Homecoming

This year I only had one little guy with me for the Homecoming parade.

Max and I hung out while Emma was off reffing a soccer game, Sam was playing a football game and Joseph was marching in the parade.

They spray painted all their hair. Joseph still has some orange we can't get out!

  We got there in plenty of time to get good seats,

so we could drop off Joseph, see the parade unobstructed and catch lots of candy!

But that meant we were also bored.

  We kept each other occupied, though.

Max is a little pilferer!  I had to tell him to stop, when he was snatching candy underneath the 3 year old sitting next to us, though!  He was crazy!!

In the end Emma's game never happened- it was canceled, because of the Homecoming parade.  So she sat at the fields and waited for us to be done watching the parade.  At least she got paid to hang out and watch soccer.  

Sam's game was their first loss, but on a brighter note, he got to play almost the entire game.  It was a B team game, and I guess the defense coach could feel my dagger eyes on him Wednesday night at the A team game when Sam didn't get to play even 4 downs.  Sam came off so frustrated that his eyes were all red.  I was ready to have a little talk with the coach.  I had mixed emotions hearing that he played both offense and defense the entire time at the B game, though, because that means that the kid whose position is Corner back on the B team, just lost his spot.  I'm sure his parents are now shooting daggers at the coach!  Not cool!

We went to the high school game the next day.  By the time we made it to the gate, Emma peeled off to go sit with the students.  She wasn't sure she wanted to be seen with us!  We had a great time, except we brought friends with us and it poured on us!  Ohio likes to just be sunny one minute and then have a torrential downpour the next.  That would have been OK,  but they had a 3 month old baby with them! Then the lightning started and that's when they cancelled the game.  They finished it the next day and I don't think the other team was even trying.  We won 16-44.

As a mom of a teenage girl and a Young Women's leader I get to hear all about who went to the dance and who got asked and what they wore, etc.  Last year, I encouraged Emma to go with her friends.  This year, she asked about it and I said no!  Now that she is so close to 16 she can taste it and she has boys that she texts on an hourly basis, I thought it wasn't such a good idea.  That going out with friends, might have turned into hooking up at the dance.  She didn't fight it too much, which makes me still think she is a pretty good girl.  But just for good measure,  her dad and I have been making fun of one of the guys she texts constantly.  Got to give her some balance!  Ha ha!

It's always fun to see what the girls come up with to wear to the dances.  We had two that made their dresses and three that bought theirs and then wore shrugs or cami's with them.  It really is impossible to find anything decent to wear at Homecoming!  Prom is a little easier, but the Homecoming dresses are generally shorter than mid-thigh and are strapless or close to it. 

I don't know how you even move in something like that- let alone dance!  

They tell me that at the dances there are two gyms.  One they call the bad gym and one they call the Mormon gym.  Rob asked, what do they do in the bad gym to make it the bad gym?  Emma told him that they all grind there.  He doesn't understand grinding.  We tried to explain it, but he still didn't get it, so I found a Youtube video for him.  Emma was shocked that I would look up such pornography, but I showed her that I found a video on how to tastefully grind with someone you don't know.  You didn't even know that was possible, did you!?  Apparently, it is!  And you too can learn from Tweet Boogie 

just how to tastefully grind on Youtube! hmm hmm!

Sam built a tree house at a friends house.

They even made the rope ladder that goes up to it.

I told him that he was going to fall out of it eventually and hurt his arm so that he couldn't play football.  Well guess what he did on Saturday?  Yep, fell out and hurt his arm.  It's all swollen and scratched up.  He says to me, "Mom, what are we going to do about this for football?"  I looked at him and said, "nothing."  "But it's going to hurt."  "Yep!  Sorry!"  Nice nurse mom!

I think Max's fort is a little safer!

Sitting in No-Man's Land

Sam is the one sitting in No-Man's land.  It's not fun to watch, either!  There were so many kids trying out for football this year, that they got to make an A and a B team.  Sam made the A team for Defense and punt return and then the B team for Offense.  There are fewer B team game, though, because there are fewer teams that could field both an A and B team.  We thought that didn't matter, since Sam is on the A team as well.  Unfortunately, it does matter.  What we learned:  Sam is second string A team for corner back.  The defense coach never rotates his players the entire game, even though they almost all also play Offense.  Which means in an A team game, the same 15 guys play the entire game with the rest of the 45 players sitting on the side lines.  

The coach keeps telling Sam to stand right beside him, so that he will be there when he wants to put him in, but of course he never does.  Every time he has turned around at the end of the game, seen Sam and a couple other guys he has told this to and says, "Darn!  I forgot!  I got so excited and just forgot.  Next game!"  Yeah, right coach!  Finally on the third game, the coach told him that he was going to get to play a lot, but if he didn't, he would start him on the B team game the next day.  Sam got 4 plays.  The guys told him, that wasn't a lot (really?) so he was going to start him, tomorrow.  But low and behold the guy that has that position on the B team, wasn't too thrilled about someone taking his spot.  Go figure!  And since he was back to 100% (he was injured- only real reason the coach was going to let Sam start there), coach took Sam out as soon as possible and never put him back in.  So there you go- too good to be on the B team, but apparently not good enough to actually play on the A team!  No-Man's Land!  They also decided the safety's would be the ones to do the punt returns instead of the corners, so he lost that job.  The nice thing is, that he really does get to play offense on the B team.  He played almost the entire game as a wing. 

They made sure that everyone had playing time on the B team game (Except starting A team people, who aren't allowed to play B team games at all.)  It was so much more fun to watch and I didn't go home swearing at the coach!  Oh wait- yes I did- but not the Offense coach!

Shining Idol

Emma was in charge of the combined Young Women's activity the other day, so I found a couple things for her to do.  She chose this one.  We made up CD's with all the songs that we had picked and copied down the lyrics for people, if they wanted to use them.  Then we got a bunch of random props and put them in bags.  I made microphones out of maracas and tinfoil and then put numbers on them.  They chose a number 1-14 which corresponded to the song that they got.  We gave the 4 groups of 3-4 people a second choice and they could use either of the songs they chose.  Then we gave them a choice of bags.  They had to use all the props in the bag.  Then they got 15 minutes to come up with what they were going to do.  I really had to convince two of the leaders that we needed to participate.  I chose a song I thought they would know, but nope- neither of them had bothered to watch Mulan.  We had "I'll make a man out of you."

 One other group did the same song, because they seemed to not know any of the other songs.  

This group had "Call me, Maybe." 

They really wanted Mr. Frog to call them!

These guys had "4-Minutes to Save the World."

Like the monkey going for a ride on Tiffany's back?

They had "Dancing Queen."  

I loved the use of the pompoms!  

Then we just all danced together to some of the other songs.

It was a fun time.  

Emma and one of her councilors judged the performances and gave out certificates that I made beforehand. 

 Dancing Queen got Funniest

We got goofiest

4-Minutes to save the World got best performance because they did gymnastics in theirs.

Call Me, Maybe got best use of props

The other team that did I'll Make a Man out of You got the "Wait, What?" award, because they didn't know any of the songs.

And Emma and Julianne gave themselves "The Bomb" award.

They did 4-minutes to Save the World also, but they just copied the group beforehand!

We had popcorn and soda pop and Starbursts afterwards.  The girls had a lot of fun and Emma got lots of compliments!  I love fun people and their internet postings!  Thank you, random stranger!

Ruminations

Just a few things I have been thinking of lately...

1.  People are too trusting.  Why would you put a sticker on your car stating where your child goes to school or worse yet those clings that have the sports team on them with their number in the center of the football or volleyball or soccer ball.

 The other day I said, "the only thing that could be worse, is if they had their name on it as well."  Then I got up close to the car and noted that it was definitely worse.  There in nice block letters under the number was the child's name.  Wow!  (Ok, I may be a little guilty of this with the blog.)
2.  Why is it that what kids hear is so different than the truth and why can't they see the paper on the floor in front of them that you want them to pick up?  Does their mind really block out the image of the paper, so that they really don't see potential work or are they just pretending?  And talk about selective hearing.  On the 8th grade football team, some kid got locked in a locker.  Sam reported that he was left in there for 4 hours.  I was horrified, knowing how scared I would be, as well as understanding the break down of muscles that are forced in unnatural positions for hours!  I kept thinking about it all week.  Finally, I asked the team mom.  Apparently, the kid challenged them to lock him in and then they were just a little slow in opening it.  The coach, when telling the other team about it, said, I am here for 4 hours, I don't need to be here longer to take care of something like this.  Yah, not the same thing at all.  The team mom said that she had heard the 4 hour thing from tons of parents, though.  Obviously, kids hear things wrong the same way.  What is that?  There needs to be some research done on this topic!
3.  A friend of mine put up an article on FB about how many of the women in the church feel that they should have more of a leadership role in the church (not the priesthood, just more say in things.)  I answered in my indelicate way, because I frequently don't think, before I comment.  But I still stand by the base thought.  We have a dearth of leadership in the women of the church to begin with.  Once that is corrected on the ward level, we might be able to take more of an active roll.  I really was impressed with some of the early day leaders.  I haven't been too impressed, lately.  The talks in General Conference by women tend to be surface things that are said with a tear in their eye and a smile on their lips.  As my friend said, "we need leaders that say more than 'I don't know, but I like little puppies.'"  After thinking about it for awhile, I decided this is part of my calling, to help the girls become strong leaders.  The YW president must have been on the same wave length, because she just did a lesson on Captain Moroni

and why he was a real hero (leader) and how we can emulate this in our own lives.  It was wonderful!
4. We DVR-ed the Olympics.  We haven't had a lot of time to watch them, but we are steadily getting through it.  We are on day 14 now.  We loved watching the Marathon.  I was so impressed with Kenyan team.

They worked together as a team.  The water was only on one side, so whoever was on that side, raced out in front of the pack, so that they wouldn't trip anyone up and then grabbed the water for the team and then came back and handed it out.  Running is what these women do, to get money for their families, yet they took the time to help each other.  That is a lesson we could all use!  Ok, so I was really impressed with all the women- I couldn't run one mile that fast and they just ran 26.2 miles that fast!  Dang!!  We also noticed a couple new sports: rhythmic gymnastics- I used to think it was kind of stupid, but it's actually really impressive.

2.  Water polo- those guys are bru-tal in the water!  They are sitting on each other's heads and pulling each other's suits off.

Crazy!  3.  Synchronized swimming-  Joseph said, "those guys are really flexible!  And their in swimming suits!  Ha ha!  Well at least we know Joe is not gay!
5.  One of my Young women asked on FB what the deal was with Chick-fil-a.

She got some rather negative comments about the guy. I hate trending or putting myself out there for people to criticize.  (One of my friends said something I said on FB was trending, because it was about guns and it was right after the Batman shooting.  I took it off FB.) But this time I decided I needed to say something.  After a couple back and forth's with this guy, I thought, I need to leave this alone.  But then I decided no, I needed to make sure my YW know what the arguments are, so that they just don't see one side of an issue.  One side seems to be portrayed more often than the other in the media.  I started really noticing that with this election.  The way things are phrased in the headlines, make it really obvious what side the media takes.  In the end, the guy decided to stop commenting back and forth with me.  Point to me!  Ha ha!  It's made me feel like I need to get smart on several issues, though- which means work!  Not cool!
6.  Why did God make you uglier and smellier the older you get?  Is it like the whole 9 months of pregnancy thing.  By the time you have had a kicking, squirming thing inside you for 9 months you're ready to go through anything to get it out?  So, by the time I roughly smell like a skunk and look like a hag, I'll be ready to say adios?  (I'm not saying all old people smell like skunks and looks like hags- just me.)
7. We have been teaching Sam about swagger, lately.  Wisdom we learned from Money ball- don't have an ugly girlfriend.  The coach notices that and thinks you don't have any self-confidence.  Sam has been trying to thwart all attempts at us teaching him.  Yesterday he mentioned our cute neighbor girl, though.  I said, "I thought she had a boyfriend?"  Sam said, "She broke up with him."  Ah, moving in!  Nice!  See they really do listen, even if they pretend not to be!
8.  Which brings me to number 8.  Why, oh why was I not more of a player growing up? (I really had one boyfriend the whole time- we were on again, off again, but I didn't date hardly anyone else.)  We are encouraging all our children to taste all the ice cream out there

and not just have one kind all through high school!  The Mormon kids around here do some really fun dates.  I hope I can continue the tradition once we move to Germany.  We didn't do much actual dating when I grew up in Germany.  I don't know if that was because we were so busy (5 varsity letters and a couple clubs, besides all the traveling!  Not much time to hang out!) or if it was because we had no money, but the dates these guys come up with require very little, if any money and they are super fun!  I have got to get more ideas from them!!  Then it will just require forcing my kids to do it!  Planning, planning!