School's out! We were definitely ready for summer break. The kids were excited about being out of school, but due to my job they were going to have to attend summer camp at the YMCA. Outside of summer camp we thought of all kinds of fun things for us to do.
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| Again our month started out with a trip to the Home Depot. The kids are both really getting good at following directions and making the crafts all by themselves. I am really proud of them. |
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| The kids baseball coach was out of town for the last few games of the season and they asked if I could help out even more with the team. I kind of fell into the head coaching role. I am a competitive person by nature, but this just bumped it up to the next level. I wanted everyone to play their best. I would try to tell everyone in the field exactly where to throw the ball each time before the other team's player was at bat. A couple of times, my own kids didn't even listen to my advice and it made me just a little frustrated. Both kids at one point said they never want to play baseball again. I had to have a sit down talk with them and told them that I am not ever mad at them on the baseball field, that I just want them to do their best. I also told them that I will work on my tone when I tell them something during a game. So, not quite sure if I will ever coach the kids again. |
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| After our baseball game we headed back to western Kentucky for my cousin's wedding. |
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| It was so crazy to see my little cousin get married. We had a blast at the reception. The kids ran around and ate everything off the candy bar. Congrats to Amanda and Lars! |
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| They had some props at the wedding for a photo booth. This big ring seemed like the perfect thing for my bride considering the next day was our 12th wedding anniversary. |
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| Celebrating 12 years with my beautiful wife. Mimi watched the kids for us so that we could go out and have dinner together. |
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| We tried out a new restaurant for us, Tony's. It was good, but it wasn't spectacular. So, for the price of what all we got we may not be back for a while. I did enjoy spending some kid free time with my wife. |
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| I have been struggling off and on with a knee injury this year and it was finally starting to feel better so I decided to take the kids out for a run in the jogging stroller. They sure have gotten heavy in the past year. I was really struggling to get them up the hills in the neighborhood. |
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| On to the tournament for these kiddos. We squeaked out a first round win. It was a very intense game, but the Red Sox played tough and moved on to the next round. Mimi and Pap came to watch them play. |
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| I spotted my first tomato on the vine. I am very excited to see what kind of produce we end up having this year. I am hoping for lots of cucumbers and loads of tomatoes. |
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| First zucchini of the season. |
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| Our 2nd round tournament game against the Giants. Here was our lead off hitter, Brinley. |
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| We got crushed in the game versus the Giants, but the team all played really hard and we left everything out there on the field. I am extremely proud of these two. They came a long way in their first t-ball season. |
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| These kids got trophies for finishing third in the regular season. |
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| Ever since Brinley learned how to ride her bike without training wheels she has really enjoyed riding with me. Landon still wasn't quite ready to take the training wheels off yet. We all took a trip around the neighborhood one afternoon. |
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| First time I ever slept on the top bunk was at Indian Summer Camp. This is a camp that is for children with cancer. Part of my job at the clinic allows me to attend camp as part of the medical staff. I was extremely excited to go and I had an absolute blast. |
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Part of Indian Summer Camp requires the kids to clean their cabin every day. Part of our job as medical staff is to judge the cabins to determine whose cabin is the cleanest. Apparently at some point the kids and their counselors decided to start bribing the medical staff with gifts to help them win. Almost every cabin had some type of bribe. Cabin 7 made sure that I wasn't left out. If you can't read the note it says that they searched all of camp to find something as cool as me and the best they could find was this Ale-8.
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Part of Indian Summer Camp means lots of fun things for the kids to do. If you participate in the activity then you get a pin to commemorate it. As you can see, I stayed pretty busy my self in the day and a half that I got to stay at camp. This camp truly was an amazing experience. Getting to see all of these awesome kids, who are cancer survivors, just getting to be a kid again made my heart happy.
If you want to find out more about Indian Summer Camp just click on the link below.
https://www.kidscanceralliance.org
There are many ways you could get involved. You could donate or even be a volunteer at one of their many events or at camp next year. Believe me when I tell you it will be an awesome experience. |
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| After returning home from camp I got to help out at another awesome event, the Luau for Life. This is an event that the Pediatric Survivor Picnic Committee puts together every year to raise funds for a picnic that we throw for all of the former and current patients that we have taken care of with cancer. We have live music, raffles, games, wine, food, and a silent auction. This year it was awesome weather and we had a great turn out. We were able to raise a lot of money which made it even better. All of the money like I said goes towards our picnic that we have in August. Again it is another time where all these kids and their families can come out and have an awesome day of just being a kid. It is always so much fun to see all of them outside the hospital setting. |
If you would like to find out more about our Survivor Picnic or find out ways to help us raise money for an awesome event then you can visit our website:
http://kchcancersurvivors.weebly.com/
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| The kids were happy to see their buddy Maggie. They ran around the entire time and had a blast. |
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| At the Luau for Life Landon learned what a silent auction was. He was checking the bid sheet every few minutes to make sure that nobody had outbid him. Well, on the way out to the car Landon told me that he couldn't believe that we won this huge box of games. I told him that we didn't win, that we in fact paid for them. He said that he meant that we won because nobody put down a higher amount than he did. Might not be taking him to many more silent auctions. |
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Happy Father's Day. I am so blessed to be a father to these two awesome kids. It is my greatest joy in this world. Being a dad is my absolute favorite thing and I am so lucky to have Brinley and Landon. I sometimes question if I am doing this "parenting" thing correctly, but I guess time will only tell.
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| For Father's Day the kids and Jennifer helped decorate some pots for me to put up in the garden. Jennifer even mounted them on the fence posts in the backyard. She planted flowers in them to try and attract bees so that they could pollinate my vegetable garden too. Brinley painted a bunny on one of her's and our family on the other. She is so crafty just like her mother. |
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| Landon had trouble coming up with any ideas to paint on his pots. So, Jennifer turned his hand print into a basketball and his foot print into a football. They both turned out awesome. |
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| Speaking of the garden, the zucchini plants have been producing like crazy. |
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| Just a couple days worth of zucchini. We made zucchini bread with some and I gave the rest away. It is absolutely crazy how fast it grows. |
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| Right before it was time to leave town for vacation we told Uncle McKinley that we wanted to have a game night with him. We played a couple of games, but the hit of the night for Landon was Pokemon Monopoly. He was obsessed and he told us that it was the only thing he wanted for his birthday in a month. |
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We decided on a family vacation this summer that we knew the kids would enjoy. They really liked Legoland out in California last year so we knew that they would enjoy it down in Florida. However, this time we decided to stay on the official property of Legoland. From the moment we got there the kids had a blast. We actually stayed at the Legoland Beach Resort.
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| The kids were extremely excited about the bunk beds and the lego set that they had waiting for them on their bed. I really thought the design of the little houses was cute. If you ever want to make a lego house then just start with some cinder blocks. |
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| The kids also enjoyed playing in the pool. Other than the legos that we built into floats it was just an everyday average pool. |
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| The next day was our official first day at the park. We were able to explore the entire park and water park in just one day. I think we were even able to ride almost every single ride the park had to offer. It was really hot, but lines weren't very long at all. I think the longest we waited to get on something was in the water park and it only was about a 10 minute wait. The bottom left picture is Brinley with a stuffed unicorn. Brinley found a game at the park that said that everyone is a winner. So, she decided that she wanted to play with her own money and she "won" this unicorn by pulling fish out of water. |
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| The kids had a blast in the water park. It was your basic water park with some slides, a wave pool, and a big bucket that dumps water on you. They had a couple of unique things like where you could build a lego tower and then try to destroy it with a water gun. They also had an area where you could build a boat out of legos and then race against other people's boats. |
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| I really like the area where they just build all kinds of landmarks and characters out of legos. So much time and effort was put into making these works of art. I am always extremely impressed. We saw all the Star Wars characters, the space shuttle launch, and even the Iwo Jima Memorial. |
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| Day 2 started out with us packing up the room and putting it all in the car and then heading over to the park. We were some of the first at the gates and surprisingly the kids were picked to be the ones to open up the park. They choose someone everyday to flip the "switch" on to the whole park. It is a little switch made out of legos and it is only able to be turned on by a child. The pirate character was the man who picked the kids out of the crowd to open the park. As we were walking back into the park for our first ride Brinley said that she couldn't believe that she turned on the power to the whole park. Landon looked up to me and said "Dad that switch didn't do anything." I quickly and quietly told him to not tell his sister and to let her think that it did. We have one imaginative thinker and one realistic thinker. |
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| Legoland has a botanical gardens that we took a stroll through. We spotted an armadillo (bottom left picture). We also enjoyed a speedboat and ski show. |
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| The top row of pictures is of things that the kids build in the interactive area. The first one is a car Landon built and then raced against other little kids. The other two are robots that the kids built and programmed to move around. Landon was sad that we didn't get to keep the robots after building them. The kids were also finally tall enough to ride an over the shoulder roller coaster. Jennifer and Brinley both took a seat at the Harry Potter sorting hat. |
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The first day at the park Brinley paid with her own money to win a unicorn. Landon had a complete meltdown because he couldn't find a game that guaranteed a win with a prize that he wanted. His heart was determined to win this Charizard. Well, the only problem was that it was a game in which you had to throw a bean bag and knock over a set of cans. Landon does well to throw a baseball within my general vicinity when playing catch so I knew that if we were to do it that it was going to be me. We also found out that there wasn't a small charizard prize only a large, so you would have to win it twice to get the prize he wanted. I had almost talked Landon out of attempting it because it was too much of a risk and we might not get anything and could spend all kinds of money. Well, he was still upset about the whole thing, so while the kids were riding a ride I went over to see what I could do at the game. I started by asking the guy how difficult he thought it was and if many people were able to win it. He said that they have quite a few winners. I told him that my little boy really wanted the Charizard. So, since I knew I would have to at least win twice I paid for the cheaper option of buying 3 games. On attempt one I knocked all but 1 can off. Then on the second attempt I did the exact same thing. Now, I was thinking I just threw 10 dollars away. On the last attempt I knocked all of the cans off the ledge. The only problem was that I won a small prize and I needed to win one more time to get him the prize he wanted. I guess the worker felt sorry for me and he told me that if I paid for one more game and I could just knock off the single remaining can then he would upgrade me to the large. Thankfully I knocked it off and was able to present it to my little boy and he looked at me with the happiest face like I had just given him the greatest gift in the world. Best $14 dollars that I have ever spent!
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| We bought the picture pass so that we could get all the pictures of us on the roller coasters. We always enjoy getting to see what everyone looks like when we get off the rides. The middle one and the bottom left were on a ride called the Lego Race. You can see some of us with virtual reality goggles on. Landon wasn't tall enough to ride with the goggles on so the adult riding with him wasn't allowed to ride with them on either. Brinley loved it! You were able to ride the roller coaster while watching a race between lots of Lego cars. |
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| We also met some characters while we were at the park. We saw Emmitt, Lucy, and Benny. If you look closely in the bottom right picture with Landon, myself and Benny you will notice that Landon is wrapped up in a towel. I had to do that because it was taken with green screen and Landon's shirt was green. |
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| Here was our first attempt at the picture with Benny and Landon. Green screen fail. |
After our second full day at Legoland we hopped in the car and headed to the east coast of Florida. We stayed the rest of the week in Daytona Beach. Our hotel was right on the beach, so everyday and night ended on the beach. During the heat of the day we tried to do something to get out of the sun.
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| The kids loved the beach. Brinley loved the waves and looking for shells. Landon preferred the beach and more specifically burying himself in the sand. |
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| More fun on the beach. The middle picture shows the first sandcastle that the kids and I made. |
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| I found a little chocolate shop that gave tours, so of course we had to check it out. Landon and I got to try chocolate covered bacon, chocolate covered potato chips, a turtle, and a chocolate caramel. Landon said that the caramel one was his favorite. |
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| I also found out about a lighthouse in the nearby area of Ponce Inlet. We climbed all 203 stairs to the top. It is actually the second largest lighthouse in the United States. It was pretty awesome views from the top. The kids were excited about climbing up, but were just a little terrified on the way down. I carried Brinley over half of the way down. Landon told me that he wanted to climb it again. There were no other takers that offered to go back up with him. |
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| Brinley really wanted to go out early in the morning to watch the sun come up. I verified with her the night before that she was sure she wanted to get up that early. She said she wanted to so we got up about 6:30 am to head out and watch the sun come up. She didn't watch the sun all that much, but she did enjoy getting into the ocean every chance she could got. |
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| Our last full day at the beach and we wanted to make our biggest sand castle yet. Landon, Brinley and I worked for a long time on this creation. You can tell I love patterns and am very symmetrical. Landon once again buried himself in the sand. I also found a dead crab while Brinley and I were out looking for shells. This terrified Landon because he then realized that there were crabs that large in the ocean. I could barely get him back out in the ocean at all. |
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| We also took a dolphin and manatee tour through the inlet. We spotted a couple of dolphins and manatees on the trip, but the difficult part was making sure the kids saw them before they went back under water. They even let the kids steer the boat for a little bit which they thought was really cool. |
