Tyson's Dad Football Video

One of the other UAB coaches stumbled upon this you-tube video of Tyson's Dad when he played football at the University of Florida in 1974. As some of you might know, Tyson's Dad passed away when Tyson was about to turn 3, and Tyson only has one video with his Dad in it. I would love to post that video on here, but for some reason, Tyson wasn't wearing any pants in the video. :) Anyways, it was just so awesome to be able to watch these videos with Tyson and for Tyson to see his Dad play football for the first time. I thought some of you might want to see these videos, too, so here you go! I'm gonna let Tyson explain these videos to you so that you can spot his Dad, Andy Summers #32. Enjoy!

AS BETH SAID, MY DAD IS WEARING #32 ON ALL FOUR OF THESE VIDEOS VS VANDERBILT... THE FOUR VIDEOS ARE SPLIT INTO THE FOUR QUARTERS OF THE GAME... MY DAD WAS A BACKUP DEFENSIVE BACK FOR THE GATORS IN 1974 AND THERE ARE 4 OR 5 CLIPS THROUGHOUT THE GAME OF HIM PLAYING SAFETY BUT THE PLAYS ARE VERY HARD TO PICK OUT. HOWEVER, HE PLAYED ON EVERY SPECIAL TEAMS PLAY DURING THIS GAME AND REALLY DOES STAND OUT. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE THE TIME TO WATCH HERE ARE THE POSITIONS HE PLAYED ON EACH SPECIAL TEAM SO THAT YOU MAY BE ABLE TO PICK HIM OUT EASIER:

PUNT=LEFT UPBACK (IN 3 POINT STANCE) .... PUNT RETURN= FAR LEFT END ON LOS

KICKOFF=3RD OR 4TH FROM THE LEFT .... KICKOFF RETURN... LEFT TIGHT END

HE MAKES QUITE A FEW PLAYS DURING THE GAME (ONE KO RETURN, A COUPLE OF TACKLES ON BOTH PUNT AND KICKOFF, AND PINS VANDY INSIDE THE 1 ON PUNT ANOTHER TIME). BETH AND I BOTH WERE REALLY EXCITED LAST NIGHT TO WATCH HIM PLAY AND THOUGHT THIS OPPORTUNITY WAS A VERY NEAT WAY TO CONNECT WITH HIM. I HOPE THAT JAKE AND WALKER WILL ONE DAY ENJOY THIS VIDEO AS MUCH AS WE HAVE AND HOPEFULLY UNDERSTAND WHY THIS SMALL THING (A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE) MEANS SO MUCH!

"I Be a Football Player"

Do I see a number 32 in his future?
Go Blue Devils!

Tyson returned to work this week and is already busy preparing for an exciting football season at UAB. I can't wait! Now if only the first game would get here already! Only 7 more weeks from today!

Jake is getting really excited about football season, too! I know I've mentioned this a thousand times on here, but all he talks about these days is FOOTBALL! "I be a football player!"..."let's go to football game!"..."Daddy at football practice?"..."I tackle football players!"..."Daddy's a football coach!" I know Tyson must be so proud that Jake wants to be just like him. So cute!

The helmet in these pictures is Tyson's old high school football helmet, and it's been sitting in Jake's closet ever since he was born. We pull it out from time to time to play with it, but not for long because it is HEAVY! I don't know how much it weighs, but it is so heavy that when Jake puts it on he almost falls over! He did, in fact, tip over once today while playing with it and landed smack dab on his face! He popped right up and said "I tackled the floor!" :) Too cute! Again, I know this makes his Daddy proud.

The Slip-n-slide Incident

Daddy and Jake running down the slip-n-slide together.

This is the only shot I have of the big kids- Connor and Chase.

Here is Jake sliding by himself!

He's not a big fan of the slip-n-slide, and neither am I now! :)

Ryleigh Kate

Spenser

Carson

Finally...the story behind the crazy photo! Sorry it has taken so long, life has been non-stop since getting back to our "routine." Anyways, where was I?

We left Tifton last week and headed to Cochran for the day to see my grandparents and my cousins; well, my grandparents had to leave to go to an appointment, so we all went over to my cousin Christy's house to play on the slip-n-slide. Christy's husband, Darin, had found this huge plastic sign someone was throwing out, and he thought it would make a great slip-n-slide. And indeed, it did!

On to the photo, Tyson and I decided we would race down the slip-n-slide. Well, my cousin Christy grabbed the camera without me knowing and decided to snap some pics. Thank goodness she did because that picture is phenomenal! She caught it at just the right time! By the way, the next shot was of the grass! :) I guess they all took off running to me because they thought I had broken my neck, and the camera snapped a few shots of the grass itself. :) I can't tell you 100% what went wrong, but I will tell you what I remember:

Here we are about to start the race...

And here am I 3 seconds later...

We had just taken off so I had tons of momentum, and next thing I know, I hit a ruffle on the slip-n-slide that brought my intertube to a dead stop. Well, I had so much momentum that the lower half of my body couldn't stop itself, and my legs went flying over my body. (This is what is photographed). I remember sliding on my face like that for a couple of seconds (long enough for me to think "Oh my gosh...I just broke my neck...what do I do?"). For real, it was really that long! Anyways, my legs over came my body and I went airborne, did a flip, and completely laid it out on my back. Once I realized I wasn't paralyzed, I jumped right up and started laughing my tail off...I knew how funny it probably looked. Like I said, everyone was running at me at the point, including my sweet Jake, to make sure I was okay and all we could do was laugh. Tyson had no clue I had busted it that bad...until we discovered the picture on the camera.

My dad thinks I should submit the picture to a magazine or something. It is pretty awesome! I look at it at least daily for a good laugh! :) Thanks, Christy, for your mad photography skills!

Cousin Jace

Jace was so sweet to Walker! He kept kissing Walker's little toes!
Jake wasn't too sure what to think about Jace!

He loved his Uncle Tyson!

Tyson and I loaded up the boys last week for a last minute trip to Georgia to visit our families. You see, once football season begins, Tyson is MIA from all family functions , so we wanted to get in one last visit while we could.

Our first stop was in Tifton to see Tyson's mom and my sister and her family. I don't have too many pictures from our trip home, but I did manage to snap a few of my cutie nephew, Jace. I sure do wish I could see those pretty brown eyes and curly hair more often!

"Good Surgery"

Here is a little video Jake prepared for my Dad to wish him luck on his knee replacement tomorrow. I must admit, I had Jake practice what he was going to say a few times, however, he still managed to leave a few words out. I don't know what exactly "good surgery" means, but it sure is cute!

Good luck tomorrow, Dad! Here's hoping that you have a "good surgery!" We love you!

And good luck, Mom! We're praying for you, too! We love you!

3 Months and 2.5 Years

Today, my baby boy turns 3 months old! I can't believe Walker has only been with us 3 months, it seems like he has been apart of this family for much longer than that. He brings us such joy, and we are so lucky to have this little boy in our lives!

What's new with Walker? Walker has started sleeping from about 7 pm to 7 am and waking to eat around 2 am and sometimes 5 am, too. He is the easiest baby to put down to sleep, thank goodness! I wish I could say I have him on a daytime nap schedule, but between being on vacation and just being on the go so much with big brother, there is no consistencies in our days. Now that vacation is over for Tyson, I'm hoping to get the boys back on a routine and Walker on a good nap schedule.

Walker is still exclusively breastfeeding and is doing quite well with that. He is still nursing about every 2 hours during the day but only takes about 10 minutes to nurse each time. He hates the bottle and is giving us a hard time with that, so we're working on it.

I'm afraid that Walker is going to be a little slow in meeting his milestones, maybe not though. I just don't feel like we put him down enough for him to even be able to work on rolling or sitting up or scooting, etc. I'm so afraid that if I put him on the floor, he's gonna get trampled on by big brother. Oh well, he'll get all of that stuff eventually, right? I'm definitely realizing that that kind of stuff isn't as important as it seemed with the first child.

Walker is such a laid back, easy going baby. He hardly ever cries and loves to give us lots of smiles. He is definitely living up to "Walker the talker"....if there is ever a quiet moment in our house (which isn't as often as I would like), Walker just goes to town cooing and "talking" as loudly as he can. It is so cute! And Jake loves to mimic Walker's sounds...super cute, too!

What else? His eyes are still a dark blue but they change hues based on the color he is wearing. They are absolutely beautiful, but it just surprises me that he might end up with blue eyes. Neither Tyson nor I nor our parents have blue eyes, however, 3 of the 8 great-grandparents do have blue eyes- my mom's mom, my dad's dad, and Tyson's mom's mom. It's crazy how genetics work, and I guess I always knew blue eyes were a possibility, but I just never thought I would have a blue-eyed baby. Eye color isn't permanent, though, until 6-9 months, so they may change at any time. (Interestingly, Jake's eyes turned brown at 3 months). We'll see in the next couple of months what happens with his eye color...it's just so intriguing to me! Can you tell? ;)

On July 4th, Jake officially became 2.5! And man, don't I know it! The terrible 2's are in full swing at our house! I could go on and on about that, but I'm going to be positive about Jake at 2.5 instead.

Let's see...what is going on with Jake that you might not have already learned about on the blog?

Jake has finally phased out Barney, thank goodness! He is now obsessed with Dora and Diego, which is completely fine by me since he is learning so much Spanish. In fact, instead of answering us with "your welcome" he says "de nada." And the other day, I heard him tell someone "hola!" Ha!

Jake is still very much into his cars, dump trucks, and trains. He loves to pretend to be a train conductor and yells, "All aboard....this is the Polar Express!"

If you ask Jake what he is going to be when he grows up, he says either a "football player," "soccer player," or a "baseball player." And I swear to you we didn't put those things in his head! ;)

I could just go on and on with all the cute things Jake is saying and doing, but honestly, I've been trying to write this post for about 5 hours and I can't get it done because 2 silly little boys keep interrupting me. Such is life these days! I will say this about Jake, when he isn't throwing a tantrum or telling us "no!," he is a very kind-hearted little boy who shares with his friends and loves his family and best friends Ryan and Brantley very much. :)

Flip-n-Slide

And just in case you need a close-up of the above picture:

And just in case that isn't close enough, here you go:

Surprisingly, my neck isn't broken. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be really sore tomorrow, though! Oh, and don't you like the look of concern of my oldest child in the background? As soon as I landed (which is after I went airborne and which is after I did the most impressive flip EVER), he came running to see about me. Pretty crazy that my 2 year old recognized the awesomeness of this "flip-n-slide!"

More on this later when my head and neck aren't throbbing in pain! :)

Gone Fishin'

Since Jake has been doing so well going potty, we asked him what he wanted for a "big prize" and he said "a fishing pole." So, we caved in and got him a fishing pole today. It was so funny when we took him to the store...we took him to the kiddie poles and he immediately spotted the Dora fishing pole. Unfortunately, it was pink and glittery, so Tyson immediately said no. Instead, he got a more "manly" looking pole that was blue and green. Ha! I told Tyson that the fish didn't have a preference over a pink and glittery or a blue and green pole.

Jake is in love with his fishing pole...so much so that he insisted on napping with it...so much so that he ran around the house trying to catch anything that could with it...so much so that he broke it within minutes of getting out of the car because he was so excited. Yep, he never even got to go fishing with it. Oh well, Tyson said he lasted about 4 casts anyways and was over fishing. He was much more interested in throwing the dog food, yes dog food, into the pond. You see, our neighbor swears that the fish at this particular pond prefer dog food, so dog food it was. Unfortunately, the dog food wasn't doing the trick today because there was no fish to be had by the Summers' family. Oh well, it was all for the experience for Jake, and he had a great time...with or without his pole.

4th of July Parade

This picture brings tears to my eyes!

Walker's first 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!!

Jake and Brantley

Just Brantley.

We got to see our good friends Dawn, Connor, and Pat at the Fresh Market.

That's Jake airborne!

Brantley's new little brother, Bricen.

Bricen was born June 21. He and Walker and gonna be best buds just like their brothers!

Happy 4th of July! We kicked off the weekend with our neighborhood's 4th of July parade this morning. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones who didn't walk or ride in the parade, but we really enjoyed watching the parade instead. As you can tell by the pictures, Jake was adorable waving his American flag and waving to the parade-goers. So sweet!

After the parade was over, Jake got to go see the fire truck that lead the parade. That was the first time Jake has ever gotten to see a fire truck up close, and I thought he would be enamored, but he acted all shy instead. Typical. He did enjoy ringing the bell on the front of the truck, though. :)

We also stopped by our neighborhood's Fresh Market for a little while after the festivities were over. There was live music, fresh produce and other things for sale, and a big "jump jump" that Brantley and Jake had fun playing on. So much fun!

What a great start to a fun weekend!

Friday Fun Day

"Thanks for the shades, Pa Pa! I'm so excited about them!"
...and so is Walker!

Tyson's vacation time is winding down, so we are making the most of our last days together. I did sleep in this morning since I had to work last night, and we just kind of hung around the house today having fun the four of us.

We got a good kick out of these sunglasses my mom sent Jake; she told me about them before she sent them and said, "they look just like his Daddy's sunglasses." Ha! They are hilarious on Jake's (and Walker's) face! They aren't quite what I had imagined, but we appreciate her effort as always!

So...I'm looking pretty rough in this picture (thanks to the night-shift), but I want to always remember this moment of having both my boys in my arms. Love this!