June 2022

15 years since we said I do. Happy to spend my life with this lovely lady. 

At McKinley and Taylor's rehearsal dinner they made sure to send up a congratulations to our parents who were celebrating their 40th anniversary the next day.  

Brinley and Landon in the top photo at the rehearsal dinner and in the second dressed up for the wedding. 

The morning of the wedding Landon had a baseball tournament game. We faced a Dodgers team that had gotten lucky and beat us twice during the season already. Our bats were not the best on the day and we fell to them again. Randy and Sheila, our cousins from New York were able to come and see Landon play. 

Our family sure did clean up nicely. 

The newly married Heflin's with our immediate family. 

The first picture with the cousin's official Aunt Tay Tay. 

Glad to welcome Taylor to our family. The ceremony was beautiful and the day could not have been any better.

All the cousins dressed up. Landon was the lone ring bearer. Brinley was a junior bridesmaid and Olivia was one of the flower girls. 

Brinley and Taylor. Brinley really likes Taylor and really enjoys going to McKinley's house only when I tell her that Tay Tay will be there. 

One of Taylor's nursing school friends got certified and actually performed the wedding. I thought he did a wonderful job for his first wedding. Here we are signing the wedding certificate.

Dancing the night away. You can see that Brinley quickly ditched her dress after the ceremony and pictures. It took a lot of convincing, but I finally got Landon and Brinley out on the dance floor for the Cha Cha Slide. 

The day after the wedding McKinley and Taylor held a open house so all the family could come see their new home. The kids started playing a game of four square in the driveway. Mrs. Heflin even came out and made an appearance. 

With Landon's team losing their tournament game, it was on to summer sports. Both kids will be playing full-time this summer. Brinley with the Rampage and Landon with the Slam. I took this picture because both kids have worked extremely hard to make these teams and have put in a lot of time and effort. They were not given their positions, they earned them. I am extremely proud of both of these kids. 

While McKinley and Taylor were gone on their honeymoon, we were in charge of taking care of Lexi, their cat. The kids were excited to try and play with and pet her. I'm not sure Lexi had the same excitement. 

Landon with his Slam team mates at their first tournament. The bottom picture is Landon with his two regular season team mates, Eli and Levi. 

Part of my job in the DanceBlue Clinic is also staffing the summer camp that Kid's Cancer Alliance puts on for all of our families and siblings. Here these kids get to meet and become friends with other children who have battled this horrible disease. They get to run around and play and enjoy being a child. Sometimes during treatment they miss out on lots of things that are a normal part of childhood. I love every second that I am at camp. Here I am one of the 35 that woke up early to jump in the pool at 7 in the morning. 

I also tried my hand at archery, which I did fairly well at considering it was the first time I used a basic compound bow with no sight. After walking in the creek with some kids I found some geodes that we cracked open to find some crystals forming inside. 

Talking through the cinder blocks to Brinley in the dugout. Look at that smile!

Brinley and her team mates celebrating after a win.

Landon and I traveled to Louisville for his second tournament and his team got their first win together. It was taking us a little while to figure out positions for everyone and how to adjust the batting order. I also became the pitcher to his team because the kids were hitting best at the moment off of me.

On Fathers Day we had a tournament game at 9 am in Louisville with the Slam team. We lost a heart breaker in the first round. I just really wanted to watch him play ball for Father's Day and we got beat out of the Slam tournament too early. So as we were driving home I said lets go cheer on the Rampage team that Landon had been practicing with. I told the coach that we came to cheer them on, but if they needed a player then he was ready. Landon sat in the dugout and cheered his team mates on, but they were getting beat and Landon was sitting out. They put him in during the 3rd inning at pitcher and he was playing lights out defense. Everything hit his direction was an out. They ended up coming back and winning the game to make it to the championship. In the championship he started at pitcher and was put back in the line up as the second batter. They played great and came out as champs! Landon's first championship!

The boys all showing off their bling at home plate.

All smiles to celebrate the championship.

This made for a really special Father's Day. Crazy that we played against another McLean County friend's kid in the championship. Seth and I went to school together our whole life. It was really neat seeing our kids play against one another. 

You know this boy is exhausted when he falls asleep because he hardly ever stops moving. He fell asleep doing his math worksheets. 

Landon made me a card for Father's Day.

Brinley made me a clay figure of the two of us. Sadly it broke, but I am so thankful I took a picture of her art.

Back yard fire pit calls for some roasted marshmallows and s'mores.

Brinley enjoying her s'more. 

Our 3rd Slam tournament proved to be our best yet. We went undefeated over 2 days and won the championship handily 10-1. It was a pretty awesome weekend. This made two weekends in a row with Landon coming home with hardware.

The kids and I took ourselves a little bike ride. Both kids have gotten much better at riding a bike. This ended up being around a 5 mile bike ride and neither kid complained once, which made me very happy. 

Brinley's team brought home some hardware too! She even got the player of the game chain for the amazing fielding that she did. I am so proud of her for the work that she has put into softball. She is gaining confidence by the day and is getting so much better. Glad to see her work paying off. 

June was full of softball and baseball games with a pretty awesome wedding to kick off the month. We are so glad to have Taylor as a part of our family. Thanks for reading and God bless!

May 2022

The bachelor party crew. We had a great time down at the cabin in the gorge. Glad that we could get together to celebrate McKinley one last time before he gets married. 

I came home and was really excited to see the kids. Especially this girl because it was almost her birthday.

May the 4th is always a great day because it is this little lady's birthday. Per her request I made her pancakes in the shape of the number 10.

Birthday cake for Brinley. This year she decided to try a Costco cake. She went for a rainbow on the top.

Mommy and Daddy with their 10 year old. I can't believe that it has been an entire decade being her dad. I still feel like sometimes we just brought her home.

Brinley loves Harry Potter and we just wanted to get her something amazing for her 10th birthday. She was really surprised to see this under the wrapping paper. 

It is still amazing to me when I get to see the puffer fish when it has puffed up. So many of the kids really want to see it puffed at work so I keep this picture to show them. 

Happy nurses week! We never ask for anything, but our clinic always does something really nice for us. They are very thoughtful and I am so thankful to work with all of them.

Brinley said that instead of a party she wanted to have a sleepover. She invited the whole softball team and six of them showed up. They had a blast. They made slime and lip gloss, played tapple, and watched Harry Potter movies. At about 2 am I went down to the basement and told them that they had to go to bed.

When they woke up they went upstairs and drew on Landon's face. He wasn't very amused with their shenanigans. 

Happy Mother's Day to Jennifer. We are so thankful for you even though we don't always show it. We love you!

We decided to try out a new donut shop, Parlor Doughnuts. The kids can never both be happy at the same time. Brinley was excited to try her peanut butter chocolate donut. Landon was upset that his sprinkle donut was too messy. It was delicious once Landon gave up and tried it. 

The kids and I went by their school so that we could vote in the primaries. We actually rode our bikes to the school.

The garden was starting to have some great produce. We had planted lettuce for the rabbits. They loved it and thought it was delicious. 

Uncle McKinley and soon to be Aunt Taylor were starting to move stuff into their new house. They invited the kids over to take a look at everything and to take a little trip down the street for some Greater's Ice Cream. The kids never pass on ice cream.

Brinley began the task of putting together the 6000+ piece castle. She said her goal was to do one of the 36 bags everyday.

Landon was keeping us busy with baseball. He was turning into a key player on the team. He was batting lead off and had easily locked up the second base position. 

One of my friends at work brought me a fruity pebble coffee one morning for work. They know I love my cereal and this was delicious. Well, at least the fruity pebble part. Coffee is awful to me. 

We went to catch a UK baseball game and they were giving away umbrella hats. The kids were really excited about them. I think they are awesome. 

They finally opened the new ice cream shop near our house, Bruster's. So we had to check it out. While Brinley was eating her ice cream she lost one of her teeth. 

We were invited out to watch the Legends play baseball. Both kids ended up getting game balls thanks to Brinley asking the players when they came in from playing in the field.

Landon had tryouts for the Southeastern All-Star team, Crush. He was one of the best kids out there. He caught all 3 pop ups, fielded his 3 grounders, and hit 4 out of 5 pitches into fair territory. He did everything necessary to make the team. Some kids were crying because they didn't hit any fair (too bad their dad was the coach so the kid had nothing to worry about). I was notified around midnight that he didn't make it and the only reasoning that I got was that he was too small. Landon I guess had it all on his mind and couldn't sleep well. He woke up at 2 am and came to wake me up to see if he made the team. I had to tell them that it was their loss that they didn't pick him. It just really sucks that they turned kids sports into who the parents are, instead of basing it off the actual talent of the child. No matter what we knew that this summer we were going to get our fill of baseball.

It was that time again to donate blood. I am just so glad that I can have a small part in helping someone in need.

One of my patients recommended Apollo pizza, so of course I had to try it. It was good, but nothing that we will start driving across town to get on a regular basis.

Landon's soccer season came to an end. Landon has turned into a defensive specialist over the last few seasons with the scorpions. Unfortunately, this will be the last season of the scorpions because the team decided to split up with some starting to play on travel teams. Landon said he didn't want to play because he only liked the scorpion team mates. 

With the start of summer ball that means that you get to use different bats. So, Landon got an early birthday present in the form of a Cat 9. He was really excited to get in the batting cage to work with it.

Landon got noticed at Brinley's practices and quickly found another team that wanted him to play for them. It was the boys Rampage out of Georgetown. They had already set their team for the year, so we became a pick up player. I would contact the head coach and tell him if we were available for the weekend. If so he would go play for them. When he got to play for them he would play at pitcher and would bat second in the line up.

If you know me well, then you know I am a cheapskate. So, for all the tournaments that we were attending we decided to pack meals so that we didn't have to go out to eat multiple times every weekend. Brinley helped Jennifer make the meals one weekend and she left me this note. This was a weekend that we were split between two different locations.

Picture with my little lady. I really enjoy watching her play softball. It is a lot of fun to see her interact with all of her friends. They have even started dancing in between games. The first couple of times they did it they had to drag Brinley out of the dugout. Then she got excited about dancing. 

May proved to be a very fun month filled with mostly sports and practices. Seeing my kids play sports is one of my favorite things. It is one of the things I dreamed about when we first thought about having kids. I just love sports and want them both to love sports as well. Thanks for reading and God bless!