New Beginnings

On July 15, Callie tried out for the Henry Clay High School JV soccer team. Because of her birth year her club team doesn't have a fall season and she is able to play for JV as an 8th grader. We didn't know what to expect but certainly had high hopes.

We were delighted to hear that not only did Callie make the team but she would be playing with many of her old teammates as well as some classmates that she hasn't had the chance to play with before. All of us, especially Callie, were excited to see what the season held in store.

This picture was taken after the first home game where they got to play under the lights. Although it was a loss to Lexington Catholic, the girls played well and are looking forward to a good season. And all five girls pictured here are 8th graders, so they will spend the season playing against girls one and two years older. It should be a great experience all around.

We don't often discuss work in the blog, but this was a big enough change worth mentioning. To make a long story short, John said yes when asked by the new EKU Provost if he would serve as the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences starting July 1. Being Dean had not exactly been on his mind as a possible career trajectory, so it was surprising to him that he said yes so quickly. It also meant that he needed to identify a tie he could wear for a more professional picture. He was excited about what the months ahead would hold, even it meant more time in a tie.

And now it is time for the required  first day of school pictures. No virtual school for the girls, which is one reason for the smiles you see.

Callie was also excited because at least eight of the twelve 8th graders on her soccer team also go to Morton. And if everything goes well, this will mark the first and only full year she will be in person in middle school. Kind of crazy to think about it in that way.

Reese was excited to finally be a 5th grader. In her sixth year at Cassidy she has finally made it to the top of the heap. 5th grade has so many great activities and we are hopeful that she will be able to experience all of them. Both she and Callie and their classmates have to wear masks at school, so we feel fortunate that our school system is putting the health and safety of our kids front and center. We should note that Callie was able to get fully vaccinated right at the end of the school year, so now it is just a waiting game for when Reese can get the jab. Hurray for science!

End of Summer Activities

As so often happens, once we get back to Lexington after a trip we hit the ground running. The summer wasn't as full of camps as it had been in the past. In fact, Callie will in part remember this summer by the number of camps she wanted to go to that were scheduled for the two weeks we traveled to New England. Oops. But Reese still was able to go to a couple of weeks of tennis camp and a sleepover camp with Ella.

The sleepover camp took all sorts of precautions because of covid, and the girls had a great week. It was good to have some experiences like this to still make it feel like summer.

Reese's soccer team organized a team outing that gave us the opportunity to see first hand a great new stadium in Kentucky. Racing Louisville is in their first season in the National Women's Soccer League, and the soccer only stadium they get to play in is fantastic. It is easy to get to and there isn't a bad seat in the house.

At this game the girls had seats right on the field, so they were able to see professional soccer up close and personal. However, you can tell they are still 10 and 11 year-olds because they were more attracted to the treats offered off the field than by all that was happening on the field.

It was a lot of fun and also made us realize how easy it is to go to a game here. Hopefully we will be visiting this stadium many more times in the years to come.

This summer also marked a crazy transition for the families in our wine club. Three of the four families have graduating seniors, which means that at summer's end three of the kids pictured here will be heading off to college. We started this wine club over ten years ago, so to hit this milestone is crazy for all of us. We were able to host one final gathering at our house before the three college kids headed out for the next exciting chapter in their lives.

Callie and Reese were also hitting milestones of their own. Reese was heading into her last year of elementary school and Callie was getting ready for 8th grade and her last year at Morton Middle School. Callie's friends wanted to end the summer in style and so they all dressed up for a fancy dinner out on the town.

Pictures like this continue to remind us that she and her friends are growing up quickly right before our eyes. Time does move fast.

The end of summer also normally means Picnic with the Pops. Covid cancelled it in 2020, so we were excited for its return in 2021. Then a few things happened. The Chrismans couldn't make it due to their extended visit with their family in Europe. The Abrahams were still out in Oregon dropping Ella off at college. And we were having trouble just figuring out a plan. At the last minute we invited Claire along with her grandmother Linda to join us. Callie was over a friend's house so it was the two of us and Reese. Then the rain began to fall.

But it wasn't just the rain. Thunder and lightning followed, and the event planners postponed the start of the concert. More than that, they wouldn't let people go to their tables, so we had to stay in the parking lot.

After a couple of hours we learned that the concert wouldn't start until 9:00pm. The glasses of wine made our dry house seem much more inviting than a Beatles tribute concert in the rain, so we packed up the car and headed home. Seems only fitting that the only disrupted Picnic with the Pops event was when the Chrismans weren't able to make it. Better luck for all of us next year.

Headed Home - Vacation Part 3

To make our New England vacation complete we had to spend at least a day in Boston before making the long drive back to Kentucky. The weather turned rainy and chilly, but we were not going to let that phase us. We started out with a tour led by this fine gentleman here who gave us all sorts of stories about the Boston Common, the Freedom Trail, and the various characters buried in the cemetery right off the Commons. It was a fun experience and John didn't notice anything too historically inaccurate that he felt the need to correct. 

The raincoats that we purchased on our trip to LL Bean came in handy more quickly than we would have liked and perhaps we should have purchased some of their duck boots. In any case, it was not going to slow us down.

It was fun to show the girls some of our favorite places in the city. They were not overwhelmed by seeing the building where Sarah used to work, but they liked Fanueil Hall and all the shops. 

Callie and Reese even got to see a really good street performance outside of Quincy Market. These two guys were true showmen and incredibly acrobatic with a good dose of humor. We all enjoyed the show but were also ready to find a good bowl of clam chowder.

Of course in downtown Boston there is no shortage of places with good clam chowder. We made our way through the rain to the Bell in Hand Tavern where we were able to have some good food and watch some soccer. 

The rain stopped while we were eating lunch, and so we were able to mosey on over to our favorite neighborhood in Boston, the North End. As usual, it was busy and full of life. But even better, that afternoon Italy was playing Belgium in the Euro 2020(yes it is 2021 but they had to postpone the 2020 version because of covid and still called it 2020 this year) soccer tournament. That meant that the North End was really alive with energy. It was so much fun to see. We ended up having appetizers and drinks at one place, dinner at a second, and then obviously ended the night at Mike's Pastry before walking back to our hotel. In short, we packed a lot into our one full day in Beantown.

What made this long driving vacation a little easier on everyone was the fact that our Honda Pilot has a built in DVD player. Reese was on fire with watching movies. On this trip she watched and rewatched Tangled, Princess and the Frog, and a couple others sprinkled in every now and then. Sarah even popped back for the first part of our departure from Boston to watch the Princess and the Frog. She enjoyed the movie and Callie enjoyed getting to sit up front.

What the girls didn't know at this point was that we still had more stop left in us. When we decided to drive on this vacation we knew that our return trip had to include Hershey Park, just like when we did this drive back in the summer of 2014.

Needless to say, the girls have grown a little bit in seven years, which meant that this visit to the park was going to be a little different. Last time we rode the Cocoa Cruiser almost non-stop. This visit began with a very different ride.

The day started off on a ride called The Claw. We hadn't seen exactly what it did before we got on, and our smiles here speak to that innocence. By ride's end John was no longer smiling and may have invoked the name of the Lord a few times during the spinning and swinging ride that at times nearly had us upside down. For Callie, on the other hand, it only appeared to fuel her fire.

Before too much time had gone by, Callie and Sarah found themselves on Fahrenheit, a roller coaster that starts off with an announcement over the loudspeaker saying, "Be prepared to upside down not once, not twice, but six times!" Reese and John were very happy to watch from the sidelines. Callie did give one look of hesitation as the cars went in motion, but at the end she was all smiles and only wanted more.

In the picture above, Sarah and Callie are in the second car, mid-descent at the beginning of an incredible journey. Before the day was over, the two had ridden just about every roller coaster in the park, and Callie had fallen in love with the thrill of upside down coasters.

In case you were worried, John and Reese didn't just sit around and watch. They simply enjoyed different elements of the park. Here we see the two driving one of the mini-classic cars that don't go too fast and certainly don't go upside down. They also made a brief excursion into the water park where they got to ride some water slides, which is just the kind of thrill they like.

We had a great day at the park and everyone got what they wanted, including some treats from the gift shop to make the final leg of the journey sweeter.

As we made our way back to Lexington, we could say that our vacation did everything we needed it to do. We had great times with friends and family, made some wonderful memories for our little family, and marked off another national park. Can't wait for summer 2022!

On to Maine - Vacation Part 2

Before we could leave the Cape completely, we had one more stop we wanted to make. The Basak family was just starting their own vacation in Brewster and we got to hang out for the afternoon with them. It was great to catch up with these wonderful folks, and it was our good luck to even see their daughter Maya, who arrived while we were there. They are amazing people and visits like these remind us that we need to see them far more often.

Our first stop in Maine was a bed and breakfast right outside of Old Orchard Beach, or the OOB as we now call it. The bed and breakfast was an absolute delight and its access to Portland was fantastic.

However, the OOB itself could have been skipped. We took a brief walk downtown our second night there and found it to require more explanations of smells and sights than we had anticipated. Let's just say, when given the opportunity to visit the OOB, we recommend looking elsewhere.

When we left the OOB and headed north, however, we saw some great sights. Our next destination was Acadia National Park and we took the scenic route that featured a number of different coastal delights and photo ops. The drive took a little longer than expected, but it was well worth it.

We love camping and we love visiting national parks, so we were all looking forward to our visit to Acadia. What made the beginning of this experience even better was that Callie and Reese took on the task of setting up the tent.

Apparently all of our camping in the summer of 2020 paid off, since now the girls can put up a tent on their own and actually want to do it. Unfortunately we only had two nights in Acadia, so we wanted to make sure we took full advantage of the long summer days. Once our camp was set up we set out to explore all that the park had to offer.

We already some recommendations from the Skoniecznys, and knew we needed to conquer a couple of different hikes. First up was one called the Beehive. This hike wasn't long, but it was certainly challenging in a couple of ways. First, the way up was steep. Second, at certain points it involved using metal rungs drilled into the rock to climb steep sections. Third, those steep sections were also right at major drop offs that you can't see in this picture. The girls handled it extremely well with Sarah in the lead. John brought up the rear, a bit stressed over what this would look like on the way down, not knowing that the hiking trail was a loop and the descent would be a lot easier.

As with so many hikes, the views from the top were well worth the climb. It was a beautiful day and you could literally see for miles. And since we weren't the only ones there that day we even got a good family picture.

A theme for this trip was also the heat. At every stage of the journey up to this point it was hot, and after our trip up the Beehive we had our eyes on the cool ocean waters.

It just so happens that the aptly named Sand Beach was located minutes away from the trailhead, and we made our way their for a quick and very refreshing dip in the ocean. The water was so clear that even Sarah couldn't resist. It was also so cold that she didn't stay in for long.

Acadia represents the tenth national park we have visited as a family, so we feel like are well versed in what to expect. This made Acadia a little intriguing, because it is the first park established through the purchase of private lands. This means the park itself is a bit disjointed. It has no major entrance and its lands are located in and around harbor towns.

This is all to say it took us a little while to find the main sign we could use as our classic photo backdrop. It also meant that there was some significant driving time from our campsite to the various hikes and other areas of the park.

One of the more well known destination points in the park is Cadillac Mountain. You can park near the top but have to make a reservation. It's far more enjoyable to find a trailhead and then hike to the top. Or at least we tried to convince the girls of that fact. The hike was nowhere near as steep as the Beehive, but with a seven mile round-trip it was definitely longer. And on this day, Callie was not amused and required more than a couple of coaxing sessions to get to the top. Despite some of the angst, however, it was yet another beautiful hike with some tremendous views. 

We always get excited about the potential encounters with wildlife any time we visit a national park. This time things got squirrely at the camp site, and in a very unexpected way. John woke up early on our first morning because of some noises around our table. We had cleaned up everything well, so he wasn't expecting any food issues. Much to his surprise, he encountered a squirrel underneath the picnic table attempting to drag away one of our head lamps. After shooing the squirrel away he discovered that the squirrel had already successfully dragged the other headlamp into the woods but had gotten the strap caught on a branch and was unable to make a clean getaway.

The Acadian squirrels are not just about electronics however. They also have some more elevated tastes as well. When we returned to our campsite that afternoon we noticed that the squirrel had been working hard to get at our unopened bottle of wine. Luckily they didn't have a corkscrew and we held onto the bottle so we could tell a good story later.

On our last morning we took our breakfast of yogurt and granola to a more scenic destination than our campsite. The Bass Harbor lighthouse was a short drive from our campsite and we got a great view from the rocks. The girls didn't want to make even a short hike at this point, so while they waited by the car we walked down and enjoyed one more great morning along the coast.

We had a couple more stops before we left Maine, and the first was a mini-golf course that we had driven by a couple of times on our way to various hikes. It had a pirate theme and was definitely one of the more elaborate courses we have ever played. 

By this time we had played a few rounds in New England and felt we knew what we were doing, but Sarah was on fire. She won the day with at least three holes in one. 

If you know Sarah, you know that when she gets an idea in her head about something that needs to happen, you better go along with it. And boy did she want to visit a classic Maine lobster shack and eat a lobster roll. Our next destination was Boston, and John wanted to make sure we got there in time to watch the US Women's Soccer team play that evening. Sarah identified the shack she wanted to visit, and we got off the exit to head there. There are two key things to know about the next hour and a half. The first is that the shack provided exactly what Sarah wanted in terms of atmosphere and food. The second is that it was a much longer detour than anticipated or desired. However, the first key thing is the one that matters. The Five Island Lobster Co. is worth the trip. And when all was said and done, we were in our hotel room in time to watch the game. Time for phase 3 of the vacation.

Cape Cod 2021 - Vacation Part 1

 Surfers? Who would have thought? But when it comes to spending time with the Skoniecznys the girls are up for anything. Our 2021 summer vacation started out with a full week on Cape Cod in a house we rented with Mike, Kristen, Ella, Ethan, and Eli. To say that we were all excited for this would be a massive understatement. We hit the National Seashore on our first full day after picking up wetsuits from the local surf shop. Those wetsuits made all the difference when spending time in the 54 degree Atlantic Ocean waters.

Ella was very kind to give Callie and Reese some pointers when it came to surfing, and impressively enough they were able to stand up on several occasions. It might be worth an official lesson the next time we go to the Cape. Another big hit of the beach day was Spikeball, which was a new purchase for us, but a familiar game to the kids.

Needless to say, both families are pretty competitive, but fortunately enjoy having fun in the midst of it all. That is not the only similarity in the families however.

Sarah and Kristen enjoy vacationing together because they like to keep an active schedule. Although there weren't too many pictures taken on this day, we did a hike along the beach in Wellfleet. Mike, John, and the kids were thinking there could have been other things to do during the day, but Kristen and Sarah left the crew behind to reach Jeremy Point. They were invigorated by their successful journey, but almost left behind for ice cream when they took longer than expected to get back to the parking lot. 

The reward for everyone was not only ice cream but a couple of rounds of miniature golf at Poit's. While Sarah and others are not huge fans of this particular establishment, it is where John has played since he was a kid and Ethan Skonieczny is also a fan. 

The main thing is it was one more fun group activity for the two families, and that's what keeps John and Mike smiling through it all. These kinds of vacations are a dream come true.

The next day we ventured north to Provincetown so that we could go on a whale watch. Not only was this whale watch active, it also inspired our budding marine biologist Ella, who, with some nudging from her mother, got up the courage to talk to the naturalist on the boat about schooling and career paths. We can't wait to go on a future whale watch where Ella is guiding the way. 

One cannot go to Provincetown and not explore the stores and streets. Once the whale watch was over we hit the town, and each kid already had their target destinations in mind. At the top of the list were candy shops, but we also hoped for some time at Cuffy's, the clothing destination for those in the know.

You all will be happy to know that everyone's desires were met. Plenty of fudge, taffy, and other assorted goodies left with us, and as you will soon see in the pictures that follow, we did plenty to support Cuffys.

In a combination of coincidence and planning, our week on the Cape overlapped with the first of three weeks that Nana Banana and Sport had rented their own place nearby. Aunt Suzy, Uncle Brian, Zoey, and Abby took advantage of that fact and flew out from Colorado. Aunt Katie, Uncle Chris, and Michael also made plans to come up for part of the week. (Unfortunately Brendan had to work) Now our awesome vacation became even more awesome.

No one was happier about this convergence of people than these two. Of course, they would be happy if we were all converging at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere, but it made it that much more special that we were on Cape Cod. 

This year marked the 49th summer that they spent part of their vacation on the Cape. Although the beaches visited have changed, the joy of being together has not.

This particular day on the bay was filled with paddle boarding, deep trench digging, more spike ball, and more marine life discovery. In short, it was a lot of fun. The day came to a close too soon, and unfortunately the Skonieczny's had to leave a day early so they could attend a family wedding. But we were able to have a group dinner and then return to the beach for one last sunset. And if you look closely you can see a whole lot of Cuffy wear on kids and adults alike. All told, the people in this crew have seen quite a few sunsets over the bay in the past five decades.  

Chatham is always a must visit location on a trip to the Cape for a couple of reasons. First, it has an adorable downtown and one of the girls' favorite candy shops.

And when it comes to candy, Callie, Reese, and Sarah are not the only ones with a sweet tooth in the extended family. Uncle Chris in particular is always up for a candy store run. Even better, he is always generous with his purchases.

Another attraction in Chatham are the seals that gather around the docks where the fishing boats come in. There are always plenty of seals to watch and although we have never seen them, it is because of these seals that more and more great white sharks have been spotted along the National Seashore over the past decade or so. Indeed, Chatham stores have plenty of shark merchandise to purchase as they capitalize on this recent phenomenon.

Another day on the Cape meant another round of miniature golf. This time we went to one Sarah had her eyes on instead of good old Poits. There were large paper mâché animals throughout in addition to a variety of obstacles.

With a group of twelve we divided into three groups to play the course. Mini-golf is always fun, but it is even more enjoyable when you get to do it with family who enjoy being together.

Time together like this also creates numerous opportunities for great photographs, and we had to limit ourselves to keep this post somewhat under control. However, we couldn't leave this one out, which highlights that Callie has not only outpaced her mom but also at least one of her aunts. Watch out Katie, she's coming for you!

Any summer vacation on the Cape is going to produce a lot of photographs, of course, and this one was no different.

This lobster pot buoy Christmas tree was on the Eastham town green right by the windmill, and while John turned in our rental house keys, Sarah and the girls did yet another classic photo shoot.

Although our rental had ended we chose to spend one more night on the Cape to soak in some more family time. It was a very wise decision on our part, as it gave all of us more time for smiles like these. These four love spending time together.

Since this was our last dinner on the Cape, Sport wanted to ensure that it was one we wouldn't forget. He and Aunt Suzy got steamers and lobster so that we all could have some good seafood before parting ways.

Reese was very interested in trying out both of these traditional Cape Cod delicacies. She was not impressed by the steamers and while she liked the lobster claws and legs she could do without the tails. We have a feeling this may change in the years ahead, but for now it just meant more for the rest of us. It was a great week packed with lots of fun, friends, and family. But our trip wasn't even halfway over.