Picture of the Week - 11/26/2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Picture of the Week - 11/19/2015

Zane's football team is going to the Lanier Bowl this Saturday.  They get to play for a championship!  

And it's taken me FAR too long to get excited about this.

I guess maybe we failed to get overly invested in Zane's football team because we've been through this before.  We took him to practice.  We went to his games.  We supported him and his team.  But I don't think we were as "into" it as we have been with other teams.  Many other teams.  

I've been thinking about why our feelings about this team tended to lean toward quiet ambivalence.  It's certainly not because we care about Zane any less than his brothers.  I think it's about perspective.  

Also - probably a good dose of just being busy to the verge of overwhelmed.  

But perspective...  it's normally a gift.  Maybe this time it stopped us from enjoying this experience as much as we should have/could have.   As parents of a kindergartner playing tackle football, perspective has taught us that this experience should be fun for the boys and really shouldn't be taken TOO seriously by the parents.  Perspective has proven that in 7 years only about a third of these kids will still be playing football.  Perspective has proven that the positions played at K/1 seldom dictate where a boy gets to line up in future years.  Perspective is very powerful!

So we hung back along the sidelines.  We didn't try to "coach" from the bleachers.  We didn't nag Zane about trying to DO better, BE better.  We just asked him if he was having fun.  We celebrated when he celebrated.  We told him we were proud - not of his play, but of the fact that he had learned to never give up.  Even against the "big kid".  (Zane's words.)  Also - we celebrated when he learned how to snap his helmet on by himself.  

Along the way, as the boys moved through the season, it became clear that they were a decent team - but not great.  We've been on better teams.  We've been on many that were worse.  The boys won enough games that they knew winning was better than losing.  But they lost enough to learn those lessons as well.  When we moved into the playoffs, I think we were pretty content with being at the end of a successful season.  Zane had fun.  He said he wanted to play again.  And he improved in nearly every area.  A victory by any measure.

And then they won the first playoff game.  And the boys - and especially OUR boy - were exited.  They were thrilled in fact.  The experience was bigger to them - to Zane - than we had recognized.  Shame on us...  

And then they won the second playoff game.  They beat an undefeated team stacked full of bigger kids who had beaten us so badly the first time we played that I don't think anyone expected to come out of that playoff game with a victory.  They shocked both sidelines.  They never gave up on themselves.  And boy oh boy - they taught me a lesson in the process.

The perspective that had held us back from, somehow, fully committing to this team, now screamed at me that this was a special time.  That the team, our boy, had just learned a lesson about life that can't be overstated.  Perspective finally shouted a wake up call that it was time to engage and show our fair-haired boy that we were in this with him.  That we cared about what was happening.  That win or lose on Saturday, this team has accomplished something that no one will ever be able to take away from them.  

So now we are heading back to the Lanier Bowl.  This will be only the Bovenizer family's second trip to this league's Championship game.  7 years ago this weekend Spencer won the Lanier Bowl with HIS K/1 team.  And after being somewhat ambivalent about this team for the last 4 months, I now find myself super excited for Saturday morning.  I can't wait to cheer this little team on.  I can't wait to hug my boy after the game and tell him how proud I am of him - win or lose.  Go Wolverines!  Beat the Bulldogs!

Here's a picture of Zane's team and a fun throwback to the day Spencer became a champion.  Hoping for a repeat on Saturday - nearly 7 years to the day!

Picture of the Week - 11/12/2015

Greetings from Scotland

I am ready to come home.  This has been a very busy and very productive trip.  I'm not lying when I say that we have accomplished more (probably because we are working like 12 hour days) in the last 3 days than we could have done in a month working remotely.  So it's hard to be too upset about coming over here. 

BUT

It's a hard trip.  The time change kills me.  I don't sleep.  I'm not hungry at the right times.  I don't get to talk to the boys because when they are home in the morning I am in meetings and when they get home in the afternoons/evenings I am trying to sleep.  It's hard to be away from home.  It would be harder if I were worried about Bob holding down the fort.  Between him and my parents, I wasn't worried at all.  They probably didn't even notice I was gone.

I'll be happy to head back home tomorrow morning.  There's no place like home!

Here are a couple of pictures I took while wandering around this week.  We are staying in a very different part of Edinburgh than we stayed last time.  Much more central and more interesting.  We are able to walk to the office and dinner, etc.  It's a very interesting city.  There's so much culture and history here.  It's just very different than Atlanta - than America.  

Have a great week everyone!

Clock tower at night

Same clock tower during the day

I think that's a museum in the background of that cute sign

Picture of the Week - 11/5/2015

For some reason, this has felt like the LONGEST week ever.  I blame time change.  I really hate time change.

I won't bore you with all the stuff that has landed on our "to do" list in the past 7 days.  I think it's sufficient to just say that it's too much.  I don't like to feel behind - and I do in just about every area right now.  

One day at a time.

Quinn got braces today.  He's also got a cold which I am praying isn't the flu and is on day 2 at home.  He's way more miserable than he looks in this picture that Bob took on their way home.  (Notice the rain on the window?  Yeah...  we haven't seen the sun down here in nearly a week.  It's depressing!)

This weekend we have a football tournament game, which could be Zane's last game as a kindergartner.  If they win, he will play in the championship game - The Lanier Bowl - the weekend before Thanksgiving.  If they lose, they are done.

Speaking of done, Quinn's lacrosse team lost their tournament game last night.  This game was supposed to happen last weekend, but we got somewhere around 4 inches of rain - so no lacrosse.  It was kind of a weird and anti-climatic end to the season because Quinn was home sick.  So Bob was there coaching, but the rest of us just got updates via text.  Odd...

I'm heading back to Scotland on Saturday for the week.  Preparing for that trip is a large contributing factor to the "to do" list.  Also it's supposed to be cold and rainy there too.  Blah!

Have a great week everyone!  

UPDATE - As I was writing this I got a text that Spencer has been sent home from school sick.  Uh oh...