Zach got his football pictures the other day and I just got around to posting them today. He is such a cute little football player. He has a great team and really nice and helpful coaches. Even though they have yet to win a game, they sure have a lot of fun!
Zach loves playing too and can’t wait for next season to play again (even though they still have 3 more games left! 🙂
On MUCH better news than on yesterday’s post, today was Sarah’s Birthday!!! SWEET 17! Yikes! It is amazing how fast time flies. Just yesterday, we were in Provo bathing Sarah in the kitchen sink! 🙂
We celebrated a little but with Zach’s football practice and Young Women/Young Men activites, we were pretty swamped! We’ll celebrate with cheesecake (what Sarah really wants for her cake) tomorrow. For her birthday, Sarah got about 20 homemade gifts from Zach which was really cute. She also got her Letter Jacket from us! 🙂 She’s really excited about that! Unfortunately it didn’t come in on time, but that’s OK. She’ll just have to be patient!
It’s also hard to believe that Sarah has already been driving for almost a year (4 months by herself with her own license)! We really love it because she doesn’t have to depend on us to cart her everywhere she goes! What’s even better is that Brittany and the other kids don’t have to rely on us 100% to cart them around either! 🙂
Happy Birthday, Sarah!
Today we received some terrible news… The dad of one of Sarah’s best friends and friend of our family passed away. Lonny Greenwald left behind his wife Jackie, and 2 daughters, Rebecca and Emily. It was quite a shock. We just chaperoned with him at the Homecoming Dance on Saturday, and he ran and finished the Chicago Marathon yesterday.
Lonny is in the front in the blue shirt with Rebecca, Sarah’s friend. This picture was taken right before the Homecoming Dance on Saturday.
It really makes you sit back and realize how short and precious life is. When I came home from work, Brittany gave me a long big hug and told me how much she appreciates me. I wish it was that way all the time with the kids, but I’ll take what I can get. 🙂
Angela went over and visited Jackie and talked with her about what our family could do. Sarah went over and spent some time with Rebecca to console and comfort her. We were a little worried for Sarah because she found out the bad news right before she went to a job interview at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. True to Sarah’s personality, she compartmentalized the sadness and didn’t let it affect her at all until after she was done with the interview. She said it went really well, however, so we’re hopeful that soon Sarah will have her first job.
We wish the Greenwald Family the best are praying daily for them in their time of loss.
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. 🙂
Today was an absolute crazy day! We had tons of things going on. Early this morning, Angela and her Public Affairs cohort, Julie Stevenson left to go to Bourbonnais, IL to a preparedness fair that they have been working extremely hard on coordinating for the past 6-8 months! There were groups from all over who participated and the fair went off very well! Angela was very nervous that no one would come from the community down there but fortunately, she was wrong. The attendance was great! They also had our scout troop down there doing some cooking and survival skills demonstrations, and they brought down at least 100 loaves of homemade bread to cut up and pass out.
She and Julie left just after 6 and didn’t get back home until just after 4. What a tiring but fulfilling day! Way to go Angela! You could hear the sigh of relief that this was over all the way from Bourbonnais when they started back home! 🙂 See part 2 for football and Homecoming Dance! 🙂
Tonight was the final Metea Marching Mustangs performance on the field. 🙁 On a good note, they had their best halftime show of the season and did a wonderful job! I absolutely loved being part of the pit crew and will miss hanging out with the pit dads at games. We had a great time! We also had our best pit cleanup after the show today as well! 🙂
Unfortunately, the football team got cremated by 40+ points for not only the last home game of the season, but for the homecoming game. Oh well, next year they’ll do VERY well because of the experience they’ve had this year. They’ll also be playing kids their own age! 🙂
Go Mustangs!
Last night, Mom and Dad Hobbs were set apart as missionaries, and today they finally went into the MTC after weeks of preparing and getting excited! Jeremy (Angela’s Brother) took them down and dropped them off. They were just like two little kids on Christmas morning! 🙂
They only get to spend a week in the MTC and then fly out to Tokyo a week from today! Crazy how that works. They have been taking language lessons via the phone 3 times per week and have been doing well. Dad’s Japanese has been coming back quickly from his mission days, and Mom is learning well too! 🙂
Good luck on your mission! We wish you well and much success! 🙂
Today, Sarah and Brittany participated in a REALLY cool Billy Joel Tribute concert at the high school as part of their marching band season and show. They played all the music in their marching show and a Billy Joel cover band was there and played a bunch of music as well. Angela and Kirstyn went to support them in this effort. They said it was absolutely AWESOME and the girls had a great time dancing on stage with their friends and having a great time!
Angela said that the attendance wasn’t as high as she had hoped, and this was probably due to the fact that it was on a Saturday and they didn’t market it very well.
Meanwhile, I was with Ben at Zachary’s football game. He did a GREAT job! It was very cold and we forgot to bring gloves. The coach taped up his hands in the middle so it would help him a bit. Fortunately, after the first series, some friends lent us a pair of gloves that he used the rest of the game and was MUCH happier! He did a GREAT job at center and didn’t even mess up one snap! 🙂
It is so much fun to see our kids participate in all the activities that they do. We just love it!
