Life Beyond Soccer

It may be hard to believe, but we are involved in things that don't involve soccer every now and then. Fall in the bluegrass means a lot of things, but UK football is certainly a big deal these days. Callie and her friends are definitely part of Big Blue Nation. Sarah and Callie had the opportunity to go to a home game on a beautiful day in September while John and Reese were on the road. The Cats won the game and the girls had a great time. 

At the end of September Reese was invited by her friend Emerson to go see Hamilton in Cincinnati to celebrate Emerson's birthday. Reese was very excited and didn't want to throw away her shot to be the first member of our family to see it live. 

From what we hear the show exceeded expectations and Reese and Emerson sang along the entire time. It was nice for Reese to be able to spend some extra time with Emerson since they are no longer on the same club soccer team.

We always want to make sure the girls remember that they are not the only athletes in the house. This marked the tenth time that John ran the Bourbon Chase, which is kind of crazy to think about. This time around John ran three legs totaling almost 22 miles and lucked out with some wonderful weather. It's always a great experience, though it is also nice that it only comes around once a year. 

With such an active fall we really had no plans in place for Callie's actual birthday. We had some ideas, but we weren't able to coordinate anything effectively that allowed for her friends to attend. We had decided to go to El Toro with just the family but then sent a last minute invite to see if some folks could join us. Fortunately, several of Callie's friends were able to surprise her by showing up. It certainly made the night a little bit more exciting for our new 15 year old. She even agreed to have the wait staff sing to her, which is a big step for someone who does not like attention.

On a sadder note, the weekend after Callie's birthday John flew to Miami to support his friend Jason whose mother had just passed away. Tyler flew in from Long Beach as well, but Bill took the prize by coming all the way from Madrid. It was very good to be able to be present for Jason during such a difficult time and it was a great reminder of how important friends are in our lives,

Callie's high soccer schedule had an unfortunate conflict. Her team was out of town the weekend of Henry Clay's homecoming dance and therefore she missed it. Fortunately, her friend Una invited her to go with a group of girls to the homecoming dance at Dunbar High School. It is one of the benefits of living in a city with multiple high schools.

A fun twist to the evening for Sarah was that one of the other girls in the group was the daughter of a colleague from work. Although it wasn't at Henry Clay, it was great for Callie to have her first high school dance with a nice group of girls.

And it wasn't like Callie didn't know anyone else there. In fact, she knew going in that Claire Abraham was going to be there with her boyfriend so she kept an eye out for her. We were very happy to receive a text with this picture during the night of the dance. Everything about it was a sign of how time keeps moving on and the girls keep growing up.

Shortly after Callie dressed up for a dance, Reese was dressing up for some candy. We have some great trick or treating options in the area, and her friends picked one close to our house. They also decided to all go as T-rexes.

The inflatable T-rex costume is one of the most fun because of how silly it looks as they are walking or running. We have a great slow motion video of Reese and her friends racing across the yard.

You can see in the picture above that one of the girls did not feel like dressing up like a T-rex and instead dressed up like a matador to corral all of the dinosaurs. 

With Halloween in the rear view mirror and soccer winding down to an extent, we could turn our attention to the holidays that were right around the corner. Among many things that means Libby and Lucy are in town a bit more often visiting their grandparents next door. Photo opportunities are a bit harder to manage now that the girls are older but we had to at least get one shot. We love the fact that they still enjoy spending time together no matter how much time has passed.