Sledding

Two winters ago it was a relatively mild winter and the kids didn't get to go sledding at all. However, this winter when there was a decent snowfall I knew that we needed to find some hills to take the kids sledding. There is a spot in our neighborhood that looks like they dug out for a basement but then decided to not build. It is a smaller hill but we decided that it was the perfect size to start out on. The kids school had been called off so we bundled up and headed out.

Brinley laying down in the sled waiting her turn to be pushed down the hill.

Landon about to head down the hill.

Jennifer didn't want to sled this day with us but she took some pictures of us. Here are my two sledding buddies.

The next day school was cancelled again but I wanted to try out a new sledding hill. We made the trip over to Jacobson Park to see if they had any bigger hills for us to go down. We found one and made the climb up to the top and were all excited to go down the big hill.

Landon on his first run down the big hill. The second time he went down the hill he thankfully decided to go down feet first instead of head first. His sled ran straight into a big tree at the bottom of the hill. It broke his sled and got him really upset. Thankfully he didn't get hurt at all. I was just glad that he wasn't going head first on that run down the hill. He didn't really want to go sledding anymore by himself after that.

We finally got mommy out on the sleds with us!

After Landon's accident he only wanted to go down the hill with someone else. So we took turns going down the hill with Landon. 

The next day the kids had school, but afterwards I asked the kids what they wanted to do. Surprisingly Landon said he wanted to go sledding again. His only request was that we didn't go back to the big hill, only the small one. Deal! So, the girls decided to do something else while the boys headed out for another day of sledding.

Happy little guy. Sledding the small hill.

Heading back up for another run down the hill.

Thumbs up from the little man. Since he had the accident of running into the tree I tried to teach him how to slow himself down and help steer his sled a little. Learning because he doesn't ever want to hit another tree.

Just a couple of Heflin boys.

He talked me into dragging him back up the hill instead of him having to walk up.

It was really windy and the sun was getting close to setting so we called it quits after about 30 minutes or so. We then headed back home to warm up with a cup of hot chocolate.

I am so glad that we got the opportunity to finally get out and sled together. Besides the tree it was a great three day stretch of sledding. Maybe next year we can find a bigger hill without any trees at the bottom. I have also thought that we might try to take them snow tubing sometime in the next few years. I have never done it but I think the kids would have a blast. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Louisville Slugger Museum and Kentucky Science Center

Last year I won a basket full of goodies in a silent auction. It included passes for the Louisville Slugger Museum as well as tickets for the Kentucky Science Center. They are actually just a block or two apart in downtown Louisville. After the kids were out of school for Christmas break we decided to make a little day trip over to Louisville. Our first stop was the Slugger Museum. 

Family picture out front with a huge baseball bat.

We got there right on time and were quickly told to head over to the factory tour. Unfortunately, there are no pictures allowed during the tour so I can't show you how they actually make the bats. It is really neat and quite a process to make a bats. They started with showing us how the bats were originally made before modern machines and it would have been a really long and tedious task. However, with modern inventions they are able to crank out any where from 3-5 thousand bats a day. It was pretty neat to see how they have the whole process down to an exact science. The kids actually enjoyed seeing all the things going on in the factory tour.

They had some original game used bats by some of the famous major league players. A few that I picked up, with gloves on (since it was mandatory), were Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr., and a replica of a Babe Ruth.

 After the factory tour you could go around and tour the museum. This was not as interesting for the kids. They kept running around and weren't interested in letting me read all the little details and facts that they had everywhere. However, I was able to talk them into posing with these replicas statues.

Landon doing his best Babe Ruth impersonation. Too bad Landon had his hands on the bat as a righty and not a lefty. Pretty funny picture.

Jennifer ready for the pitch just like Mr. November himself, Derek Jeter.

Doing my best Ken Griffey Jr. impersonation in my shorts and flip flops. Griffey was always so much fun to watch play ball.

By far my favorite impersonation is Brinley kissing the bat like Ted Williams. It is just so funny to me. Part of the factory tour also included these little mini bats. The kids were really excited about them but they quickly got them taken away when they started hitting each other with them.

Sitting in the dugout. We are ready coach. Put us in!

They even had an area where they built some scale models of a few ball parks out of Legos. They were pretty amazing! Here was Wrigley Field complete with ivy on the outfield walls.

This was a neat little sculpture/art/bench in the lobby area. 

After a quick lunch we headed down the street to the Kentucky Science Center. This place was really neat. It had all kinds of things to play with and without the kids knowing they were actually learning about science.

Here the girls were building a little wooden structure. 

The kids trying to climb sideways on the wall. Both kids eventually finished it after multiple attempts. Jennifer was also able to finish as well, but I couldn't get a good foot hold with my sandals on.

Landon climbing around the little play area.

One last picture before hitting the road back to Lexington. We will definitely have to come back and explore some more at the Science Center. Behind us is a huge spherical mirror comprised of a lot of small mirrors put together.

I would recommend both of these museums for anybody that is going to be visiting in Louisville. Clearly the Slugger museum would be great for any that loves baseball while the Science Museum would be great for kids of all ages. There are plenty more places for us to explore in Louisville and I can't wait to go back for another little day trip adventure. Thanks for reading and God bless!

YMCA Basketball

After playing soccer last fall we decided to go ahead and try out a new sport, basketball. This sport is one that I know quite a bit more about. Unfortunately, all the games are played on Saturday mornings and with the current weekend work schedule that I am on I didn't know if I could be one of the coaches. That made me a little upset, so each week I would try to be helpful and be an assistant during practice because it always looked like the coaches were out numbered. Ten little kids for just 2 coaches was just not enough. 

Our little players were numbers 11 and 12. Here Brinley is going for the shot. The whole game is so cute because most of the kids don't know how to dribble, or actually any rules of the game of basketball. So, Brinley and Landon would both get the ball and run down the court without any dribbling and then throw up a shot. Thankfully both kids scored during the season which was more than they did in soccer. They were both so excited too!

Our little 4 year basketball player. He was one of the only 4 year olds on his team that actually scored a goal. He tried so hard, but was so worried about trying to get more goals. Towards the end of the season he actually got a lot better at defense. I told him that he should just take the ball from the other team like he takes toys from his sister.

Brinley did really good for her first season of basketball. I was surprised at how quick she jumped out in the first game and actually scored 2 goals. She spent the rest of the season trying to score more than that but it never happened. She was the only girl on her team that scored all season.

Most of the team was at the last game of the season and they were all excited about getting their trophies. They won the majority of their games on the season, although they didn't keep score. I think that it is funny that Landon is the only kid looking at me.

Proud parents of our little ball players.

These two couldn't have been any more proud of their trophies.

Basketball is something that both kids really enjoyed and were both fairly successful for being their first time playing. I definitely anticipate that we will be playing basketball again. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Game Night

With the kids being so competitive I decided that we should try to harness some of that winning spirit and put it into a family game night. The kids have some favorites that they keep wanting to play, but we recently got some new games for Christmas that have really been a lot of fun. 

Pop the Pig is a quick fun game to play. You shove cheeseburgers in the pigs mouth and then press on his head the number of times that was on the cheeseburger that he just ate. The winner of the game is the person that "Pops" his belly out. As a nurse I can only think of the practice dummies at CPR certification when the kids are pressing on his head because it makes the same sound. 

My mother got me a new game for Christmas too called Blokus. It is one of my favorite games that I have picked up from playing over at my brothers house. Did I mention that my brother is slightly obsessed with board games? The game says that it is for 7+ year old but both of the kids really enjoy it. For a while I was actually undefeated. Now I spend so much time trying to help the kids find a perfect spot that I have actually been dethroned as the champ. 

The kids really like this game where you have a big board full of Disney scenes and you have to find certain objects within the pictures. You have to find random objects like plates, fish, bridges, etc.

Uno is our new go to. It is fairly quick and the kids were really quick to pick up the rules. The only issue the kids have is with trying to hold their cards. They try to build a barricade or some device so that nobody sees their cards. They have actually been pretty resourceful with how to block people from seeing their cards.

Another game of Blokus!

Oh no! The Yeti is about to fall into the spaghetti.

Yeti in my Spaghetti is another quick and easy game that the kids like to play.

Not every game night has ended well. With two kids who are really competitive it sometimes means that when someone wins that the other one is really sad. For some reason it doesn't really matter if Jennifer or I win. It is only a problem when the sibling wins.

Family game night has been a lot of fun for us and I am so glad to see the competitiveness that the kids are learning. I sometimes have to remind them that it is in fact ok when you don't win. The world is not going to end, but rather that there will be more games to play. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Puzzles

About 18 years ago Jennifer and I got a gift of a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. Since then I have absolutely been a jigsaw puzzle addict. I will go periods of time where I will do them all the time and then other times I will go months without doing one. Well, as it turns out my kids have developed a love for puzzles too, especially Landon. So, over winter break I had a desire to start a puzzle, maybe because I had gotten one for Christmas. The kids said they wanted to help so I started them out with the grunt work of sorting through all the pieces to find all of the border. They were actually very helpful!

Many years ago I started dating and labeling the last piece of the puzzle. I thought it was just a cool way to see which piece was the last one since I have glued all of the puzzles that I have ever put together. This was the first puzzle that I ever completed that I got to include the kids initials. They weren't as excited about this as I was.

The first puzzle experience was so good that I immediately decided to start another one. This one was a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Here the kids and Jennifer were again helping with the border pieces. 

Even though I do most of the work on the interior of the puzzle I still think it is cool to let the kids help me with finishing the puzzles. Here all 4 of us are putting in the final piece to the puzzle, a true team effort.

The kids were struck with puzzle fever and got out one of their own puzzles to put together. Here they are almost finishing up their USA puzzle.

I decided to get a couple of smaller puzzles at the store because I wasn't wanting to do another 1000 piece puzzle again just yet. So, I picked up a 4 pack of Disney themed 500 piece puzzles. I sorted this puzzle by myself and when I do I usually pick out all similar looking pieces. Here Landon was putting together a little picture of Mickey and Minnie. 

Here are all the puzzles that I did in the first few weeks of 2018. I did a 1000 piece, a 750 piece oval bald eagle and then 4 500 piece puzzles. Not too bad of a way to start off the new year!

I have around a 100 puzzles that I have done over the years and I have glued every one of them. I had always told Jennifer that I wanted to have a puzzle room in our home where I could display all of them. That has never really worked out, but I was tired of having all of those puzzles sitting under our bed collecting dust. So, I went through them all and found some of my favorites as well as puzzles from places that we have been to on vacation. I hung these up in the laundry room and I was really excited about how it turned out. A nice little reminder while doing the laundry about some of the fun adventures that we have been on.

Seeing all those puzzles under the bed made me realize that we probably shouldn't glue all puzzles any more. So, from now on I am going to decide if it was worth keeping and putting up on the wall. If it doesn't make the cut then I am going to take it back apart and maybe pass it along to someone else so that they could maybe enjoy it too. I am however going to keep my tradition of putting my initials and date on the last piece. So, maybe someday you will get one of my slightly used puzzles. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Infinity Gantlet 19.3 Mile Challenge

It seems like an eternity ago, but this last January Jennifer and I made the trip down to Orlando to run in some races. Jennifer did the Disney World Marathon and I ran in the Dopey Challenge which was a 5k, 10k, half, and full marathon in 4 consecutive days. At the time we said it would be cool to run one in Disneyland California sometime. Well, we decided to make it happen sooner rather than later because if you run at both places in the same calendar year then you can earn a special medal that is called Coast to Coast. So we signed up to run a race in November. Turns out this proved to be a very good decision because we later found out that the race we signed up for ended up being the last race at Disneyland for the foreseeable future. Jennifer didn't want to miss out on getting more medals like in Florida earlier in the year, so we both signed up for the Infinity Gantlet which was races in back to back days for a total of 19.3 miles (10k and half marathon).

Our first stop was the race expo. We wanted to make sure we got our packets since we had a race the next morning at 5 am! The process was really easy and it didn't take but a few minutes to go through the whole process.

After we picked up our packets we headed over to spend a little bit of time at Disneyland before heading to the hotel to get some sleep. First thoughts when walking through the gate was "Man, that castle is tiny!". We took a tour later in the week and they reminded us that this was the first park that Walt Disney built and at the time it was probably a huge undertaking. Millions of dollars later they invested in building a much larger castle down in Florida. Our first ride in the park was the Argonaut, which seemed to be a remodeled 2000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was pretty neat. The ride was themed after Finding Nemo. Jennifer would tell you that we made a huge mistake next in that we went over to ride Splash Mountain. I specifically asked for the front seats on the log. Well, Jennifer got completely soaked and she wasn't very excited about it! We didn't close the park down because we had a race early the next morning.

We got up around 3:30 in order to get ready and make it to the starting line in time for the 10K race. It was really great weather for our race around high 50's. Thankfully we didn't have to freeze like we did last January at the marathon when the temperatures were in the low 30's. Jennifer figured out our costumes. I was Captain America and I carried a toy shield for the entire race. Jennifer was Thor and carried the hammer the whole time.

There were plenty of photo stops along the race route through both parks. We actually stopped at almost every single one of the photo opportunities and almost every character stop. We saw Captain America, Mater, the giant Mickey Ferris Wheel, Santa and the reindeer, Mickey Mouse house, It's a Small World, and the Matterhorn.

We stopped and took pictures with Hawkeye, Thor, Black Widow, Spiderman, Loki, and the fuchsia girls from the Guardians of the Galaxy. In order to save some time waiting in line, I would run ahead of Jennifer and go ahead and get in the next line. We waited almost 25-30 minutes for a picture with Thor and the rest of the characters took about 10-15 minutes.

There were photographers all over the course ready to get some action pictures of you running the races. We got quite a few action shots together even though I ran ahead a few times. Sometimes we were right together, but the photographers didn't know that we were a couple so we sometimes got only a portion of the other person.

Since we were waiting in line to meet all of the characters it meant that our times were horrible. In fact around mile 4 while we were waiting in line for Loki we got passed by the two women in the first picture, the balloon ladies. These are considered the end of the race. They keep the pace for the slowest racers and if you get passed by them then the race crew picks you up and transports you to the finish line and you are not allowed to finish. When they get to each mile marker they stop and give a final countdown before people are "swept". When we passed them I heard them counting down "29,28,27". Jennifer didn't hear them or else she would have flipped out. We decided that we wouldn't stop at anymore stops for the final 2 miles because we definitely didn't want to be picked up. I did however talk her into stopping for a couple of more pictures in front of the castle and with the flowers shaped like Mickey. We crossed the finish line and received our medals. Then it was time to get cleaned up and head out to the park.

The next day was our half marathon. Jennifer dressed up like Iron Man and I went as the Hulk. We again had an early morning with the race starting at 5 am. 

I knew from the time we booked the race and looked at the map of the course that it was going to be much different because only 4 of the 13 miles were actually in the parks. The other 9 miles were spent running through the streets of Anaheim, with a brief stop inside the Anaheim Angels stadium. I told Jennifer that I would run with her through the parks and then we were going to split up and run at our own pace. My favorite picture is the one where I am flexing and Jennifer is shooting something out of her Ironman hand. We didn't really stop at any of the character stops because it was all the same characters that we had seen the day before.

Here are the few things that we briefly stopped to take pictures with during the race. We got a picture with the Ferris wheel, the castle all lit up, one of the many Christmas trees, the Avengers ride and some random horse. After the 4 miles in the parks they didn't have any characters or photo stops with the exception being in the Angels stadium.

Here are some of the pictures that I took along the route and a picture in the middle of Jennifer and I with our medals. After looking back at all the pictures I still can't believe that I took candy from a stranger, but at mile 8 those red vines looked delicious. Running through the Angels stadium was pretty cool. We ran on the infield and behind home plate. As you entered they called out all the runners names too. The whole time all I wanted to do was lay down in the outfield and make a pretend snow angel, you know for Angels in the Outfield.

Besides running our races we spent the better part of 5 days exploring Disneyland and California Adventure. I still enjoy running all kinds of rides and especially ones that have a picture taken during the ride. After the first time I usually do something silly just to make it interesting.

California Adventure was a really fun park. It had Jennifer's all-time favorite ride from all the Disney parks, which is Toy Story Mania. I am super competitive and it frustrates me beyond belief that I can't beat her except for once in a blue moon. Maybe that is why she likes is so much, seeing me sad and frustrated. They also had a Cars ride that was really cool. I also had one of my favorite park meals here too, macaroni and cheese in a bread bowl. It was carb overload but so good and in fact it was actually a hidden menu item that I just happened to spot someone else with. They also had a pretty amazing light and water show too. The only downfall was that it was standing room only and there were a ton of people there the night we saw the show.

One part of Disneyland that we loved was that they changed some of the rides for the holiday season. The Haunted Mansion turned into the story of Jack Skellington and the Nightmare Before Christmas. It would have been much better if I had actually seen the movie, but we still really enjoyed it. After we got home I made it a point to watch the movie and it was actually really good. 

We got medals for our 10K, half marathon, for doing the Infinity Gauntlet Challenge and then the last medal (one on the left) is for doing a half marathon at Disneyland and Disney World within the same year - Coast to Coast Medal. After a couple of pictures in front of the castle we put away all the other medals and just wore the Coast to Coast medal. It's a Small World was so pretty lit up at night time. Every 15 minutes they also had a show on the outside of the building that was pretty cool.

It's a Small World also changed their decorations to coincide with the holidays. It was really amazing inside too! I think out of all three parks we visited this was my favorite Small World. It actually incorporated Disney characters into the ride which was neat. The picture of us holding hands was a throw back to when Landon was just a little smaller. He would just see the sign that is posted inside the boats and it looked like kids had to hold hands with parents. I never told him otherwise. Since Landon wasn't there I picked Jennifer to hold my hand. 

After our races we definitely wanted to show off some of our hardware at the park. We enjoyed some delicious Mickey shaped beignets. The fireworks were also nice with a holiday theme to them.

The Cars land was pretty awesome. If you have a kid that likes the movies Cars at all then they would love this place. We even got to meet Mater and Red (the fire engine).

We didn't wait in lines to meet very many characters because it just wasn't a priority to us. However, Clara Belle was one that we waited a few minutes for because we had never seen her before.

The last day of our trip was spent at Disneyland, which is the only park that Walt Disney ever got to visit during his life. We actually signed up for a tour that was a Walk in Walt's Footsteps. It was a pretty awesome tour and it concluded with a trip up to Walt's apartment which was right above the Fire Dept on Main Street. They only allowed the one picture that they took of us in the apartment. I knew that it was going to be a big day, so I was sure to wear my tie. This is one of my favorite shirts that Jennifer ever made for me.

We had planned to leave earlier in the day so that we could get back to Las Vegas well before our flight time, but Jennifer had trouble pulling me away from the park. We rode Dumbo and made sure to take plenty of pictures with Sleeping Beauty's Castle. The whole week we could not get over the fact that the castle was so much smaller than the one in Florida. Our tour guide told us, which made sense, that the Disney corporation had so much more money when Disney World was being built than Walt had originally when Disneyland was built.

Disneyland and California Adventure ended up being a really awesome experience. I can't wait for a few years from now when we will be able to take the kids to see all the different things that Disneyland has to offer. If you ever get a chance I would definitely recommend you going. I am so glad that we were able to make the trip out west to run our races. Especially since they have cancelled every race at Disneyland for the foreseeable future due to some issues with construction and the local government. So, for now we are part of the last group of people that were able to get the Coast to Coast Medals. We were so thankful to get away and just spend some time as a couple. My parents have been awesome to watch the kids so that we can go and enjoy some things together. Thanks for reading and God bless!