The Boys' First Football Game

I know its the middle of summer, but to me its always football season. Is there really any better way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

This past Sunday was their Cousin Ethan's last flag football game of the season. Since it was the first time any of our nephews was old enough to be in a football league we thought it would be nice to go see him play.

So we packed up the boys...short sentence, but boy does that actually require a lot of work. It was new park that we have never been to before, so of course I got lost. It was kinda goofy, Kelly told us it was on Jordaine St., but what I didn't know is that it was literally in the middle of Jordaine St. and where we turned onto the street we couldn't get to the park because the street went to a dead end before the park. So we turned around and got back on Jordaine St. on the other side of the park and all was good. Then we weren't sure exactly which field it was on ( they had 3 games going ), so we decided the best choice was to pick the one all the way at the other end of the parking lot. This might sound like an odd idea, but they boys had been kinda cranky during the day so this field provided the best opportunity to take the boys on a little calm down walk. Of course that was not the right field, so we walked around a bit and found the field we were looking for. By that point the boys had gotten a nice little walk, so it worked out good that we walked around for a little bit as they were now starting to fall a sleep.

But they didn't stay sleeping for too long. Emersyn wanted to talk to they boys ( just like any little girl does ) so that got them up. The boys are not quite as excited to hear Emersyn talk as Alexis, but they do love talking to any little kid that comes to talk to them. So they woke up and were all smiley while Emersyn and Kelly talked to them. Jamie and Joe's friend Adam was there, and I didn't realize that he had never seen the boys before. He was helping Jamie be an assistant coach so he didn't get long to see the boys, but it was a nice chance for him to meet them.

Then we started to feel a couple of sprinkles. No big deal, but I hate having the boys out in the rain. So we grabbed thier blankets and started to drap them over the stroller. Then we could see it coming...on the other end of the park you could see this massive down pour. It was kinda neat to see, and if the boys weren't there I probably would have just sat and watched it coming. But we really needed to make sure the boys weren't caught in that, and I'm not sure how well our little baby blankets would have held up to that. Luckily Kelly's mom was also there and she had a big thick blanket that Emersyn was using to sit on. So we quickly grabbed that and threw it over the stroller.

By the time we got the blanket over the stroller the down pour had hit us. I grabbed the stroller and started pushing as fast as I could. The football field was set up right past the infield dirt of a baseball diamond. So we pushed as fast as I could towards the dugout. Kelly was trying to help hold the blanket on the front of the stroller as I pushed. Then about half way there we realized that Emersyn wasn't running under the blanket anymore. So Jamie ran back and got her. The dug out is just chain link fencing with a roof over it, but for the most part we weren't getting rained on too bad. We kept the blanket half drapped over the boys, so they stayed pretty dry.

One of of the games had already started before the rain so those kids kept playing. Thinking back to when I was a kid, that must have been a lot of fun for those boys. What probably wasn't a lot of fun was that Kelly remembered she had left thier camera on the chair, so she made Jamie(brother) run back to the chair and get it. It was sitting in a pretty big puddle so hopefully it dries out ok for them.

Once the rain slowed down a bit the referees decided to start Ethan's game. We watched the game for a little bit from the dug out. After about 10-15 minutes the rain stopped, and most of the people left the dug outs to go back and watch from the sidelines. We decided that we didn't want to risk having the boys caught in that again, so we decided to head home. In the end the boys didn't even get to watch any football.

The walk back to the car required us to walk quite a ways through the grass and mud. By the time we got back to the sidewalk the tires had accumulated a pretty good collection of mud on them...its a good thing we have an awesome stroller because it wasn't too hard to walk though all the junk with it. Me and the boys took a few laps through the large puddles that had formed on the walk ways and that cleaned off the tires pretty good.

On the way home it started raining again, and talking to Jamie(brother) later they kids played through the rain when it came again. So its a good thing that we did decide to leave early. Sounds like Ethan is playing again in fall so we'll try to take the boys to a game again then.