Our family loves football.
My husband
relives the glory days enjoys the sport as well as the sights, smells and sounds that bring back so many wonderful memories. Our oldest son dreams about the day when he can wear the uniform himself, and our little guy just loves getting out and about...especially if it involves junk food from the snack bar.
I love the ambience...the lights, the excited and hopeful crowds filling the stands, the sense of small-town community, and the patriotism that a person feels when the high school band plays the National Anthem and the crowd stands in respectful silence, hands over their hearts.
Like this guy...a family friend of ours and World War II vet.
Normally he gets around by scooter due to a disability, but when that old Anthem plays, even he manages to get to his feet, pull off his hat and stand proud, wiping away tears of knowing...having fought for some of the freedoms it represents and which we enjoy to this day.
My heart wells up with gratitude and patriotic pride during that Anthem, especially when I see this old Vet and look down and see our boys holding hands over hearts. Makes a mama get downright choked up. Thank God for folks like him who continue to preserve our freedoms.
On this particular night, it feels wrong somehow to be at a game when the temperatures were in the high nineties all day.
For football, it needs to be so cold we have to bundle up and bring hot chocolate to keep away the chill. On this night, the only thing that would do was cold bottled water.
Last year, our friends' daughter was a Freshman, and they turned out at a few games bemoaning the fact that she was now going off to hang out with her friends instead of sitting with mom and dad like she used to.
This year, she's a cheerleader.
My heart used to give a little pang thinking that eventually, that would be our Jericho going to the games not for family time but to hang with his friends.
I just hadn't realized it would be so soon.
He came by a couple of times to say "hi" and told me, "Mom, this is so
fun! I want to do this every weekend!" and left to catch up with the guys.
**sniff, sniff.**
The boy is growing up.
What I hadn't counted on, however, was that some of his classmates would be in the crowd.
Female classmates.
Brazen hussies Girls that weren't afraid to call out to him as he walked past.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. He's a nice kid and makes friends readily, and the way those girls were acting it was apparent they thought he was cute.
While it kind of takes my breath away thinking that before long there will be talk of driver's licenses and cars and prom dates, I'm pretty sure we'll be okay for a while yet. Jericho still plays with Transformers and Legos, after all.
And though he is kind to everyone, he still seems a bit...
wary where girls are concerned (as he
should. Girls today are so bold!) He thinks the drama of pre-teen and teen 'romance' is just plain silly.
My hope is that we can keep him so stinkin' busy he won't have time to even
think about such things until he's finished with college, lol.
So while Jericho wandered around with his friends, Judah and I sat with the extended family of our friends who turned out in support of their cheerleader daughter.
Judah called to her very loudly several times, as she's one of the girls that works in his Little Tots class on Sunday mornings at church.
She obliged by waving and smiling up at him each time she heard it. He was so "pwoud".
The game was exciting and the air held a hint of fall even if the wind was far too warm.
Once again this year, Jeff was announcing from the press-box.
Even though daddy announces the games, it all sort of blends in and becomes part of the ambience after a while.
It came as quite a surprise about midway through the game when suddenly, over the loudspeaker, we hear something that made Judah pull one of these
Home Alone type faces:
"We have a special announcement this evening...there is a little boy in the crowd who just turned 4...Happy Birthday, Judah!"
"Somebody mus haf towd 'em it was my birfday!" he said with amazed delight.
One of the privileges of having your dad as the announcer, I suppose.
Later, another announcement came over the loudspeaker that produced quite a sensation in the stands in spite of the losing battle on the field.
"We have another special announcement this evening from two guys from [our high school]...Brad and Tony would like to ask our cheerleaders Katie and Ashley if they would like to go to Homecoming with them."
For said cheerleaders, it took a moment for the words to sink in. In fact, one of them had to run up to the other one to tell her what had just transpired.
The crowd watched her face light up...and you would have thought that they'd just been proposed to so great was their delight.
"I take it that the answer is 'yes'?" Jeff asked over the loudspeaker.
With typical cheerleader exuberance they indicated that "YES" they would love that, and hair ribbons and pom-poms fluttering, they ran back to get into place for their next routine.
The crowd went wild.
It was all very cute.
Those boys took a big risk, and clever as it was, I'm sure they have no idea that having done such a thing just to ask those girls to Homecoming has set a very high bar.
Should they ever propose to anyone on down the road, they're going to have to do something far above and beyond that...especially if it's a local girl, lol.
Judah, being a big 4 year old now, sat pretty still for most of the night watching the football game with interest.
With all the talk of football in our home this time of year, he was already bemoaning the fact that we'd forgotten his football at home.
One of the highlights for all up-and-comer kids at these games is that after the game is over, they can go out on the actual football field and play catch.
It's the stuff of dreams, really.
For some reason, while watching the game, I thought of Jeff up in the press box during the in-between moments of down-time, looking across that field and thinking about how one day his boys would be out on that field.
Probably because he bequeaths his vast knowledge of the sport to them nearly every afternoon as they play catch or practice other football related maneuvers in the yard.
I could also tell by Judah's observations exactly what he was thinking as he watched all the football players doing their thing.
He finally looked up to me and says, "Mama...I want to be one of doze guys."
I looked out at the football players, resigning myself to the coming years.
For some reason, in that split second I could suddenly see my own boys in those uniforms, could hear Jeff's shouts from the sidelines, and could picture myself sitting in the stands cringing as I watched my sons bodies being slammed around on the field, holding my breath when they'd go down with the ball...wondering if they'd get up again in one piece, or if it would require trips to the ER for sprains or broken bones...and I sighed deeply.
For some reason, God in His sovereignty gave me boys instead of girls. Boys that need to be trained up into strong men that can handle whatever comes their way. Likely, this will be one of the steps in that process.
I look back at Judah. He looks up at me with those big brown eyes and says, "I want to weow bwack pants and howd one of doze fings."
My attention snaps back. Black pants? None of the football players on that field were wearing black pants.
I scan the people in the general direction he's looking and my eyes focus in on exactly who he's referring to.
And I laugh my head off.
Knowing Judah, I suspect that the megaphone and not the uniform or sport was the real draw. He's been itching to try one of those things out for forever. Nevertheless I found myself replying, "Buddy...in this family, boys don't become cheerleaders."
He looked at me kind of surprised. "But dat boy is" he says pointing.
"Yes, but our boys play football and leave the cheerleading to the girls."
And suddenly, in spite of my fears about those future days of football, I realized that by some strange twist of fate, I'd become one of them...the football fanatics that are my in-laws. The ones that turn out in droves to see their boys play, and have for two generations.
How did this happen?!
Then I hear a little voice from beside me. "Do I git to weow a heowmet?"
"Yes, buddy...you will get to wear a helmet."
And I was rewarded with a huge grin.
Ahhh, not too many things come close to fun Friday Night Football with my boys.
:: :: :: ::
FRUMP FAMILY RANDOMS
After a long and busy weekend and early part of the week, I indulged in a much-needed nap on Wednesday afternoon.
I woke with a start remembering that I hadn't yet put together our "Crazy Hats" for Awana that night.
Jeff and Jericho had just arrived home from school, and as we were eating dinner I thought through the dilemma.
Immediately afterwards, I dashed around my craft room grabbing up supplies and depositing them on the table.
It was a frantic, shrieking-fishwife kind of an affair, but in just under 10 minutes and with the assistance of my trusty hot glue gun, we managed to make all four hats.
Unfortunately, the photos for Jeff's and Jerichos didn't turn out.
Jericho's buddies pulled off some of the dinosaurs we'd hot-glued to the top of his ball cap just before we remembered to take a picture, and Jeff misplaced his hat during the course of the evening.
His was a great dollar-store find from the day before which read, "Welcome to Korea, 2002" and I think had an Olympics logo on it.
What I'd like to know is where in the world have those hats been for the last seven years?
:: :: :: ::
So because of the festivities surrounding Judah's birthday weekend, we procrastinated on getting around to Jericho's science project until last evening.
His job was to construct a model of a plant cell from a picture in his science book.
We'd been shopping for supplies a week or two earlier, but hadn't been able to find anything to represent the large central vacule, which looked like a clear blob of jelly.
Miraculously, after a quick trip to Michael's, we found some clear glass Christmas bulbs that were round from the front, but only about an inch thick on the sides. Their semi-flattened out ball shape was perfect.
So I helped him to cut open the styrofoam ball and then to carve out the spot for the vacule.
It was going pretty good but the bulb didn't seem to want to fit in the exact depression we'd made for it. I pushed, hoping the styrofoam would give a bit.
What 'gave' was the bulb, breaking into a hundred tiny shards of glass, some of which entered the tender flesh padding my thumbs.
On my right thumb, it managed to nick a vein or something, because it was spurting out pretty good.
As dashed for the sink holding my lacerated hands beneath the faucet and asking Jeff to run for tweezers and hydrogen peroxide, I could hear Jericho quote in an affected English accent his usual response to such injuries that don't concern him personally, "It's just a flesh wound."
Not exactly the sort of thing you want to hear when you see deep bleeding wounds on YOUR OWN HANDS and you know you have to pull the glass out yourself because only you can feel to know if it's all gone. **shudders**
Who knew science homework could be so dangerous?
Thankfully we had a backup bulb...and the model turned out pretty good!
:: :: :: ::
Shortly after we got back from our vacation a few weeks ago, I found a lost sticky-note on my desk which had been put there to remind us to send off Jericho's birthday thank-you's.
From the end of June.
Woefully late, I set the cards out on the table and told Jericho to get them all written out.
Here was what one of them said:
For a moment, I felt proud that he would incorporate such big words into his Thank You cards...until I remembered that THIS was his 'investment':
I'm thinking that hmmm, yeah...perhaps we need to clarify the definition of 'investing'.
Wii seem to be a bit unclear on the concept.
