Just an update

Posted on November 20, 2010 by Suzanne

There are probably only about 2 of you that care, but here’s an update from my post from Thursday:

1. Lego League mock competition: the project presentation was awesome: they blew away the judges. They had 2 interviews that went well, but we have some thing to talk about. The robot portion of the evening was a disappointment, but that was mostly because we found out that we have been doing something wrong: and that had a significant impact on the functionality of the kids programming. Three weeks until the real competition, so they should just be fine.

2. The North Tama Redhawk football team WON the state championship. 43-34. They came back from a 20-0 deficit, and I’m sure the other team thought they pretty much had it wrapped up by the 2nd quarter. This is the first state title in a boys’ sport in school history, so it’s pretty exciting.

And for the other 2 of you that were interested in my Nanowrimo participation: I’m currently at 30,474 words, which is a little short of where I should be, but: thanks to items number 1 and 2, no writing was accomplished yesterday, and I’ve still been recovering today. And now I’m going to go see Secretariat, so I’ll probably have quite a bit of catching up to do tomorrow…

Unexpected afternoon off

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Suzanne

Not sick, no.

Injured by recess football (again).

He got pushed and bit his tongue. I won’t show you the picture, suffice it to say that it is a really big cut and it looks really nasty. So nasty that he’s going to have trouble eating and playing his saxophone for a few days.

Needless to say, he won’t be playing recess football again in the near future. He and his brother both have come home with more than enough scraped up elbows and wrists and knees and…

I find myself being very reactionary about this, and I’m trying to resist the urge too much. ON the one hand, it drives me crazy when we have to stop this or recall that or go all bonkers after one kid got hurt (usually being stupid or not being supervised). This, though. The nurse wishes they would outlaw recess football: she sees a TON of injuries. The 6th graders get to play on the grass. 4th and 5th graders are relegated to the street and the concrete, respectively. (They aren’t allowed to play together because…there are too many of them, and the younger ones would probably get even more hurt…)

Too bad they can’t go play on the HUGE FOOTBALL FIELD that is just steps away from their playground. Yes, I know that would be SACRILEGE, to have the snot-nosed kids WRECKING the pristine grass of the almighty football field.

(photo didn’t turn out very nicely, so I used a Seventies action from Pioneer Woman to make it “look” like it was supposed to be grainy and stangely colored).

Football 2009

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Suzanne

Will plays Quarterback quite a bit. He also does other stuff, but I can’t ever remember for sure what the position names are.

Joe is…a Defensive End? I think? He really likes hitting people. And I guess he’s pretty good at it.

They are 0 and 3. It’s pretty demoralizing to lose 53-0, and by the end of those kinds of games, most of the boys aren’t even really trying anymore. The first two games were against the teams that are probably the best in their weight class.

The last game was only 8-6, so at least they are improving.

Mark is helping to coach, only one of the boys (not ours) has informed Will and Joe that their Dad isn’t REALLY a coach. He’s just a ball carrier.

This is the young man that then turned around and told Will that the only reason Will is playing QB is because his Dad is a coach.

In other words, he’s a real rocket scientist.

I have the boys’ football pics from last year taped to my monitor, I guess it’s time to replace them. They look so much older now, but that might be the hair. (Last year’s pics are HERE).

Perky Blog Post #1

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Suzanne

And thus concludes all chipper and perky blog posts.

Someone made this comment on my prior post about the white stuff in the sky.

I am bound and determined to prove this someone wrong by posting as many chipper and perky blog posts as possible.

So how is this for chipper? Our football team just won another game and are headed to the Semi-Finals!!! We chose not to go watch because of the unmentionable weather, and instead I enjoyed a nice evening at the movie watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. The boys stayed home and watched Indiana Jones (the newest one).

We’re really hopeful that tomorrow is going to be a great day at our little show in Traer (anyone in the area? you should come, there’s some neat stuff on display!), and as soon as I figure out what I did with my camera, I’ll post some pictures!

Have a Fabulous Saturday!

Suzanne

The last game

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Suzanne

The boys had their last football game over the weekend. Things started out great — they scored a touchdown on the very first play of the game. It was all downhill after that — they ended up losing 28-6. They just couldn’t move the ball at all. It had been raining earlier in the day, and so it was cold and wet, and they were tired. The whole team sort of looked like it had given up.

Not Joe, though. I could tell by his body language that when he was on the field he was serious and he was ready to play. I had my camera with me at the game and I set it to the “sports” setting, so that I could just start snapping pictures and hopefully come up with something good — here’s one where I actually caught him from the front:

And this isn’t to imply that Will wasn’t out there with intent, too — it just wasn’t as obvious with him as it was with Joe. Amazingly, I actually managed to catch a shot of him in motion from the front as well:

I could never figure out why the boys were all given white pants. A few teams had black, but most everybody had white. Most practices and games didn’t leave mud — but plenty of grass stains and streaks of dirt. Since it was our last game, we didn’t have to bring those muddy things home with us! We got to dump them in a bin and the league will clean them. Yuck.

I’m pretty sure the boys are looking forward to playing again next year.

I guess I survived the experience. I still don’t really know what’s happening out on the field, but I’m learning. The other night my husband had the New Orleans/Seattle game on the TV in our room. I was trying to read, but I kept finding myself watching, and asking “What just happened?” “Why did they do that?”

Next up: basketball! Oh boy!

Suzanne