Happy 49th Birthday, Miranda!
Yes, I am including a number with those
best wishes, but unlike Grandma Eleanor; Miranda doesn’t mind admitting her
true age; and that’s easy to do when you look as great as she does! ;^)
I wish that she could have had time to
really enjoy her special day, but that wasn’t an option – and rarely is when
her birthday falls on the working days of the holiday weekend. Michael and I also didn’t get to spend much
time with her at all today; and I wish that we could have done that too instead
of being busy with cheerleading, band, football, and band fundraising. We did go to the Inn for a bit of birthday
fun before going on to the school, but Miranda continued to work around opening
gifts and having a birthday cupcake and coffee; Michael had been helping out
with the breakfast shift to that point too; and that really was just a handful
of cameo moments between orders that Miranda continued to deliver to the dining
room with help from Rebecca and the other servers working with her.
Michael and I didn’t have time after that to
spend any time with his parents. We
walked to the school together; split up for football and cheerleading
practices; and then I didn’t see him much after that until he picked up his
fruit and vegetable boxes orders after football practice ended. While he was busy with the morning workout
and then their afternoon team meetings and game plan studying; I was on the go
most of the time with cheerleading until lunchtime; helping Mom out with lunch
at home; and then an afternoon working at the school and elsewhere with the
fruit and vegetable boxes deliveries. We
had perfect weather for that – warm, but not too hot; and that made it much nicer
for unloading the truck full of boxes; and then re-loading trucks, vans, and
cars with the orders as they went out again with the band members for delivery
to their customers. I didn’t go to Maple
Valley this time, but did help load that truck for our Maple Valley band
members; and we had two volunteers from ‘our side’ of the band take care of
that delivery this month.
Let’s not drag out that part of my
report. It was a lot of work; we had fun
with it too; and I’m glad that I could help out with the most important
fundraiser we’re doing with the band. We
still have months to go before the trip next February, but I’m sure that the
fruit and vegetable boxes will continue to be more than half of our fundraising
income – even with the other fundraising efforts we’ll be launching between now
and Christmas. That’s news for another
day, so let’s not go there tonight; and keep this story moving along.
I had dinner at home, but not with my
family because they were doing a family barbeque at Uncle Adam and Aunt Leanne’s
tonight; and I couldn’t wait for that before needing to be back at the school
for the football game. Uncle Blaine,
Aunt Alison, and the kids were here by then, and I got to have a quick visit
with them; but that was only because I was dropping off the fruit and vegetable
boxes orders on my way home. The Rice
clan didn’t get here until later; and I haven’t even seen all of them yet –
even though they’re all in the house with me as I’m writing this report. Some of the guys in my collective family came
to the game after they ate dinner, and I saw them there; but didn’t have time
to hang out with them at all while I was busy with cheerleading and band. I’m not being sexist about that statement,
since they didn’t bring any of the girls with them; but Mom and Aunt Leanne did
bring a handful of girls over to the school to catch the half-time cheerleading
and marching band show. Dawn stayed to
catch the second half of the game, though that seemed to have more to do with
hanging out with some of the teens she knows; and checking out the guys both
out on the field and hanging out and watching the game too.
That brings us up to the game report, and
as I’ve mentioned; we were playing against Maple Valley tonight. Now that we’ve been hanging out with students
from Maple Valley through the marching band; that’s put a new dynamic into our football
rivalry – especially since some of those band members are cheerleaders and
football players too. I wouldn’t say
that the rivalry has eased at all, and we’ve always been friendly; but tonight
felt a bit like a family scrimmage at the park – if those games were played
with full-contact instead of touch or flag-tackles. Both teams still played hard, but that didn’t
keep them from having a lot of fun too – even when our team proved to be much
better than Maple Valley again this year.
Nobody on their team will ever read my
journals, but I still won’t drag out the details of the game. We won by a score of forty-nine to fourteen;
and the score was that low for us because Coach Robinson had our team run the
ball during the fourth quarter; and Lucas still scored two touchdowns while we
were really only trying to run out the clock.
Michael had two touchdowns in the first half; Tim had three, including
one in the third quarter; and Maple Valley earned their two touchdowns in the
first and fourth quarters – one on a great offensive play; and the other thanks
to a great kick-off return to set up a short field opportunity that they were
able to beat our defense on with a handful of short-yardage plays.
The win is big for our team and school, but
I’ll be honest and admit that I really loved the cheerleading and marching band
action more. For the cheerleading, Jenny
wanted to show off for the home town crowd, so she used one of the routines
that Rowen and I made up for our half-time show, and as I’ve mentioned before;
we really like the kid-friendly, story-telling routines. Jenny got what she wanted; we wowed the
crowd; and had a blast while putting on our Elena of Avalor-inspired display
that included some fairly spectacular gymnastics. We’re modest about that in public, but I’ll
admit here that Rowen and I are really good at those tricks; and it helps to be
a pair of thrill-junkies when it comes to trying the coolest, airborne stunts.
Now if only the Magi council would allow us
to add a bit of Magi power to those routines! ;^)
Okay, that’s never going to happen; but it
would still be amazing!
Moving along, we couldn’t do the same thing
this week with the marching band as we did last week; since we have band
members on both cheer squads; so we instead had breaks between our cheerleading
routine; the marching band performance; and the Maple Valley cheerleader
routine to allow for the costume changes.
That worked out better for the football players because they had time to
change before and after the marching band part of the show; and Michael and Tim
helped Rowen and me by making sure our flute and saxophone were ready for us by
the time we got changed and met up with the rest of the band. Our show this week was the same for the
marching band; though we improved a bit since our first game; and we will
change things up as we move along into the season so that we don’t do the exact
same show at every home game – even if we could get away with that for the road
games. We’ll change up the music a bit
too, but will still mostly do the Disney songs we’ll be doing in Florida
because our performances will hopefully help with the fundraisers – including the
raffle tickets sales we were selling again tonight – and we’ll continue to sell
them at the park this weekend; at our upcoming games; and through both schools.
Being at home for this game was much better
for me; though I still ended up at the school until nearly eleven; and then I
went home with Michael to have a very short visit with his parents, Rebecca,
and Lucas before Lucas and I headed for our homes and Michael, Rebecca, and
their parents all headed for bed with another very long, holiday weekend work
day ahead of them. That’s true for me
too, but I had a bedtime visit with my parents, aunt, uncle, Martin, and Dawn
first; and then Dawn and I had another, longer chat in my room after we all
came up to bed for the night. Grandma
and Grandpa Rice had already gone to bed before I got home; and so had the
twins – though I stopped in for goodnight kisses with Ethan and Ehlana on my
way up to my room. They slept through
that; though I’ll add that they are aware of me when I do that – even if they
choose to stay asleep sometimes – like they did tonight.
It was heading toward one o’clock by the
time that Dawn went to bed in Violet’s usual room, and while I was ready to
crash by then; there was some family business work that I needed to deal with,
so once I was ready for bed; I got started on that. A time phase was beyond me, so it took longer
than it would have if I hadn’t worked in ‘normal’ time; but I am done now; and
hope that’ll be it for the rest of the holiday weekend – at least until Monday
night. There isn’t much time left for my
nap now; so I’d better just wrap this up and get started on that. I’m helping out with the breakfast and lunch
shifts at the Inn on Saturday, but will have the afternoon and evening off –
unless I decide to help out for a while at dinner too before Michael, Rebecca,
Jenny, and I will all be busy with our championship ballgames. That’s going to be tough for Miranda and
Jacob, but they’ll manage; and we’ll try our best to get a pair of wins for
them to brag about in exchange for the extra work they’ll be doing while we’re
playing with our friends again.
You’ll be able to read all about my entire
holiday weekend with a few digital page flips, though, and since that really
does make writing about any of it ahead of time fairly pointless when I’m this
tired anyway; let’s call it a night. It
hasn’t been all fun today, but we do have a win for our first home game of the
season; and everything else was really great even with all of the work; so I’ll
score this as a really good start to our last holiday weekend of the summer.
Let’s hope the next three days will be even
better, but I need some sleep before getting around to finding out whether that
happens for me or not; so, until next time...
...May the Magi Force be with you!
