Born in the SEC...Bred for UT: November

Hey, remember that time about a month ago when I wrote about how I was going to rededicate myself to timely posts on this blog? I'm positive I heard a collective laugh go up...and for good reason. Yikes, where does time go? It's already December?

Here are most of our November pictures with the exception of Thanksgiving and our trip to Asheville.

We've always thought our Smokey Cat had a little squirrel in her. I think we've got our confirmation.

Thankfully I was still working on our bonus room tree and we didn't have any ornaments on yet. I think the experience scared her and ever since she's kept her distance from all of our trees.

No telling where we'll find this crazy girl! We can never close any drawer or cabinet without first checking for her.

Here is the reason that at 4 and 9 my children do not dress themselves. We just had to run to Target really quick so I asked them both to run and put on some clothes.
Miller: Full Panther's colors which he would NEVER take off if I didn't make him. He was off to a good start. And then he insisted on wearing the Santa hat.
Mary Grace: "What, they're both grey so that means they match."

We don't have that many trees in our yard, but for a few weeks they were gorgeous!

Mackenzie babysat the kids one afternoon and they asked to go over to her yard to play in the leaves. They knew Ms. Kim had a lot more than us! Mackenzie texted me this cute picture.

So flag football happened this month and it was a disaster. Miller begged to play. I said no. Then Brent said yes. I found out the league only took 5, 6 and 7 year olds. Much to my disappointment, the commissioner decided to make an exception for Miller. Being the only 4 year old in the league should have been our first concern.
He went to his first practice totally fired up. About half way through they played some sort of sharks and minnows game to try to take each other's flags. Miller was actually really good at avoiding the sharks. Somehow after about 6 trips up and down the field, Miller became one of two minnows left. I think the pressure of staring at 10 players- all bigger than him, and 2 coaches totally freaked him out. He came off the field in tears and never went back on that practice.
More tears came at the end of practice when they handed out jerseys and he found out he was on the Gators. I kid you not, he melted down and said "but I hate the Gators."

Brent and I did everything we possibly knew to do to encourage his participation. We ordered flags and practiced at home.

But nothing worked. He would literally start shaking as we'd arrive at the field for his games.

For a month we insisted he stay on the team, but in the end we realized we were probably doing more harm than good. Any lesson we were teaching about commitment was being completely cancelled out by his fear. Brent and I don't want him to be reluctant to sign up for teams in the future, and we also decided that we were to blame for allowing him to play even though he was too young.

So, hopefully he'll never wear a Gator's jersey again!