October 2019

October was again a jam packed month. For the majority of it we were trying to figure out what we were going to be for Halloween. The kids didn't really have any good ideas for outfits, so Jennifer ended up coming up with an awesome idea. She even decided to do family themed outfits too! Here is everything we did up until Halloween.

The kids had their fall break and I promised them that I would take them to Adrenaline. The kids jumped for almost 2 hours and had a complete blast. They asked me to jump with them too so I was a hot and sweaty mess. 

Trying to teach the kids early to help their old man out with washing the car. They are pretty big helpers for the most part. 

Jennifer and I celebrated our 19th dating anniversary. It is crazy that I have had this beautiful woman by my side for all these years. 

One day a week I spend my day off volunteering at the kid's school. I work on sight words with all the kids in Landon's class. Well, I decided to stay one day to have lunch with both of the kids. 

I also volunteer in Brinley's class too. I help a couple of students in the class with learning how to read a little better. Brinley asked me multiple times to eat lunch with her. No way I could let my little girl down.

With October comes the opening of the Keeneland fall meet. They have a pretty neat sunrise trackside event that they do every Saturday during the month of October. The kids and I went and had breakfast. They also got their faces painted, met some horses, and had a pretty awesome morning.

After an early morning at Keeneland we headed over to the Home Depot to make our project for the month. The kids made helicopters. After the kids completed their helicopters we headed over to the public library where they were having a fall festival. The kids made some slime and played on the inflatables for a little while before we headed home.

The softball team was having a fall scrimmage against Eastern Kentucky. We stopped by to see a few innings before the rain came in.

The clinic that I work at is financially supported by DanceBlue. For those of you that don't know, it is a student run organization who raises money all year long to benefit the children of Kentucky who are undergoing chemotherapy treatments at UK. One of their fundraisers is a 5K. I asked both kids if they were interested in running it with me and to my surprise Landon said that he wanted to do it. We didn't train for the race at all. I had it in my head that Landon would probably run for a little bit and then walk for a bit. I wasn't worried about our time I just wanted to have a good time. Since I wasn't worried about our time we went to eat at Olive Garden right before the race. Well, Landon had set different goals for himself. I just wish that he had told me them. His goal was that he didn't want to walk at all for the entire race. If I had known this in advance I wouldn't have started out near the back of the group of people. We weaved in and out of people for the first mile of the race. We were passing a lot of the college aged kids. The guys were getting frustrated they were being passed by a little kid. All the girls were just saying look at that cute little guy. They had little cheering stations and they always got so excited to see Landon and would high five him and cheer him on. Landon was loving every second of it. I ran behind him the entire time and would tell him how far he had ran. At times I was even struggling to keep up with him because I ate too much at Olive Garden. I called Jennifer to tell her when we were close to the finish line so that she would be ready to get a picture of us. He finished in at time of 28:34 seconds, which was just a minute slower than my race day PR. I was so proud of the little man. Maybe we have a little runner on our hands.

Landon loves board games just like his Uncle McKinley. Landon begged me to see if we could go over to play some games one day. We learned a new game, crokinole.

It's basketball time in the Bluegrass! Big Blue Madness officially starts the season for the Wildcats. I even spotted McKinley and Taylor across the court from my section that I work as a blue coat. I even took a pregame walk up to where my season tickets are located so I could see the new chair back seats.

I also worked the UK football game against Arkansas. It was Jared Lorenzen day and the Wildcats pulled out the win for the big guy. I spent a bit of the game up in the stands with McKinley and Taylor, the lucky recipients of my game tickets that I get for working the game.

Lexington didn't have any rain for almost 50 days straight during the late summer and early fall. When the first rain did happen we got a very unpleasant surprise. Jennifer and I woke up to the sounds of a drip. Upon further investigation we discovered that our roof was leaking in three different spots. We had three different companies come give us estimates and recommendations. All three recommended that we get a whole new roof and that insurance wouldn't cover it because it wasn't due to weather damage. Not exactly the news we were looking for, but we found an awesome company to work with completing the job while we were out of town for a weekend. I would highly recommend Atlas Roofing for all your roofing needs. Let them know I sent you and I will get a little kick back from it.

We made a trip up to Columbus to visit with my sister and her family for Miss Olivia's birthday party. I can't believe that this little girl has been a part of our family for a year. She has so much energy and is getting quite the personality.

Brinley and Landon were in charge of the children's area at Olivia's birthday party. Brinley found this dry erase board and wrote out all the stuff that everyone could do. I thought it was precious.

We let Andrea and Chris have a date night so they could celebrate their anniversary, which happens to just be the day after Olivia's birthday. McKinley and I were in charge of deciding what to do for the night, so we picked our favorite restaurant and took Olivia to her first Giordano's experience.

Before we headed home on Sunday we took the kids to COSI to run around and burn off some energy before we drove the 3 hours back home. They had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles special exhibit that we spent quite a bit of time exploring.

The Lexington and Louisville ballet collaborated for an event that helped raise money for DanceBlue - the group of UK students that raise money for my clinic. They invited all of our patients as well as staff for the dress rehearsal. Jennifer had to work, so the kids and I headed downtown to see the ballet. It wasn't mine or Landon's favorite, but Brinley really enjoyed it.  

The kids had a trick-or-treat event at their school. This is where the kids wore their Ghostbuster outfits for the first time. They had a lot of people saying references from the movie like, "Who you gonna call?". The kids just looked at them. So, Jennifer and I decided that before we actually went trick or treating that we needed to watch the movie again.

We left the school trick or treat and headed down to Kroger Field for a Dance Blue Fundraiser. It was a great event and we even ended up winning a best of Lexington basket. Landon has unfortunately learned how bidding at silent auctions works and put his name and a bid down for a chick-fil-a basket. I thought we ended up winning it, but thankfully someone out bid us at the last second.

One Saturday morning I took the kids down to Memorial Coliseum to have breakfast with and meet the women's basketball team. You could also stay to watch practice, but the kids really had no interest in that. All of these young ladies were extremely nice and good with the kids. I think they enjoyed the donuts the most.

After meeting the women's basketball we headed across the street to the UK student center for a Halloween party thrown by the DanceBlue students. It is always so much fun to see all of the children that I take care of at the hospital out in the real world. I had one of the mothers ask me if I was able to bring my children with me. I said yes and that it was also very important for me to bring them to events. I told her that every night when I put my children to bed that we pray for the children that I take care of. I think it is awesome for my children to meet and know these children that are undergoing chemotherapy. It makes my heart so happy to my two worlds meet and interact. When we were going home they were telling me about all the fun that they had with my friends.

Another Saturday night means another UK football game. This game against Missouri was a rainy mess, but thankfully I got to stand under the awning and didn't get wet. Another win for the boys in blue too!

We all headed downtown for the UK/Georgetown exhibition game. We had lunch at Goodfellas and then I remembered hearing about the pumpkin carving at Transylvania. We made the quick walk up to see what it was all about. Of course I carved a UK pumpkin with my blue coat on.

After some pumpkin carving we all headed over to the game at Rupp between my two Alma mater. Since I was working the game I had to wear my blue coat, but underneath I was representing the orange and black. Proud to be a Tiger and a Wildcat!

The top left picture was the 3 pumpkins that we carved at Transy. The other pictures are the carvings that we did at home.

All of us with the pumpkins that we carved.

Jennifer had to work the night of Pumpkinmania at Transy so the kids and I went to see all of the pumpkins and to do a little bit of trick or treating. We had a blast and got lots of compliments on our costumes. A lot of people liked the Slimer mask. Since Jennifer and the kids rewatched the movie the kids understood all of the Ghostbuster references. They even heard the theme song playing once and said they were playing their song. 

Working in the children's hospital is unlike anyplace else in the world. You see children and their families while they are battling horrible diseases and diagnosis. The people that work with me in the clinic and throughout the UK Children's hospital try everyday to make the day just a little bit brighter and happier for these families. To help with that we celebrate Halloween in the hospital by dressing up and doing a reverse trick or treat. We actually take the candy to each and every patient's room. This year our clinic dressed up as characters and parts of the popular children's game, Candyland. Everyone in the clinic was so creative and their costumes looked awesome. I went more for the practical approach. I dressed up as the box, because lets be honest you can't have Candyland without the box. I got an awful lot of weird looks walking around the hospital, but it all made sense when I lead our Candyland crew around the hospital. It was such an amazing experience to see all the patients dressed up and waiting at their door for candy or treats. I can't wait to see what the theme is next year!

Halloween night got slightly ruined when the day prior they cancelled the city wide trick or treating because of poor weather conditions.The reschedule date happened to fall on a date when Jennifer and I were going to be out of town and at the exact time the kids were going to be at a birthday party. In order to take advantage of our Halloween costumes that Jennifer put together we decided to head to a couple spots to do some trick or treating on Halloween. First stop was at Cabela's where they were having a little event and you could even get your picture made. As you can see Olivia was our Stay Puft Marshmallow and Jennifer was the Keymaster. After Cabela's we headed over to the mall. This was a huge mistake. The place was completely packed and not worth all the trouble. We waited in a line for about 10 minutes and when we got to the front of the store they handed the kids one tootsie roll each. We packed up at the mall and then headed to dinner at Malone's. We had dinner there to celebrate McKinley's birthday. McKinley's birthday is the next day and we weren't going to be able to see him then. 

Like I said October was full of fun and tons of activities. We had a great time celebrating Olivia's birthday and all the Halloween festivities. I am just thankful that now if you ever say "Who you gonna call?" that both of the kids will quickly respond with Ghostbusters! Thanks for reading and God bless!