Food, Football, and the Four Horsemen

No matter how hard we try, time marches on. Some days faster than others, some days (much) slower than others; but time never stops and it never slows down. If we're lucky, on the days when we stop to catch a breath, count the years, and consider all we've accomplished, we catch ourselves in a smile.

Today, Billy and I are celebrating 17 years of marriage. Seventeen years of "I do." Seventeen years of sooooo much more than just words and cake and pretty dresses and handsome men. Seventeen years of learning, compromise, change, trust, mortgages, kindergarten registration, baseball tryouts, drivers permits. Seventeen years of soooooo much good-- seventeen years of smiles and laughter and messes and big fat belly laughs because the only other option was tears.

Today, I'm stopping to catch my breath, count my blessings, and tally up those seventeen years of food, football, and four amazing boys we get to call our sons.

I have to put food first because I feel like I've been cooking for two decades straight. Who knew, so many years ago, how much food 5 guys could go through in a week? Certainly not me. I feel certain Kellogg's and General Mills will be calling me any day now to see if my household will become a "test house" for all their new products. If there really is a Big Brother, he not only knows what goes on here, but is probably shaking his head at the cereal bowls, spoons, and sheer amount of milk I go through daily!

It's not all head banging on the kitchen counter every afternoon, though. Some of my favorite memories exist simply because I made an extra batch of Rice Krispy treats one afternoon or because we decided to stay home and grill out instead of heading to a restaurant. i do hope when I get to the big Kroger in the sky that there's a yellow piece of paper and a total of all the money I spent feeding these growing boys ( and maybe a few of my favorite cashiers up there, too). And Cokes, definitely Cokes. But I digress.

There's no way I can even begin to grasp how much impact football has had on us and our family. I think the first "real" tears Tucker ever cried was when his Dad's team lost a nail- biter. He stayed up that night and wrote his dad a note, professing him the greatest, smartest football coach ever-- win or lose. Then he taped it to the wall where Coach would see it first thing when he came home that night. The boys have chosen football games over friends' friday night birthday parties and learned to crawl on the field house floor while Coach graded film from the night before.

Football has moved us from house to house, community to community, school to school, and neighborhood to neighborhood, introducing us to some of the best ( and maybe a few of the worst) people around. Our boys were all welcomed with field house baby showers and babysitting offers from the best moms from offense and defense.

Football has allowed our family the joys of winning big games and celebrating together afterwards; Football has also taught all of six of us how to handle defeat on the field and off; what to brush off and what to let sink in; how to move on after the death of a young coach/friend; and how to put everything into perspective. The past seventeen years has all been wrapped around football, and we are better for it.

Finally, the best part of the last 17 years runs us ragged, football to baseball to wrestling and basketball. They eat me out of house and home, keep my washer and dryer on repeat cycles, and have given me a new appreciation for spring scent bathrooms cleaners and deodorizers. I have come to accept frogs and salamanders touching my skin. I can throw a pretty good spiral most days. And I buy every pair of pants and jeans with the full expectation that they will make it about a month before they come home with a hole in the knee.

Congratulations to my best guy, and happy anniversary to us. I look around at all we have accomplished and I like what I see: 2 quarterbacks, a wide receiver, and a determined little brother. I see more messes, more ridiculous belly laughs, more falling Christmas trees, more Friday night lights, more Saturdays on a diamond under the sun, and more good than bad.
I see you and me looking just as good as we did back then. Maybe even better😉

Most importantly, I see you and me, still together, still putting up with each other, still smiling while we do, still counting our blessings, and marveling at this crazy life we call ours.

Life is short, the years rush past, A little boy grows up so fast

I'm almost a month late for my birthday post about my super special third son, but with four boys in my life, late is the new early for us. We spent another glorious week in Destin as Tate celebrated being 7 years old and being lucky enough to spend each of those birthdays on the beach. Seriously, how lucky can one get? He rode go carts at The Track, saw Finding Dory, and had his birthday request for spaghetti served up with a side of DP. He opened all of his cards from his family that arrive in the mail and finally got to see his BIG present from Mom and Dad-- and it didn't disappoint. He drove his RC car all around the house and condos and flipped it, rammed it, and may have even taken out a toe or two of mine, all in the name of birthday fun. He finished off his big day with a late night swim, a bike ride with his brothers, and plenty of hugs and kisses from me!

So now that I've relived Tate's big day in detail, I'd like to "relive" Tate in detail and make a little running list of all the blogworthy qualities etched in my mind the last seven years.

First, it wasn't all sunshine and roses-- that baby would. not. sleep. Ever try having a newborn during a stressful football season? I wouldn't recommend it. Many nights when Coach K. had had a particularly trying week of practice and/or had a rough game looming, I took to the roads at odd hours of the night to get the crying, whining, angel out of earshot. Not sure what happened, but that night owl sleeps like a boss and has made those famous words- this too shall pass- my mantra.

But once we cleared that hurdle of sleeplessness, the sun did shine and the roses bloomed and they're still blooming and shining as I write this!

Oh what an angel, what a doll, what a precious, precious child I've been entrusted. This child makes the sweetest gifts (even if it's not your birthday), he loves to help in the kitchen with pancakes and cracking eggs, he loves to share (namely my phone, my cokes, and my money😉), and he takes care of his baby brother Truett better than anyone I could have trained. He changes diapers, fixes sippy cups, finds the perfect shows on TV, and has become the name most called for in the mornings!

What I think I love most, though, is that this child never stops talking. Like, never. Like, #howdohisteachersdoit? #ihaventfiguredouthowtohushhim. Either way, we have all learned to love the constant questions, the constant observations, and the constant conversation from the backseat. I see great things in the future from this little guy, based simply on the fact that his questions STUMP me sometimes. Some days, ok, many days, he comes up with something either so deep or so scientific that I can't even FAKE a good answer. More often than I'd like to admit, I've resorted to a simple, "I don't know, buddy," or "let's google it when we get home."

I guess maybe it's the fact that I have a son heading to high school in a couple of weeks that's swift kicked me in the pants and made me realize that we only get so many of those back seat conversations, so many early morning breakfasts, and so many evenings snuggled on the couch watching some HORRIBLE Disney or Nickolodeon comedy that they find hilarious. It dawns on me a little more each day that we only have so many years when they really are shorter than me, slower than me, and not as strong as me. I watched from a distance the other day as the oldest two boys threw the football, and from where I stood, they were not the little boys in the backyard I knew, but real teenagers practicing for something big.

Now that he's seven, Tate begins HIS football career in tackle football and will slowly start chasing those big brothers on the field and in all the other things that they get to do but he's always "too little" for. I thinks it's hitting me with the school year coming and the football schedules on my calendar that I may wake up one day and watch from the top of a hill, not my little boy in the backyard, but another teenager who is taller than me, faster than me, and stronger than me, following in so many footsteps before him, hurrying to become them.

For now, though, I have a chatty, curious seven year old who likes to throw the football with his mom and, for now, thinks I'm a pretty good receiver. And I'm holding on tightly to that. And to him. And to the other two perched on the edge of the nest, anxiously waiting for their turns to fly.