September 2022

We signed the paperwork for the new house and then rushed to get the U-haul emptied at the new house. Then we headed back to fill it up again. While we were moving stuff out we had a lady coming to stage the old house so that we could put it up for sale. The kids only carried a few things in, but they helped Jennifer and Taylor pick up stuff at the old house. McKinley was due up to help me move because over the past 14 years since he left for college I have helped him move 11 times. After moving boxes all afternoon long we had our first meal in the house, Little Caesar's.

The only goal while moving stuff into the house was to get the stuff in. The house was complete chaos. It would take us a long time to get everything put into its new place. Another problem was that the lady who was staging our house wanted to use some of our furniture. We agreed, but quickly found out that might have been a mistake. We left our bed there which meant that the only thing we had to sleep on was an air mattress. 

The kids were super excited about the new house because they got their own room. They were happy to sleep in their beds.

We ran into Mayor Linda Gorton at Donut Days one morning. We introduced ourselves and I told her that it was nice to have a former nurse in charge of the city. 

Well, I signed up for another season of driving recruits around on visits to the UK Football games. We started the season off with a win against Miami of Ohio.

The kids and I got dropped off at the old house by Jennifer after church and we rode our bikes to the new house. It was only about a 3 mile drive. I can't wait for us to explore and find places to ride around the new house.

One of my patients invited the kids and I to their birthday party. We were happy to go and celebrate with him. It was out at Champs and the kids had a lot of fun roller skating. So much so that they asked their mother to take them back the next week.

I finally started to unpack my all my sports memorabilia. I have quite the collection. I'm sure Jennifer wished I didn't have that much stuff because it isn't nice to look at. 

We were happy to take Aunt Tay Tay out to dinner for her birthday. She chose Mexican which was funny to me because all she ate was chips and queso. The kids picked her out some gifts from the Dollar Tree. One was the tiara that she is wearing that says Happy Birthday. Landon got her a glass that said Happy Birthday. 

On the way home from the Mexican restaurant Taylor was getting out of the car and she accidently dropped it and it shattered in into a hundred pieces. 

In order to make the old house look better I went and tried to work on the yard. I ripped out the entire garden even though it was still having some produce. I bagged up the good tomatoes and brought them over to the new house for us to eat. 

The kids and I enjoying the perks of our new backyard, Jacobson Park. We just went out to play a little pitch and catch as the sun was setting. 

Landon and his Garrett Morgan Wolfpack teammates at the cross country meet. Landon ran a nice race and was all smiles afterwards with his buddy Cash. 

The past few years I had seen and heard about the remembrance climb that the firefighters do every year on 9/11. I wanted to do it and asked the kids if they did too. Everyone agreed to doing it, with a little reluctance from a certain young lady. We climbed half of the stadium and then did it a second time. After the first time we rang a bell and said the name of the person who lost their life that we had picked up at the beginning. We all had the person we chose clipped to our shirts during the entire climb.

Another night that we could get out and enjoy the park. We took a walk down to the playground so that the kids could play. I do know that God can paint a beautiful sunset. 

I had a day off from work so Jennifer and I decided to go out for a lunch date. Only problem was that Jennifer wasn't off work so she had to work while we had our lunch. We picked to have lunch at Wild Eggs and apparently not as many people come there in the early afternoon. We were there at 1:00 pm and we were the only people in the building. 

In the attempt to get everything out of the old house we had to get all the stuff out of the the attic crawl space. I let the kids get in there and hand me all the stuff. They thought it was awesome. 

It also meant that I needed to take all down my posters from the garage. These posters had been up on these walls since the 2015 season when we had the 2 platoon system. They were one of the best teams ever assembled and I believe that they would have won the title if Alex Poythress didn't get hurt. 

Brinley's first tournament with the new Rampage. There were five returning players and they added four new girls to the squad. They also added a couple of new coaches too. There are going to be some growing pains again this fall because of the lack of pitching experience. Brinley was not playing to her potential so she got put into the outfield and was batting next to last in the line up. They lost all three of their games and started off their fall ball season with an 0-3 record. 

For the first time in 2+ years the kid's school was able to host all the dad's and their kids for breakfast. It was donuts this morning and the kids were excited to have me there. They weren't excited though that neither one of them won a door prize. 

Another Saturday meant that it was race day. This race had the powerhouse team of Liberty and Landon was not excited to see them. They are really good. I told Landon to not worry about it and gave him a goal of getting in the top 50. He is mad in the bottom picture because I had just told him that I didn't think he had made it in the top 50. I told him that I might have lost track because I was busy looking for him. 

Here was Landon coming down the final stretch. In the left picture you can see him behind the two kids and in the picture on the right you can see that he had a better sprint to the finish line. He officially came in 50th place, just meeting the goal that we had come up with before the race. Too bad we didn't find that out for a couple of hours after the race. 

The girls had been at a birthday party while I had taken Landon to his race. I had to go straight from the race to Kroger Field for the UK football game. He came in with me in his red cross country uniform. The guy that works with me told me that he was dressed in the wrong color. They gave him a shirt, visor, and lanyard. 

Another win for the Wildcats. This was the win against Northern Illinois. 

Landon had his first flag football game. We initially signed up to play so that Landon could play with his baseball friends. However, he is in the 4th grade and his baseball friends are just in 3rd. Well, Landon couldn't play with them because they split it between the league with 2nd and 3rd grade playing together, then the 4th and 5th graders play together. Also they use a larger ball for the older league and Landon could barely grip it to throw it. Landon played multiple different positions on both offense and defense. He still was upset at times because he didn't understand what he was supposed to be doing. 

After his football game we took Grandpa out to eat for his birthday. Grandpa enjoys Texas Roadhouse so that's where we went to it. 

The last cross country meet of the season. Landon said he ran so hard that he was completely exhausted. Brinley gave him a ride to the car. 

Some pictures of Landon during the city championships. 

When the 56 days are over then it means that it is time to donate again. This donation I wanted to do in honor of my new friend who had just given me this shirt. Get out there and save a life!

After we got an offer on the house we went and took all of our remaining furniture to our new house. It was long overdue because we slept on the air mattress for far too many nights. It was really nice to have our room start to look like an actual bedroom. 

September kept us pretty busy with practices, meets, games, and now UK Football games. Oh yeah and also packing up and moving all of our belongings to our new house. It seemed like a whirl wind with the whole home buying process. A lot of people at work thought we were crazy that we bought a home before selling our old one. I would have lost it but I believed we wouldn't have any trouble selling at all. Thankfully, we got an offer the weekend it went on the market. A huge relief was knowing that we were going to be getting money from the sell in the very near future. Thanks for reading and God bless!

August 2022

Started the month out donating blood. I try to get in every 2 months when I am due up. You never know when you will be able to help save a life. 

Brinley's Rampage team had the first day of tryouts. Brinley did well, especially hitting. The next day her coach quit on her team, saying that his heart wasn't in it anymore. Come to find out one of the better players on the team decided to abandon the team and join the rival squad. Instead of finding a replacement for that one girl he decided that the other girls weren't worth it and folded the team. This came out of nowhere so we were completely in shock. It left us without a team and a lot of other teams in the area had already had tryouts. I immediately started searching for any local team that had open spots and started trying to get a tryout for Brinley. This was the only sport that she has actually enjoyed so I wanted her to keep playing.  

The garden was in full production mode and we had tons of tomatoes. So, time to get out the canning supplies and make some salsa and chili base. 

August brings the beginning of the school year. The past couple of years I have always taken off the first day of school. It really didn't make sense because I just spend the day at the house. This year I figured it out, take off work for the last day of summer. I asked the kids what all they wanted to do and this was all the stuff they picked. Breakfast at Josie's, lunch at Goodfellas, and then we got some shakes at this burger joint to finish off the day. 

Some of our Slam teammates and dad's showed up to play a little kickball on the last night of summer. We had a lot of fun but the dad's showed these kids that we still have some left in the tank. 

With our offer on the new house going through we got much more motivated in packing up the house. Jennifer would pack it in boxes and then I would play a real life version of 3-D tetris in the garage. 

Happy first day of school!

We have a 5th grader who is super excited about this year. She still insists on wanting to be a vet, if nothing else she is consistent. She has said this for the last 6 years.

Landon is ready for 4th grade. This year he said he wanted to be a MLB pitcher. This guy has changed it up every year. 

One of Landon's friends invited him over to an overnight birthday party. So, we took Brinley out for a rare only kid day. We tried out a pretty cool ice cream shop and took our first trip to local taco.

Cleaning up the old house meant a lot of things. One was giving the house a little bit of touch up paint. It also meant getting rid of all these extra puzzles that we have been storing in the basement for about 10 years. 

Random but we saw this uniquely decorated vehicle one day while driving around town. You could look at it for hours and still find all kinds of different things. It really was distracting trying to drive and look at it too!

With Brinley's coach quitting on her we had to find a new team. She tried out for three different teams and one of them wanted her to play that weekend with them. While Brinley was trying out for different teams, her former teammates were trying to get the old Rampage squad back together with a new coach. We had a couple options for Brinley, but I let her choose and she wanted to go back and play with her friends. 

Landon's Slam team had an end of year party. I was too busy jumping and playing at Skyzone that I didn't even get a picture of the boys, just the cake. This group had a lot of playing baseball together over the summer. 

I was too busy throwing fastballs at the boys in the dodgeball area. The next day my entire body was sore from getting out there and playing at SkyZone.

Landon loves to run so I signed him up for the Garrett Morgan cross country team again. His first race of the season was in Frankfort. He came in 3rd place overall right behind his friend on the team, Kash. 

Landon tried out for next years all-star team Southeastern Crush. He only had 2 errors on the day, but they were big ones. He missed two fly balls and it was his own fault because he didn't have his sun glasses on. He fielded grounders great and was amazing hitting at the plate including laying down some nice bunts. Of course this was all for show because the coaches that pick the team knew who they were going to pick before it even happens. It is so frustrating to see your son put his heart into something and not get what he deserves. 

After the tryouts we headed to Mt. Sterling for Landon to play with a pick up team called the Surge. It was a collection of summer players from Crush, Slam, and the Bombers which are the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams for Southeastern. We struggled in the pool games just trying to figure out where people should play. Then the tournament started and we started to gel. We won the first tournament game and made it to the championship. In the championship game we got runner up by default when then had to cancel the game due to lightning. After 2 innings played we were losing 1-0 and were wanting to wait it out to finish, but the tournament director called it. Landon was named the overall MVP of the tournament. He was perfect at bat for the day before the championship game. In the championship game he struck out to one of my former patients. It was a really weird position for me because I was upset for my son clearly, but also happy for the young man out their pitching on the mound. If the Crush coaches could have seen him play in this game there is no way that they wouldn't have chosen him to play for them. 

The very next day was a huge day for myself and my co-workers. It is a day that we have been planning for almost 3 years. Covid had cancelled the past two Pediatric Cancer Survivor Picnics so we were so excited to have this one in person. We had about 60 families come celebrate with us at Keeneland and it was so much fun seeing all of their smiles. 

Landon came out to the picnic to meet my patient friends from work and of course he played a little bit too. 

Brinley testing out the virtual reality coaster at the picnic too. 

Another race day for Landon. This time we saw a couple friends from other sports. We saw Hayes that we played baseball with all summer and also spotted Casey who we have played soccer with the last 3 years. 

Mimi and Pap came to watch Landon play again with the Surge. This one was a local tournament over at Western Little League fields. 

Brinley has enjoyed hanging out with the Green girls when she didn't have tournaments of her own to play in. 

I just really enjoy seeing Landon up on the mound pitching. It was something that I was never confident enough to do when I was little. Landon doesn't have much power, but he is able to consistently throw strikes. So much of kid pitch games is getting walked or hit by pitches and base running. Landon doesn't get many strikeouts, but he doesn't walk many either. I believe he has lots of potential and I am excited to see him continue to grow.

Well the Surge came up one short again. We lost in the championship to a really tough team out of London, Ky. In fact their first basemen was almost twice as tall as Landon. Landon looks really upset in these pictures because he says that he lost the game for his team. We were losing the game by about 10 runs and Landon thinks this because he was the very last out of the game. I like his winning desire, but sometimes you have to realize when the game is a team sport that you don't win or lose by yourself.

Brinley has become increasingly less helpful and playful with her bunnies. We didn't really have space for them at our new house, so I sent messages out to friends to see if anyone wanted them. Free of charge. I wasn't really getting any takers. Finally I mentioned it to Brinley's new coach. They practice at the coaches house out on their farm. He said sure so we dropped the bunnies off one night and said our goodbyes. It was a scary drop off because one of the dogs tried to eat both of them and the bunnies were freaking out. We finally put them up in the coaches garage and just prayed the dogs wouldn't get in there. For a few days I was nervous for the next practice that they wouldn't be there. 

Mom and Dad came by to visit one day and it was the last time they were going to be staying at our house on Hibernia Pass. Clearly Mom was not taking it very well. She said that she had a lot of great memories in that house. 

Kentucky Children's Hospital was celebrating their 25th anniversary. A few of my co-workers and I went down to pick up some cake. 

I park at McKinley and Taylor's house everyday for work so I will occasionally bring a few treats for the newlyweds. This morning I dropped some of my bread and butter pickles off for them. Well, actually I think only Taylor likes them so they were for her. 

This is the only puzzle that I have never been able to complete. Jennifer got me this for Christmas years ago and I got over half of the 2,000 piece puzzle put together but then couldn't get the tops of the trees finished. With the move coming up I decided to just take out the part of us and throw the rest away. This puzzle has haunted me for a couple years and it was hard for me to throw the rest away, but I just didn't know when I was ever going to finish it.

The last day of the month McKinley and Taylor came and helped us pack up the U-haul. We close on the new house on September 1st. Getting the U-haul was an adventure in itself. I had reserved one and when I went to pick it up they didn't leave the key in the overnight pick up box. I had to go to another location to pick up a U-haul which was all the way downtown. Then on the drive the check engine light came on and I had flashbacks to my car breaking down on the trip back from Nashville earlier this year. It made it to the house and we got the first load all ready for the move tomorrow. 

August was a very busy month for us in between sports, school starting, and packing the house up. We were sad to see summer end, but the kids were excited about school starting back. Thanks for reading and God bless!