Football Time in Tennessee. And Time for School!

Look what I have in my house now.

Andrew was SO excited about TACKLE football. At least he was until his first practice, a few days after this photo was taken, when he had to wear what you see above in 90 degree weather for two and a half hours. Yeah, the coaches overdid it. I wonder if they were trying to prove a point. He came home hot, exhausted and overwhelmed with what the season was going to hold for him. In fact, he told Wade, “I’m not going to play next year.” (See, he knows once he starts he has to finish but he wanted it known he wasn’t happy about it.)

But by the end of the day he was excited again and looking forward to his first game where he could knock someone down. (Not sure that’s going to be all he’s hoped for when the time comes either.) He wanted to go back outside and throw the football some.

Aren’t we like that a lot of the times in life? We get all excited about something and then when reality hits of how much energy or time (or money) is going to go into it, then we feel defeated.

There are a lot of quotes that we hear that go along that line but I think most of them originate from Booker T. Washington when he said, “Nothing every comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.”

Verse 4 of Proverbs 13 says, “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.” Yeah, nothing worth having comes easy.

Now where’s my verse of inspiration for the fact that our house has officially entered football season. Three days of practice for now and then we’ll have two nights of games soon enough which I am afraid will be on school nights. Waaah!

I wanted to also share a picture of a paper that hangs from Andrew's bulletin board in his room. He made it last school year around the beginning of October. It was a front page of a newspaper that described each student. Wow, his handwriting and drawing has improved, thankfully!

"An important event in my life is football because you get to knock people down and if you win or lose you can still be happy because you get to touch people but at school you can't touch people. Oh, I about forgot you can also get flags and if you get flags then you keep the other team from getting a touchdown."
[I'm pretty sure he wrote that as one sentence; I didn't see any periods except the one. The English major in me made me correct the misspelled words. It's hilarious though and makes me wonder how much aggression he needs to get out on a daily basis. LOL]

Elizabeth was jumping up and down today when she realized it was two weeks until school starts. I have to say that days like today make me look forward to it too. The kids have always got along easily with each other, but the last two weeks I have been beside myself with how to reverse this bumpy road they are going down that will lead to an unacceptable conclusion.

To get ready for the start of school we still need to do a few things - buy first-day-of-school outfit, get school supplies, etc. This was delivered for Andrew last week.


He has looked forward to getting a rolling backpack for a few years now. Probably since Elizabeth got hers. Maybe the new backpack will make him anxious to use it, as in going to school!