School

Tonight, Sarah and Brittany took Zach and Ben over to the Gombert Elementary Monster Bash for Halloween.  Zach and Ben got all dressed up and ready to do the games and such with Brittany, while Sarah volunteered to help out with concessions.  She worked at the caramel apple stand most of the time which made her laugh.  This is much of what she does at work.  Unfortunately, the person who had volunteered to replace her didn’t show up so she just continued on and also helped clean up after it started coming to a close.  What a sweet kid!  She didn’t have to, but did anyway.  Meanwhile, Zach and Ben wore Brittany out going to the cake walk (where they won some cupcakes), and playing all the games in the gym.  They had a blast and came home totally tired!

While the four of them were over at Gombert, Kirstyn had a bunch of friends over for a Halloween party at our house.  Kirstyn had all kinds of snacks, pop, pizza, and such and many of the kids brought over snacks to share.  They played Apples to Apples, played on the Wii, and ate lots of food.  The girls downed about 8 pizzas.  🙂  They must have been really hungry!

Unfortunately, we didn’t get too many good pictures of the party.  They had a blast, though and everyone was totally tired by the time they left our house.  Needless to say, Angela and I were exhausted as well from running around and helping.  🙂

Today, Zach was really busy!  He had an early football game and had a TON of fun, even though his team lost again.  🙁  He played on the offensive line today and had to go against a really big kid that I swear is not in first grade.  We were joking that maybe he is a 3rd year 1st-grader!  🙂  One of the dads got some great pictures of him!

It was rainy and cold and but the kids still played hard and enjoyed the game.  Zach didn’t have his best game, but he had fun and he won the weekly crunch bar for doing great against kids that most of the time were way bigger than him.  Go Zach! 🙂

After the game, Zach went over to the Gatorthon at his elementary school.  It was a walk and activities to raise money.  We sponsored him and he was pretty excited to get lots of prizes and other “stuff” for his efforts.  He came home with a load of things and was excited to set it all out and have a picture taken.  🙂

We were all exhausted by the end of the day when you add all those activities together, plus all the house cleaning we did.  We rewarded ourselves by having a  family party that night with a movie, some games, and just hanging out for some much-needed “together time.”

Part 2 of our very busy Saturday consisted of football and the Metea Valley High School Homecoming Dance!

Zachary had his football game and played pretty well.  He is still starting at center and today, he didn’t have a single missed snap!  What a cute little football player he is.  He is trying really hard to get a Crunch bar, given out to one offensive and one defensive player each game by one of the coaches.  He hustled better today and ran up to the line every time after the huddle!

Unfortunately, they lost again!  The poor little team hasn’t won a game yet.  It seems like they are TINY compared to the other teams that they are playing against!  They don’t give up though, and even though there are some tears, they keep playing hard.  The coaches are great with them and treat them like winners.  We’re glad that he has coaches that care and want them to have a positive experience.  🙂

This afternoon, the girls got ready and went over to Gaul’s house (Sarah’s and Brittany’s friends), and started partying for the homecoming dance!  They had dinner and then got all dressed up, did hair, etc., etc., etc., etc.  Sarah and Brittany both invited friends from church to go with them and so they had a group of 7 kids.  After getting all dressed up and pretty, they went and took a bunch of pictures…

One of the highlights for me was that I got to be a chaperone at the dance.  Myself, Ken Gaul, and Lonny Greenwald volunteered through the PTSA to help out.  We all were pretty excited to be able to hang out with the girls tonight.

We drove the kids up to the school and had a great time at the dance.  For the first part of the dance, Ken worked at the refreshment area, while Lonny and I helped out at the extremely busy coat check (which was more of a “shoe check”).  I don’t think that there was a single girl there that left her shoes on.  When you think of it, it’s kind-of gross.  600+ girls walking around in sweaty bare feet around the dance floor.  Sounds like the boys locker room!  🙂

All three of us finished up the dance at the refreshment table.  Lonny had to leave a bit early because he’s running the Chicago Marathon tomorrow!  I don’t know how people do that!  🙂  We wished him good luck and then continued our work.  We had a great time talking to each other about all kinds of stuff, talking to all the kids who came to get refreshments, etc.  I tried not to get too close to our kids, however, due to threats from Brittany that I better not hang around them!  🙂

It was so funny being there and comparing dances we had growing up vs. the dances now.  Back when I went to dances, if you didn’t have a date, you just didn’t go.  Now, there were probably about 60% of the kids there that came as big groups without dates (either mixed boys and girls, all girls, or all guys).  They just stand in the middle of the floor, jump around, and dance with everybody.  It seems like our larger dances were more formal and nice as well.  How times have changed.  🙂

After the dance, the girls all came over to our house for dessert, snacks, and a movie.  Most of them didn’t make it through the movie.  We had to wake them up to go home at midnight.  🙂