On the way home Mom stopped for the time-honored tradition of photographing the ever growing boys on the mountain.   She took 20 photos and this was the best… unfortunately in all of the others at least one of them looked like Angry Cat.  🙂

Mom, Alex and Sam all drove up to Virginia on Saturday to see Lillian, Beth and Margie.  They stopped in Waynesboro to pick up Nana too. They all spent some time at Sunnyside visiting with Lillian and then went back to Beth and Margie’s house to socialize for a while and have a very nice dinner.  Sam took advantage of the pool and Alex got a great slow motion video of him jumping off the diving board.  It was great to see everyone including the gang in Waynesboro and a short Skype visit with Emma and Seby!

After a little retouching on Sam’s, this is probably the best year we have ever had.  As handsome as the boys are, they just don’t do well with school photos.  

🙂

No goals for Alex today but the Tigers pulled off another victory and are now 2-0.  Alex played little lackluster in the first half, but played much better the second half.  Alex had a couple of opportunities close to the goal but just couldn’t get a good clean shot.  Next game will be next Tuesday as they have Friday off due to Labor day weekend.

  So Alex has been playing soccer since he was probably 4 or 5 years old.  Up until last year he almost exclusively played defender but at the beginning of the year he was moved up to Midfielder.  He did OK for his first year, but he was still pretty timid and only took a few errant shots on goal.  Over the summer he worked on his footwork, passing and dribbling skills.  Today at the first game of the school year he had 4 shots on goal, 3 assists and 2 Goals!  Of course the game was a bit of a blowout for his team, but it’s a great first start for building his confidence for the rest of the season.  We are all very proud of what he has accomplished.  Now if we can work on the grades and the 3 point shot for basketball season we will be in great shape!   🙂

Yes, Alex turned 16 on Friday, but between work, soccer practice and a soccer game we didn’t get a chance to celebrate until today.  Kelly, Joe and Reid all came over to have a nice cookout with us.  Alex didn’t get many packages because we had already celebrated with Nana and Gung Gung a couple of weeks ago and he had already worn most of the rest of his gifts.  🙂

Boys actually seemed excited to being to be going to school this morning.  They came home last night from Orientation bouncing off the wall and this morning had the first day of school jitters.  I’m sure they are excited to see their friends again and I know Mom is happy to be able to clean the house and to keep it clean for more than 1 hour at a time.  🙂  Where did the summer go??

Alex waited until the last minute but he finally got his curls cut off last night from Gaby at Great Cuts.  Ironically enough his friend Cole was there doing the same thing.  Tonight was Orientation and they had to show up in dress code so last night was really his last chance since he had soccer tryouts today.  It’s a shame he had to get it cut though because he was looking more and more like Starsky every day.  Below are before and after photos that Mom took yesterday and today.

Here is the video of Grammy’s house on Mount Vernon street.  We realized that even though the boys never saw the house, they may recognize some of the furniture…  🙂

If you haven’t seen this one in a while you might want to grab a cup of joe… it’s 26 minutes long.

Well Ok there wasn’t really a haircut but Alex did get his first shave back on March 16th.  We posted the photo to Facebook but just realized that we never posted it on the blog.  So here are a couple of shots.  Alex will definitely have to shave again before he goes back to school next week.  He also probably needs a haircut – very long and curly right now.  🙂