Fall Fun

There are many reasons why it's wonderful to live next to the Chrismans.  One of them is that on occasion we will get their tickets for a football game.  These have always been good tickets since they are near the 50 yard line and only about 15 rows from the field.  But since the renovation of the stadium they have gotten even better because they come with access to the field level premium community area - a.k.a. room full of free food.

John was out of town and Reese had a sleepover, so Sarah and Callie got the take advantage of the royal treatment.  It was a cold night but the two of them had an absolute blast.  And Chris's sister and brother-in-law were at the game to show them the ropes. Callie's smile says it all.

Another year of school means another year of Variety Show fun at Cassidy. Reese branched out this year and joined girls from her class to perform a dance number to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. It was sweet, age appropriate, and somewhat coordinated.  The thing that melted our hearts the most, though, was that when Reese had her mini solo, Callie and her fifth grade crew erupted in cheers.

Callie, meanwhile, was participating in Variety Show swan song, and this was her fifth year being a part of it. So what better way to cap it all off then to have a showcase of all their previous performances. They did a phenomenal job and we are truly thankful that Laurie Preston had the drama-teacher background that brought it all together.

With the Variety Show concluded, it was time for the next opportunity to dress up.  We were all pretty excited because Reese has had her costume since our July visit to the Everglades. For some reason this year Callie never really pulled a costume together. Lucky for us we have a basement full of options from previous years, and a butterfly seemed like it would work well.

We ended up actually outfitting both her and one of her friends and grabbed a net for Reese so she could chase her sister all night.  It ended up working out quite nicely.

For years we have had a tradition of getting together with Harper and Kennedy for Halloween, and this time around we decided to go around their neighborhood.  Now we must admit that their costumes have always had a darker tone than ours, but this year they really took it to another level.  Doesn't seem to bother Reese and Callie and they don't really know what the story of the costumes is.  But as long as it doesn't interfere with their candy collection they don't mind.

Although we had a busy fall, this year we were lucky that we were able to fit in some family photos.  The photographer was fun to work with and we got quite a few good ones of the girls. Yet out of all the photos we took we only had one family picture that turned out well.  But this is the one that qualified for the blog.

In the month of October and November, five of Callie's good friends, including herself, all have birthdays. This happens to be a picture from Addie's birthday party, which had a movie theme.  The girls took pictures and made their own short films. They are certainly a creative bunch and a silly group when they get together.

Every year at Cassidy they host a big Thanksgiving meal and invite all the parents to attend.  Unfortunately John's teaching schedule didn't allow him to join in the fun, but Sarah was able to eat not one, but two helpings of instant mashed potatoes.

This continued the farewell tour of all of Callie's annual Cassidy events.  Her last Thanksgiving celebration in elementary school.  This event is always couple with the book fair.  Callie capitalized on her mom's sentimental mood and was able to make quite a large purchase of books that day.

Fall Soccer LFC Style

In Fall 2018 we embarked on a whole new soccer adventure with Lexington Football Club.  Both Callie and Reese were playing with LFC for the first time, so we did not know what exactly to expect.  Reese was excited because she was going to be with the U9 LFC Academy, and her friend Ella Hughes was going to play on the team too.  In fact, Reese had numerous friends from school on her team.

Of course the fall is also the time for high school soccer, and we have become huge fans of Lafayette's Girls Soccer because of Ella Abraham, who was looking strong for her sophomore year.  It was her second year starting varsity and she was getting a lot of playing time.  Therefore the games were even more fun to watch.

Reese and her friend Ella were embracing the soccer theme every chance they got, and that included face paint.

Of course we are also fortunate to live about a mile from the University of Kentucky's home soccer field, which means it is easy to catch a game if we have the time.  Reese's team did a group outing to a women's game early on in the season and had a great time.

Callie's LFC team was going to be a challenge from the start.  To make a long story short, she and three of her friends were going to be playing on a team made up mostly of girls who were born in 2006.  So for the whole season they would be playing in a league of teams made up of older girls.  Regardless of anything else these four girls had each other and that made it a much better experience overall.

Reese not only enjoyed the social aspect of her new team, but she also flourished on the field.  This is a special picture because it captures the one and only time that Claire Abraham reffed a youth game.  After this one she hung up her whistle and called it a career.

One thing that Reese and Callie have in common is that they are very coachable when it comes to soccer.  John likes to think that he laid some good groundwork, but it may just be that they are very happy to have a coach who is not their father.

Although we did not know at the time that this would be Claire's only appearance as a ref, Sarah made sure to do a proper photo shoot when the game ended.  What follows is a photo series we like to call, "Red Card".  The first photo is subtitled, "What?!?"

The second photo is, "You've got to be kidding me, ref!!"

And last, but not least, we have, "I'm sorry I didn't mean it!"

Callie's Amazing Birthday Race

Callie asked for a scavenger hunt for her 11th birthday celebration.  We thought that this was a great idea, but of course we needed to take it up a couple of notches.  We decided to combine a scavenger hunt with the show Amazing Race, which has always been one of our favorites.  It took some time and intricate planning, along with the help of a few friends, but we pulled it off and were ready to go.

We had fourteen girls split up into four different teams.  As you can see here, the teams were indicated by the color of their headbands, and their first task was to come up with team names.  Once that job was done everyone jumped into cars and headed to the Summit at Fritz Farm.

Once everyone had gathered at the Summit, we took a group photo and prepared to descend on the various businesses, most of whom had given their approval ahead of time.  We had Jessica Johnson as one of the game masters, and she was set up in the Barn for an ice cream taste testing with Crank and Boom.  John and Patrick Lakin held down the fort on the Whole Foods patio with a Connect-4 challenge.  And those were just two of eleven total tasks in honor of the new eleven-year-old.

Teams had to complete each task given in order to get the next clue, and we made sure the compile the lists so the teams were not all doing the same task at the same time.  You can see the yellow team completing the task of finding five different animal sculptures throughout the Summit and getting a picture with each one.  To appease our family's Captain Caution, teams were penalized if they were caught using poor judgment when crossing streets or putting their team in jeopardy at any point during the race.

Blind taste tests are never as easy as one might think.  Each team had to have a member correctly identify three different kinds of Crank and Boom ice cream.  Here we have the red teams' Amelia guessing a flavor.  We were very kind and had ice cream as the blind taste test portion when we could have picked the wheat grass juice bar at Whole Foods.

If you have ever watched Amazing Race, they have things called Detours, where teams have a choice of tasks.  In this case, a team could choose between 1) dressing up in the gear we provided and running around the green space in the center of the Summit singing a tune from the Greatest Showman or 2) answering a Fritz Farm history question.  Needless to say, the history professor in our household was disappointed to hear so many Greatest Showman tunes that afternoon.

Another major decision of the game was deciding between juggling a hacky sack eleven times or counting the number of glasses frames displayed on the walls of the Warby Parker store nearby.  Surprisingly enough, even though we had numerous soccer players at the party, the hacky sack was not the big winner here.  And there were over four hundred glasses frames on the wall of the store.  We finally let teams pass the task if they got within one hundred of the correct number.

As teams were finishing the race, the girls were hanging out and talking through their strategies.  They also had a chance to debrief the funniest moments, especially for those who had to go in to the Kentucky Spirit store with Groucho Marx glasses to ask if they sold any Louisville gear.

Although all the times that finished were winners, the team that completed the tasks first was the yellow team.  You might be able to  tell by looking at this picture that not everyone was living by the "we are all winners" attitude.

The crew headed back to the Bowes residence for one final fun activity - build your own ice cream sundaes.  No tasks needed to get the sundae other than saying please and thank you.  It was a great group of girls and we had a lot of fun.

Based on Callie's smile, we are pretty sure she had fun too.  We hope she has a great year ahead.

Carter Caves with Lt. Dan

For the second year in a row we went camping with the Abrahams on Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately Ella had a soccer tournament and therefore couldn't join the fun. We soldiered on and tried to have fun without her.  This year we went to Carter Caves State Park in eastern Kentucky.  Overall it was a beautiful place to visit as you can see from this picture.

We pulled in late Friday night and set up camp in the dark.  The campground was not exactly a spot for privacy.  Not pictured here are the other campers who were all around us.  There was line dancing on Friday night, axe throwing on Saturday night, and a whole line of activities for the holiday weekend.  In addition we had a neighbor we called Lt. Dan who spent most of the weekend with his shirt off chopping wood.  As Claire Abraham said at one point, "this is the most country place I have ever been!"

We always want to make sure that we are well fed when we go camping, and each family is put in charge of certain meals.  For night one we brought the hot dogs, sausages, beans, and potatoes.  The fire took a little work, and the wet wood we had meant that we often had more smoke than fire.  But eventually we had what we wanted, a fire hot enough to cook a good summer meal.

On our first full day at the park we participated in a day long scavenger hunt. We got a sheet of paper that had a long list of clues to places throughout the state park and we had to take a picture of our group with it.  It was a great way to see all that Carter Caves had to offer, and it was surprising how few people we met on the paths.

One particular clue had us taking a short hike through a pass that had huge boulders and cliff faces.  It wasn't what we expected when we first made the reservations at this park, so it was a very cool surprise.

Just to give you a sense of the scale we are talking about, here is a picture from that hike with most of our crew walking along the base of one of the cliff faces.  Kentucky's scenery is about more than just bluegrass and horses.

There is an outdoor amphitheater at the park, and one of our clues required us to take a picture acting out a dramatic scene on the stage.  We were more than happy to comply.  However, asking a stranger to take this picture was a little awkward.  But we managed.

We don't remember the name of this particular individual in the portrait above the fireplace, but he was key to us finishing off some of the last clues in the hunt.  As always, most of our crew was ready to pose, whether the clue required drama or not.

We were only one of the three groups that completed all of the tasks associated with the scavenger hunt, and it came down to the pictures we took.  Our group had a picture of a real bat while the second place team had a picture of a stuffed animal bat.  Authenticity matters, even in state park scavenger hunts.

Of course, this camping trip also coincided with Sarah's birthday, and we made sure to celebrate appropriately with a candle and a cupcake.  Reese brought out her special shirt for the occasion.  We are going to act like she planned it.

One of the things that drew us to Carter Caves was that on this weekend they were showing a movie inside one of the caves.  So we got to take our camping chairs inside the cave, form a row, and watch the movie Jumanji. We also got to bring snacks in and they sold popcorn, so it was a real theater experience.

The movie turned out to be more enjoyable than expected, and the setting itself was "pretty awesome".  That was a phrase we became quite familiar with during our initial tour of the caves, because our fine tour guide relied on it as his main adjective to describe just about anything.  And while it was certainly chilly in the cave during the movie, we should note that Lt. Dan still did not put his shirt on.

On the second night we had some visitors that you can see if you look at this picture closely.  Although we had tied our garbage to the top of our tent over the picnic table, two raccoons still tried to get a hold of it.  We scared them off, but they didn't go too far.  And then Claire had some fun playing raccoon noises on her phone outside our tent just to scare us.  It worked.

As our prize for winning the scavenger hunt the previous day we got free passes for the miniature golf course at the camp site.  So we made sure to play a round before we headed back to Lexington. This wasn't just any golf course - it had a unique twist that added challenges to some of the wholes depending on your results when you spun a wheel.  John had to play one whole using his golf club as a pool cue, for instance.  In the end, Callie pulled off a win.  But really, we were all winners because it was another fantastic camping weekend with great friends.

New Beginnings - School and Triathlon

This year for back to school we were launching from our house as opposed to last year when we were still in the apartment during the renovation.  So we wanted to feature the hydrangeas since we don't know how long they are going to last.  She had already met her teacher, Mrs. Martinez, and was excited to be in the same class as her good friend Ella Hughes.

And while it is hard to believe, Callie is entering her last year of elementary school.  She and her friends are now the fifth graders who know all the teachers and rule the school.  Fortunately she has picked up some phenomenal friends and they are going to be benevolent overlords.  They are certainly going to ensure that it is going to be a wonderful year.

Another new experience for the girls in 2018 was the YMCA Kids Triathlon.  Some friends of ours had done it before and coordinated a training group for a number of kids.  Unfortunately our schedule didn't allow us to participate in the group training, but we made sure the girls ran, biked, and swam throughout the weeks leading up to the big day.  As you can see here, it was pretty official with the numbers written on arms and legs just like the real deal.

Reese's group was the first to go, and after she finished an excellent swim of 100 yards she made her way to the transition area to get her biking gear and bike.  Honestly, the transition area is just as intimidating as it looks, but good thing we had John standing right outside to make sure that Reese could spot her bike and get the guidance she needed to change clothes and not panic.

Meanwhile, back at the pool Callie was stroking her way through her 200 yard swim.  She is in the middle of this picture, looking pretty good.  She may not have liked when we made her swim laps before she could play every time we went to the pool over the summer, but it paid off.

Here is Callie in action again, this time in the midst of her transition from the swim to the bike.  Although we practiced all the individual sports, we failed to practice the all important transition.  With that being said, both girls did an excellent job.  They took their time, but they did everything they needed to do and didn't stress out.  And that latter part was particularly important, because we wanted to make sure they had fun doing this.

After a one mile bike ride, Reese brought it home well in the half-mile run. She has a great stride and it didn't look like she was all that tired as she cruised through the last of the three stages.  It was great to see her finish strong.

Callie wasn't that far behind, although she had to bike for three miles and then run a mile.  Like her sister she finished strong and we were so proud of her.  She beamed when she saw that on the other side of the finish line all participants received a free ice cream from a truck placed strategically within sight.

These two girls have now done something that neither of their parents have done.  We believe that this will probably be the story for years to come as the two of them continue explore the world with great curiosity and a willingness to try new things.

Of course, we need to be completely honest as well. The girls were not entirely excited when we reached the staging area the morning of the triathlon and may have even said they didn't want to do it.  It is possible that we reminded them of a certain reward they would receive upon completion of the triathlon.  And it is very likely that the reward in question was a sundae at Baskin Robbins.  And that explains this final picture.