A Day Off

For the first time since July Doug had a Saturday off from soccer.  There were no scheduled games and he told his players that they could take a break from practice too.  It sounds like they all decided to hang out together anyway with plans to eat dinner at one of their homes and watch the Grace College girls play.

We were thankful for Doug's day off and used it to spend the time together.  Cal had a tennis invitational in Merrillville.  Cam and Meg agreed to ride along.  We watched all three of his matches with him winning two to finish in fourth place.  We were all pleased with that, especially since he got off to a slow start.

Once Cal was finished we headed to South Lake Mall.  Cam bought his first pair of Vans.  They are red and match his "Hoosiers" jacket.  Meg tried some on, but didn't like the arches in them.  I had to stop at Yankee Candle and found the most adorable Halloween set of bottle candle holders with spider bases.  They all gave me a hard time saying "You can't go in there without buying anything."  In the end, however, they had to admit that the bottles looked great on our table.

After shopping we stopped in Valparaiso to play mini-golf.  It was a unique course with a large dragon facing the highway.  We realized once we got started that it looked ominous to the West.  Luckily, the rain hit just as we got on the road.  It definitely was a strong storm.  At one point we finally had to pull over.  My iPhone was reporting 70 mile an hour winds with hail.  Doug did a great job driving.  We only saw one slide off, a couple of errant garbage cans and several trees down.

All of us were relieved when we made it to Buffalo Wild Wings in Warsaw.  Cal's group ate in Merrillville and made it home safely ahead of us.  Our power was out for a couple of hours, but no serious damage.  We greatly appreciated Doug's time with us.  His season is drawing to an end, so it won't be long and we will be able to spend even more time together.