Maxwell has been playing a ton of golf this summer. He’s taken several lessons and goes out with his friends to play 9 as often as possible. I love it – but I love it even more when he convinces his brother to go play with him…

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Last week Maxwell even convinced me to go watch him play – meaning he wanted me to drive him around in the cart! ha! I was happy to do it and even convinced Spencer to ride along. Spencer didn’t want to play which was fine with me. We had the best time heckling – I mean cheering on – Maxwell at each hole! “Put that down as a bogey!”

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I love these boys so much and as so proud of the awesome kids they are.

Soccer

Samantha played soccer again this spring on team Spirit coached by Clay and Seton – same team she’s been on since kindergarten! This season we lost a player or two but picked up several others that were great additions – and mostly all friends of Samantha’s so that was fun! The season starts early spring and they had some cold practices…

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Unfortunately at the second game of the season, Samantha hurt her foot and ended up in a boot for two weeks and missed a game.

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More unfortunately, it rained and rained and rained. I think they ended up on only getting to play 4 of their regular season games because of the weather. It kept raining and they just ran out of time to make up the games! They did play in the end of the season May Madness tourney out at the Hoover Met. They gave it their all but were playing against Academy teams that were just better. I got some great pictures though!

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At the end of the season, several of the girls decided to go to the Academy tryouts and decided to join the team, including Samantha.

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That means the end of our awesome rec team that has been together for 5 years – bittersweet but I’m so thankful to her coaches for all the years of effort they put into the girls. They really prepared them for Academy and, most importantly, made them love soccer!

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On to new soccer adventures. Long live the Spirit / Dream Team / Narwhals / Glitter Unicorns / Sparkle Unicorn Sprinkle Marshmallow Blueberries / Blueberry Cupcake Sparkly Princess Unicorns!

More baseball

The end of the season tournament for Spartan Baseball Club was in Santa Rosa Beach this year. I went with Maxwell to the Destin tournamen last year and Robert headed down with him this year.

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They had a great place to stay that included passes to the Watersound Beach Club. They definitely weren’t suffering in between games!

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The schedule wasn’t great though. They ended up with a late afternoon game Sunday that kept getting pushed back. The 4:30 game finally started at 6pm and they won! That took them to a very late championship game. At that point, after staying so late, they really wanted to win to make it all worth it! Well, they did! Woohoo! Maxwell got to play second base and even start one of the games. These boys – the Black team – that had been really dismissed the entire season came out strong when given the opportunity and came home with a ring! I was so proud of them and happy for them!

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Maxwell and Robert made the 5 hour drive home late at night getting back to Birmingham about 2am. Since Maxwell never did summer or travel ball, he never had the opportunity to win a ring. Pretty cool to win one in his last tournament. What a way to end it all!

Baseball

Maxwell played for the Spartan Baseball Club again this spring. He put in a lot of time and hard work and enjoyed his baseball friends. It was a good season but overall frustrating when he didn’t get the playing time he deserved. After 8 years of baseball, I think this is the end of the road for Maxwell. He enjoys the game and I wish there was a way for him to keep playing – but it’s also not his favorite sport and requires such a huge time commitment. It sure has been fun watching him play and I’m glad he stuck with it as long as he did.

I didn’t get many pics from this season but I did get several from the night they got to play at Regions Field!

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I”ll go just about anywhere to watch this kid do just about anything he wants to do!

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The most exciting part of the season came during the end of season tournament in Santa Rosa Beach. Pics tomorrow!

Dance Recital

Samantha had her dance recital last week and, as always, she stole the stage! She’s been doing a “build your own” class on Sundays this year with three friends and they had the cutest dance to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating”. Ready for the stage!

Her hair is really long right now so it took a lot of bobby pins but we got it up in an excellent bun (if I do say so myself!)…

She was in the second act of the show so we didn’t have to get there until later which was nice…but it also made for a pretty late night as she was act 38 of 50 in the second half!

Their dance was totally worth the wait obviously! Samantha nailed the dance and had such sharp movements. She also kept that megawatt smile on the entire time! You couldn’t take your eyes off of her!

I just love to watch Samantha – she’s got rhythm, she’s got natural stage presence, she’s a joy to watch!

My superstar!!

Fantastic job, Samantha!!