Fall 2017

This year for the Halloween and fall season we found plenty of fun activities to do and places to go. The kids always enjoy dressing up so we took advantage of some of our stock pile of dress up costumes. We carved pumpkins and even visited a couple of the apple orchards.

The kids and I went downtown to Transyvania University for Pumpkinmania where all the students and faculty passed out candy to all the kids. It was a good idea, but there were just too many people and the kids didn't seem too interested in waiting for it to get dark and for the lighting of the pumpkins. So, we left after they visited all the candy stations.

We had gone to Evans Orchard for Brinley's school field trip so we decided to take a family trip to Bi-Water Farms. We enjoyed going through a corn maze together.

The kids enjoyed playing on all the different things around Bi-Water. I didn't get a picture of it, but the kids had the most fun going on the zip line over and over! This place is huge and has tons of stuff to play with. The only downfall from other orchards in the area is that all the adults have to pay to enter even if you don't play on any of the equipment. Definitely worth checking out though!

This year I tried to let the kids cut their pumpkins as much as possible. I also let them decide what shapes to make their eyes nose and mouth. I think they turned out pretty good. 

After the kids went to bed, Jennifer and I cut out our pumpkins. Jennifer went with the evil pumpkin and of course I made the UK pumpkin. I did mine completely free hand, so I was really surprised that it turned out that good!

Since Jennifer didn't get to go with us to the Pumpkinmania we decided to go see all the pumpkins lit up one night after a UK basketball game. We spent about 20 minutes looking at all the pumpkins and picking out our favorite ones. It is pretty cool to see.

Portrait Innovations sent out an email telling about a special day that they were going to be having for kids dressed up in their Halloween outfits. Jennifer had to work so the kids and I packed up and headed to get some pictures. I am so glad that I did because these turned out awesome! Everyone loved the Buzz and Jessie costumes. I am just a little sad that we didn't have the whole crew together for the pictures. Also, they took and printed off pictures for us for free, yes FREE! How awesome is that!

The past couple of years we have made a little trip over to Georgetown for their Spooktacular downtown trick or treating. It is always a lot of fun and the kids love it. This year with Brinley being in school it got to be a special little day with mommy and daddy for Landon. He had a lot of fun, but acted so shy to everyone and didn't even want to pick out candy at times or say trick or treat. I guess he still heavily relies on his big sister to do most of the big talking. This was also a trial run for our actual Halloween costumes.

Grandma and Grandpa came to celebrate Halloween with us. They had told us in advance that they were going to be coming up since my little brother's birthday is the day after Halloween. So, Jennifer made them a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head costume so that they could fit in with the kids. On the right hand side is a picture of the kids with our next door neighbor's dragon lawn decoration. They love it and I think have gotten their picture made by it the last few years.

The whole Toy Story crew. Jennifer started asking the kids a few months before Halloween what they wanted to be. We couldn't ever think of anything that worked out very well. Jennifer was ready to just tell the kids that they could dress up as whatever they wanted, but I still like when they dress up as something that goes together. We tossed around a couple of ideas and went to the Disney store for some inspiration. Landon loved the Buzz outfit and then Jennifer decided that she could make the Jessie costume for Brinley. Then she made my outfit by dying one of my shirts yellow and drawing red lines over the whole thing. She made a cow print vest and a homemade belt buckle along with a few other accessories to complete my Woody costume. Jennifer downplays sometimes how good she is with all of her Pinterest projects, but she is very talented and everything always turns out awesome! I just wish that she had gone for a bigger character for herself, maybe like Little Bo Peep. We got so many complements in the neighborhood and a few people who said "oh look, an astronaut and a cowgirl!" I almost failed to mention that Jennifer also sewed the stick horse Bullseye for Brinley too!

Halloween is such a fun time for kids to dress up and pretend to be one of their heroes or favorite characters. I have enjoyed the past few years of dressing up as a family. Jennifer swears that this was her last year of making our costumes, but I might just have to persuade her again next year. They are truly one of a kind and we are so thankful for her creative and artistic abilities. Send us an idea or two of what you think we should be next year. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Soccer

Earlier this year I had a friend mention to me about his son playing soccer with Upwards. I thought it would be something that the kids would enjoy so we went to one of the tryout nights so that they can see what skills and abilities each kid has so that they can try to even the teams out to some degree. Thankfully they allowed the kids to be on a team together. We met our teammates and coaches at practice and started working on our soccer skills, which I have no idea about anything that they were learning. We also learned that our team name was going to be the lil monkeys. The season seemed to go by extremely fast and the kids actually had a lot of fun. I wanted so bad for both kids to score and as the season progressed it seemed more and more unlikely that it was actually going to happen. The kids had a couple of kids on the team that were much better than everyone else and they seemed to keep the ball and never pass it to any of their teammates. I understand that it is hard for kids at this age to understand teamwork, but sometimes Brinley and Landon were wide open and had a easy score but nobody would pass the ball. A couple of times I actually got really upset when the kids were going toward the goal and one of these kids on their team took the ball away from them. The other side of it was that because they had these good players the team was always on the winning side of things, although they don't keep score. Here are a bunch of pictures from our season.

The kids were excited after their first soccer game.

For the last game they had a tunnel and smoke machine for all the kids to run out of and have their name announced.

Here was one of the times I was talking about. Brinley had a breakaway and then her teammate swooped in and took it before she could kick for the goal.

Some of the family members would create a little tunnel for the kids to run under after the game. The kids thought it was awesome and were always so excited about it. Sometimes the other team would even come run through the tunnel.

At the celebration pizza party after the last game.

2017 Upwards Lil Monkeys

We had quite a few people come out to watch the kids play during the season. They enjoyed having a pretty big cheering section for this game. I think MiMi came to almost every game. 

At the end of the season the kids both said that they had a lot of fun and wanted to play again next season. At least they enjoyed it and that is in all honesty the most important thing. One thing that I was really proud of was that Brinley won the Christ-like award one game because she helped her teammates and opponents up every time that they fell down. It got to be excessive in later games because the ball would be right beside her and she would skip on kicking the ball to go help someone up. We just need to work on kicking, passing and ball handing skills before next season. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Fall Break 2017

It just so happens that the kid's fall break fell a month after my sister moved to a new city, Columbus. We decided that it would be the perfect place to get away to for a few days. We were excited to get to see Aunt Andrea and Uncle Chris. I think it is going to be pretty cool having my big sister closer so that she can see the kids more often. After the kids got out of school we began our journey toward Columbus. A few weeks before the trip I discovered that Ed Sheeran was going to be performing the same night that we were arriving. Thankfully Grandma and Grandpa decided to head up to Columbus for a visit, so they got to watch the kids while we headed downtown for the concert.

Date night with the wife. 

The whole crew. We were on the back row, but at least we were there!

We were sitting almost even with the stage. We missed seeing some of the stuff on the screens,but we got a birds eye view of how he was using his looper pedal. He literally was a one man band. Since I had only recently become a big fan of his, I only knew a little over half of the songs that he played, but the show was amazing! 

Jennifer and I said that we would definitely like to go see him again the next time that he is performing close to us.

The next day it was raining so we decided to head over to Chuck E Cheese for a little indoor fun.The kids had a blast playing all of the games and we finally decided to cash in our tickets that we had been saving up. Brinley picked out a playdoh toy. Landon picked this out after looking for about 10 minutes at all the options. It looked like a little toy battle arena. They were both so excited to get back to Aunt Andrea's so that they could start playing with them.

Well it turns out that the toy Landon had picked out was actually just a board! The box did not contain any of the action figures that it had shown on the front of the box. He was devastated. So me and the little man got back in the car and headed back to Chuck E Cheese to see if they could help us out. They let us exchange it for a new prize! Landon was so happy!

Then we headed over to check out one of the public libraries. Landon was so tired that he fell asleep in the car. Brinley enjoyed the kid area.

A Columbus ice cream place called Jeni's was next on the list of places to explore. They had some very odd flavor combinations, but we all found something that we liked. Landon picked out the purple one which was wildberry lavender flavored and I thought tasted like perfume, but he said he loved it! The two that I picked were sweet potato eclair and salted peanut butter with chocolate flakes. We would all highly recommend Jeni's to anyone visiting the area.

The kids both approved! 

The next day we headed out early for one of the kid's highlights of the trip which was a visit to COSI, the Center of Science and Industry.

Aunt Andrea and Landon learning about how much energy, or pedaling, it takes to light up some light bulbs. 

Landon was in love with this huge train track. It baffled us because at home he rarely wants to play with his train table.

We spotted Thomas while we were in the train area.

What in the world do you think Aunt Andrea and Landon could be lifting up in the air?

Brinley was helping them too! You can see that in the background they are in fact lifting up a car! Science is amazing because without the use of a lever there is no way that they could ever lift up any car.

Aunt Andrea was the only one brave enough to take a ride on the tight rope unicycle.

The kids exploring the inside of a space capsule.

Landon really enjoyed the water table even though this picture may not show it. I think he was sad because that other kid got in front of him and put his ball on it. 

Landon even dabbled in the painting area to create a masterpiece.

Brinley absolutely loved the farmers market vegetable and fruit stand area. She got so engulfed in trying to put all the right produce into their correct bins. The only problem was that as soon as she would get everything in order some other kids would mess something up. It was a vicious cycle that Brinley was trying to correct. It was funny seeing her trying to run around and pick up everything. It almost is how her mother and I feel at home with trying to clean the house. Every time we get things in order the kids come behind us and mess everything up.

We were just walking down the hallway and spotted this worker with his tarantula. Jennifer practically ran down the hallway with the kids. The rest of us stuck around to touch the little guy. It was actually terrifying, but I saw small kids doing it so I did too!

We found these little pulley chairs. We both sat down in one and tried pulling ourselves up. Jennifer was getting all the way up and I was struggling. I know that I am bigger, but it didn't make sense because I know that I am stronger than her. Then I tried out her chair and realized that it was really easy. Turns out that each chair was different in that it had more pulleys and this one had 3, which made it the easiest. I was sitting in the hardest one that only had 1.

We also wondered upon this room where they had a production studio complete with a green screen. We sent grandpa up there and kept changing the backdrop. We would ask him questions to see if he could guess what was going on behind him. We just thought we were giving good clues, but turns out that when we went around we discovered that he could see what was going on the whole time on the monitor.

This little drum was attached to the bar that Brinley is holding onto. The bar took your pulse and then the drum would beat and the heart would light up in correspondence with your heart beat. I thought it was pretty awesome.

This place is huge and even though we had about 5 hours to explore it still wasn't enough time. We are already planning a return visit and possibly a season pass. The kids could have played in this place for days! I would definitely recommend it if you are ever in the area.

After COSI we headed over to Dave and Buster's for all the big kids to have a little fun. I had never been in one before and I was actually pretty excited about it. It is just a big person Chuck E Cheese. Grandma stayed out in the car with the kids because they fell asleep on the way there. Here everyone was playing a game of trivia.

Jennifer playing her first game of red solo cup, aka beer pong. I even tried my hand at it and actually set the high score. The kids woke up and came in just about the same time we had used up all of our credits. They wanted to play some games but I told them that they would have to wait until our next time.

We all grabbed a bite to eat before packing up everything and making the 3 hour drive back home. The kids really enjoyed their fall break spending time with family up in Columbus. I have a feeling that we will be going back to visit sometime soon. Thanks for reading and God bless!