Our Annual Boys Football Trip -The Importance Of Family Traditions
Today I am on my way with our son Matt to our annual football trip in Cincinnati Ohio. Tim is flying in this evening to meet us for the weekend. Here is some history of this family tradition.
I am not sure where I got the idea but 15 years ago I came up with the idea for me and my two boys to visit every NFL stadium on an annual basis over the course of our life. When we started, the boys were both playing competitive football at the rep level and needless to say we were and are a very football focused family. Lets put it this way, Barb is always pleased when Super Bowl is over because up until that point the TV and radio are tuned in to football almost every single day over the summer, fall and winter.
Our first trip was when Tim was 10 and Matt was 7 years old and we started with our seasons tickets to the Bills and started close to home to locations we could easily drive. We therefore started with Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit and then progressed to locations further from home such as New England, Indianapolis and Baltimore to name a few. We have seen some great cities, great stadiums and great teams and it is always a weekend we really look forward to. There are years that we all can’t make it but the rule is that we go every single year as we don’t want to miss a year as we are worried the tradition may stop.
I will be 74 years when we are done every stadium, god willing. We were talking the other day and we discussed the fact there are a lot of new stadiums so that when we have visited every NFL city, we should start again when I am 74 based on my life goals of living until well past age 100. The interesting thing is that Tim and Matt will almost be my age today when we finish visiting every stadium and start all over again!
The best thing about the trip is it gives us the chance to be together, visit great cities and more than anything create amazing life lasting memories. When the children were young we used to visit Aquariums, go swimming in the hotel pool, visit local areas of interest. Now they are young adults, we typically focus on visiting the city attractions, working out(we always work out or run every day), go for some great meals and always look for the best sports bars to get in the “football spirit”. For those of you that are interested, I have outlined our schedule this pastweekend at the end of this blog so you can get an idea of what we do on these weekends.
Our football trip is a family tradition that we will always continue however we seem to have many family traditions thanks in large part to Barb. When we fail to continue a life long family tradition, we are always reminded by the children. Here are a few of our family traditions that seem to be deeply embedded in the Brady tradition:
Christmas
Like many of you, we have a lot of traditions around Christmas. It starts with Christmas Eve where we typically go to church for the Christmas Eve service and then look at Christmas lights on the way home. The kids when young used to fly to bed as they wanted to be sure they were asleep when Santa came while Barb and I would sip on our rum and Eggnog(now I use almond milk of course). On Christmas morning we have a great tradition of Barb making a big breakfast for all of us after we open our Stockings from santa. The food traditions that the kids still ask mom for are Quiche and Fruit salad. After that we have a tradition of going upstairs where the kids have always had there own little christmas tree(since they were very young). We have always opened their gifts to us around this tree and still do today. Another tradition is that following Christmas dinner(we typically have all Barbs and my family come for christmas) we do Karaoke. This is always a great and fun way to end the day. Another tradition is that every Christmas we play the a video from a christmas 10 years earlier. The family always love this as it shows them what we were doing and the fun we were having 10 years previous. Again, all great traditions and great memories.
Halloween
Another tradition is what we do at Halloween. Ever since the children were young, we always went to a local farm to take a hay ride and pick out our Pumpkins. We would make sure we had a Pumpkin for every family member including our nanny and our dog Wilson(7 pumpkins in total). The kids would then draw out what they wanted on their pumpkin and I would spend the day cleaning them out and then carving them while watching Sunday football games. Each child would make the pumpkin have some of the same characteristics of themselves. Well this is a tradition that still continues even though we have no children at home. The past 2 years, Barb and I have continued the tradition and gone to the same farm, picked out the pumpkins and decorated them based on the characteristics of our children. We did it again this year and sent pictures to the children which they loved.
Traditions
These are just a few of the traditions that our family have enjoyed.My point in sharing these is that these family traditions are what amazing memories are made of. I know we all look forward to them and I know Barb, I and the children would be disappointed if we did not continue with these traditions and I know they are good for us emotionally and provides mental well being.
Yours in Great Health, Kev
Our Schedule for our trip to Cincinnati
Friday
-travel to Cincinnati
-checked in hotel and had healthy lunch at Vegetarian restaurant
-2 hour Cross fit workout with Matt
-quick healthy dinner – I had a dairy free salad and homemade veggie burger
-went to Bearcats college game( they lost terribly but we loved the college game day experience
Saturday
-Tim and I went for long run along river(1.25 hours) while Matt went to cross fit gym
-went for a really healthy brunch(avacado toast and free range poached eggs)
-we all spent most of afternoon in the Hotel lobby doing work for 3 hours
-late afternoon shopping(great deals as was Black Friday sales)
-great late dinner at Mortons
Sunday
-woke up early and did a fast paced anaerobic weight workout for an hour to get ready for game day
-great healthy breakfast
-went to Tailgate pre game on Freedom Way
-got to game early so we could watch the Bills warm up and experience the great stadium
-went to a great game and a Bills win
-went to great restaurant after game for a snack and watch the 4:00 games
-back to hotel for a hot tub to warm up and cleaned up for dinner
-went for dinner and watched 8:30 game
-to bed by 10:00 as had to get up early for workout and flight on Monday
Monday
-went for early morning run with Tim(matt had to go to airport at 4:00 am) and then to Airport to fly home
Summary
We had a great weekend and really enjoyed the Cincinnati We had a great balance of football, work, fitness and healthy food. It was an amazing weekend with the boys and a great family tradition! We are all looking forward to next years trip. I also want to thank Barb and Lauren as they have always supported our boys football trip over the past 15 years.
