semi-circles

You know the cliche about coming full circle?  That's what I am thinking about, but I can't bring myself to title my blog post that.  I figure my kids are too young to have gone full circle already, right?  Maybe more like halves of a figure eight?  or a curve in a circle?  little tiny partial circles?  Anyways enough cheesy, deep thinking for now.

Here's a picture from Labor Day weekend.  The first UGA football game of the season.  We hosted a viewing party/ hanging out/ do-NOT-call-it-a-playdate-whatever-you-do/ gathering at our house and let Ryan invite whoever he wanted.  Being Labor Day, we figured over-invite so no feelings are hurt since surely not everyone will come anyways.  He invited eight.  We had ten.  Hmmm.  Oh well, luckily they are an AWESOME group of boys.  If they weren't, they wouldn't have made the invite list :)

I LOVED having all that red and black in my yard! -and added bonus some of it was Atlanta United who also happened to be playing that night.  We had two TVs going because we are that awesome and that soccer crazy.

So that good-looking crew is Spence, Grady, Tripp, Cooper A, Lucas, Matthew, Cooper, Clark, Ryan, and Jake.

I could go on and on and on about how much I love our small-town, tight-knit community.  The friends and neighbors who will do anything for you at any time.  Like helping with kids when your kid breaks an arm.  Twice.  Or a hubby breaks a shoulder.  The ones who show up unannounced with wine when you think your dad has had a heart-attack.  The ones who help with your cats and your dog and your mail.  The ones you coordinate calendars with and carpool children to and from and back again - we've decided calendar-keeping, esp with middle schoolers in the picture, is a full time job.  Oh and then there's the trips to Kroger on a Sunday afternoon that take an hour to pick up two things because EVERYONE in Macedonia is returning from fall break and stocking up on groceries.  I love this life.

Anyways, still not the original point of this post.

Circles.  Circling back to the circles.  Ha.  Three of the boys in that picture up above are new Avery friends.  And yet, they are not new at all.  I am still super amused by this.  I love sociology and connections and back-stories and putting it all together.

*So Grady.  He and Spence have been good friends since preschool, ironically the same preschool my kids all went to, yet Ryan didn't cross paths with them then.  But Abby did.  Grady is Virgil's big brother.  Abby and Virgil were in all three classes together and were quite the little buddies.  Oh and Grady & Virgil's mom went to Walton, and while I didn't know her then Alyson did.  And actually thus possibly Auntie Sarah - they're all the same class.  Grady also played one season of CYB at Macedonia when he signed up late and the Avery teams were full.  Ryan, Spence, Clark, Grady- to name a few- all played together in third grade.  And now Ryan and Grady are in home-room together and legit friends all on their very own.

Here are Abby and Virgil at five years old.  OHHHH, and if we didn't have enough connections yet to Grady and Virgil, Abby's bff Taylor and Virgil are in class together at Avery.  Perhaps I've missed a few connections here, but I think that's pretty impressive.

*The next new Avery friend is Tripp.  Ryan and Tripp were little buddies in Kindergarten when Ryan went to Avery!  Here they are at the Kindergarten Christmas party ::

And ironically, when I went to find and upload the picture of Tripp and Ryan, right next to it was a picture of Virgil and Abby at their Christmas program that same year!

We've seen Tripp over the years as Macedonia and Avery compete in everything, namely basketball for this group of boys.  We've also seen them at the Brandon Seniors's Halloween parties.  Levi and Larsen's [who were also good friends with Virgil] parents went to college with Tripp's parents.  I remember Ryan and Tripp hitting if off at one of the yearly Halloween parties two or three years ago.  We haven't been intentional about keeping up with him, but we were happy to see them again at Creekland.  And then to find out that Tripp and Ryan have the exact same schedule!  From what I can tell, Ryan and Spence and Grady and Tripp are really good school friends - from home room to sitting together in the lunchroom, etc.

*The third Avery kiddo that Ryan is friends with - and who made the cut for both the football party and Ryan's upcoming birthday party - is Cooper A.  I'm not entirely sure the first time that we met Cooper's family.  They have a young one that is Chloe's age.  Chloe and Landen were really good preschool buddies - playdates, birthday parties, all that fun stuff.  And then at some point Cooper A was on a baseball team with Ryan and Cooper E.  Hence Cooper A is still Cooper A to us.  And that season is where the Esterlings became the Es to us and that has completely stuck.

Here are Landen and Chloe swimming way back when.

And just because we're walking down memory lane, here's another.

Landen, Chloe, Couper, and Alice celebrating Chloe's 4th birthday at Waffle House :)

That was fun!  This is the part I miss about blogging.  I love keeping up with my pictures, and I feel like I've done a really good job of that.  And by captioning my pictures on google photos, I can remember a lot of the things that I no longer expand upon on my blog.  But I do enjoy finding some quiet time and typing like this.  Remembering all these moments and friendships and memories.  And as an added bonus I like to think that my kids will appreciate these posts one day.  It's cool and special and enjoyable and fulfilling to see them snuggle in on the couch with a blog book or a shutterfly book or even an old school photo album sometimes.  The years sure do fly by, and I know I'm guilty of trying to hang on too tightly sometimes.  But there are also so many, many perks to watching them grow up too.  I love watching them do what they love and find themselves and their passions.  I love their friends.  I love watching Abby play soccer and Ryan play basketball.  I love seeing Ryan thrive in middle school despite our [well mostly mine!] worries and fears of the unknown.  I love Ryan's friends and his flag football team and that he made the school Academic Team.  I love my sweet Chlo-Chlo.  And watching her swim, oh she's a fish!  And the love she has her whole family is BIG.  I love Abbys and her love and joy and energy for life.  Her obsession with soccer and ninja and anything physically competitive.  I love watching her reading in a quiet corner and then two minutes later she's singing her favorite songs at full volume.  I am truly so very blessed, and I wouldn't change any of it!!