The Start of Football and Ryan's Birthday Week!

This weekend kicked off a few exciting things in our lives - football and Ryan's birthday week! First was a local football rival game recently started between Clarksville and Lamar. There is nothing wrong with a friendly rivalry game and, from what I hear, everyone was good sports. We didn't attend the game this year - too many people when your kids are not into the game and will want to run around everywhere. But, I do hope for us to get to go soon. For the record, Lamar won, by a lot. I really like both schools - but now that Noah is a Clarksville Panther I had to root for them :) I am one of the least competitive people you will meet - so it was fun giving my brother (a die hard Lamar fan) a hard time with Noah wearing his Panther shirt - that was a win for me!

Saturday was the opening day of Razorback football!  For the last 5 years we have taken a picture of the kids in their Razorback clothes by a Razorback rock on the opening day of football season. I LOVE traditions like this - it shows how much the kids have grown and is so fun to look back on. Ryan has been able to wear the same dress for all 3 years of pictures so far. It was tight this year, but she insisted on wearing it! We then went home to watch "Woo Pig Sooie" as the kids say. The Razorbacks won big!

The next day we decided to make one of Ryan's birthday wishes come true! Every day (literally) she says "when can we go stay in a hoteyo [hotel] again?" And that is literally what she wants to do - stay in the hotel room and play. Jump on the bed, watch cartoons, wrestle daddy in bed. maybe swim, but really she just loves to play in the rooms. So, after church and lunch we surprised her with a night at our local hotel. We decided to stay there since we had plans Monday and also we wouldn't have to pack a bunch of stuff :) Ryan was SO excited - and Noah too! We had so much fun swimming, getting pizza delivered and watching cartoons all piled in the king size bed together! My niece Eliza came and joined us for pizza and swimming too :) It only took a few hours after we checked out for Ryan to switch from "I had so much fun at my hoteyo" to "I want to go back to my hoteyo again" - it was a nice few hours though :)

My step-dad went on a fishing trip recently and smoked us some of his catches for Labor Day. I am not much of a fish person at all - I eat only some catfish and I am pretty picky with it. But, I tried it and it was really good! My mom had ice cream cake for dessert and since Ryan's birthday is coming up Noah told her we needed to sing to Ryan - so she threw some candles on there and we sang to her :) Her birthday week is off to a great start!