November Update

PLAYS AND MORE!

Several of the girls on my team are involved in drama and plays. Over the past few weeks, I have been to several school and community plays. We were able to go watch "Santa's Zombie Apocalypse" and "High School Musical Jr." this month. It is such a gift to get to see our kids involved in and loving other things as well as soccer. They all did such a great job. It was really fun to watch these precious shows with other coaches!

Many of our players throughout our club play basketball in the winter. We were also able to watch them in some of their games. I foresee lots of Park District basketball games in my future over these coming weeks!

One of my favorite things over the past few weeks was getting to see one of our girls in a band concert. It reminded me so much of my early days in band! 

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RECRUITING TRIP

Another special piece of this past month was getting to go on a Summer Academy Recruiting Trip. Becca, Elisha, and I travelled to several colleges in the South to recruit for our summer college program. It was special to spend time together, share about Academy, and visit some Summer Academy alumni! It was really good to get to spend a short time at Milligan and see so many of my friends from home!

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HOST FAMILY

This has been a really exciting season at home as well. We finally wrapped up kitchen renovations, and the new space is beautiful! And, more importantly, functional!!! We celebrated birthdays, snow days, and the beginning of the holidays together. We got our first real snow of the winter, and I shared my family's snow day tradition with the boys. I taught them to make snow cream and we decorated for Christmas as well!

Throughout the process of renovations, we moved all of the furniture out of the living room. This made for lots of projector movie nights and football games. This was a small surprise that I really enjoyed. 

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FAMILY TIME AND THANKSGIVING

I had a couple opportunities to see my family this month, and I have been so grateful for that time. My dad was running a marathon in Indianapolis, so I was able to go spend the weekend with my parents and watch my dad run. The time alone with them was precious to me!

For Thanksgiving, we traveled to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Indiana. We were able to celebrate with my dad's family. It was wonderful to see all of them and spend time enjoying all of the new family members we have added over the more recent years.

We also celebrated Thanksgiving with the Residents. The Baria's made Brazilian stroganoff, and we spent time together talking and playing games. It was another sweet display of the community I am so blessed with here.