Catching Up with a LONG List

The Catch-Up List (apologies for the length)

      I have a friend who regularly makes a Friday List and it's so smart.  It covers everything from random thoughts to weekend plans.  Instead of a half-baked story about the Rodeo intertwined with baseball stories, I decided a catch-up list, okay an essay, would cover all the non-writing I've done this week.  And since we are preparing for a very short Spring Break get-a-way, I thought I should get all of the good stuff in before our trip to Baton Rouge, Memphis, and Hot Springs took over.  I'm also fearful that once I start working - in ONE more week, the writing will go to the wayside.  Or maybe I'll be so enthusiastic about the new hectic Ward way of living, that I'll need the writing outlet just to vent.  We shall see.
Until then ...

OPENING DAY

    Writing about Luna and her cat funeral was all I could muster for last weekend's events, but there was so much more.  In between burying our feline, we had OPENING DAY of little league.  This year Elijah is in the Pee Wee league as a Rockie.  Now I have to search my wardrobe for purple and black.  If you want to get a feel for Opening Day in Pearland just read last year's post because it was pretty similar.  Except this year, we knew what to expect.  We knew that a parade at 9am on the first weekend of March would be freezing.   We knew to dress the girls in hats and gloves, and to bring snacks, and we knew that where we sat, we wouldn't really get to see the boys parade by anyway.  But we went, because that's what you do.  Also, we knew we wouldn't win the Silverado Truck raffle.  Sorry dad, I know you hoped you'd win.

LUTHERAN SCHOOLS WEEK

   
        Again, here's another event I wrote about last year.  I am beginning to see that our life is more cyclical than I thought.  I keep repeating the same stories.  But last year's was so happy, this year, not so much.  During Lutheran School's Week, the kids get to dress to a different theme each day.  Day one:  PJ's (no problem).  Day two:  Neon (again, no problem)   Day three:  Wacky Wednesday (Huge Problem).  I will have to agree with Kenny on this - we hate dress up days.  It takes the kids FOREVER to choose crazy clothes.  And even though I was smart and had them lay out the clothes the night before, the morning was a disaster.  Kid 2 fell apart.  It was all on account of her hair.  I fixed it like she said with about 10 pony-tails around her head.  Next thing I know, she's taking it all out.  And when we start rushing her and asking why, why, why did you take it out (and probably a little berating by her brother) and we need to go, we need to go, we need to go, she starts crying.  Poor kid - her sensitive nature is never going to withstand middle school.
      I wanted my pic of all 3 before we left for school. Didn't work out so well since she was in tears.
      But just so you don't think she cried all day, I dropped Lanie off at her class (tardy) and went back to Lydia's class, fixed her hair in a simple ponytail, apologized for the morning, and gave her a big hug.  She was fine. But the drama of the 30 minute drive or what I call a race-with-the-red-lights, oh boy.


R-O-D-E-O, part one

   I made a blanket statement last year in a post that attending the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Carnival was something we didn't need to do every year.  It's crowded and hot and expensive.  But, I was really determined to take the kids to actually see the Rodeo, so they could see that the three week long event was more than a ferris wheel and some baby chicks.  While not great judgement on my part, I got the 1/2 price Wednesday tickets and after school, we drove down to Reliant, parked where the old AstroWorld once stood and made our way across highway 610.  I found out that we really didn't need to pay for our cheap tickets because the kids had the most fun watching diesels fly by underneath them, rolling down a suspicious hill that ran into the feeder road and riding 3 escalators to our cheap seats in section 636 where we watched real cowboys bull ridin'.  I did learn that bull-riding really stresses me out.  One guy got stepped on several times and medics had to rush him to the hospital.  Does that happen every night? It is not my kind of sport.

      Of course watching the bull riders gave me the opportunity to tell Elijah all about the 1994 movie 8 Seconds  about Champion bull rider Lane Frost.  Please tell me you remember that one -- with Luke Perry, from 90201.  Now you remember?


R-O-D-E-O, part two

After we realized the kids couldn't make it through any more Dierks Bentley songs (which for the record, I really enjoyed), we decided to leave.  I made the mistake of sort of promising that they would get to do ONE thing on the fairway.  This was before I realized the prices of tickets.  But, like the good man that he is, even though he highly disagreed with me, Kenny went to buy the 22 dollars worth of tickets so Lydia could ride the ferris wheel once, Lanie could go in a fun house for two minutes and Elijah could shoot two baskets at a chance to win a stuffed animal.  And it was already 10 o'clock.

I begged Elijah to do something else, but he couldn't be convinced.  I tried to tell him how disappointed he would be when he didn't make the shot and his money was gone.  I showed him the basket and how oval shaped it was and how tricky they made it.  We watched some men in front of us lose out.  But he was still determined.

And can you believe what we went home with?

 

That kid totally proved me wrong.  I love when that happens.
It's God's way of keeping me humble.


Sorry for the long, long post.  But if you made it all the way through, thanks for indulging me.

Have a wonderful Spring Break!