Homecoming 2021 + Delights

I won’t even bury the lead: look at these two… Probably the *only* formal high school function our kids will ever both attend at the same time, so of course I made them pose together:

Rewinding at bit…

Football is sitting at 5-2 (a bit of a surprise! our last 3 games will be rough, though, esp. next week vs Will’s 10th grade high school.) I am vigilant re: my post-game pic, win or lose! 

Varsity high school football in Texas is truly unmatched. This is *one of two* almost college-sized stadiums where our district Varsity teams play:

(If you click & expand to make it bigger, you can see the stadium lights & jumbotron from the stadium *literally next door* in the clouds on the left! :-D This is our band at halftime.)

I love this action shot of Will running out of their Spartan helmet tunnel:

(He’s #41, busting through the sign behind the flag. You can see our opponent school had a blue mustang tunnel, too - almost everyone here has one!)

They have formal color programs at every game. Here’s the centerfold:

Play "Find Will"! :-D (middle row, 4th in on the right from the center line) And here’s the online version! (Will’s on page 12 :-P)

I’ve already shared the senior banners for every individual player, too - the production value level here is high!

So, obviously homecoming last week was also quite an event! They had a huge parade with every school team & organization (3,700 students at this school, y’all!!!) participating…except wrestling! :-( (Such bad luck timing for Annelise: every wrestler in the whole district gets tested for hydration & weight on the same day…& it just happened to fall during our hoco parade! At least wrestling didn’t have to miss the dance for a district competition like band did! :-P) Bryce’s mom, Marcee, & I helped serve the boys pizza pre-parade, and then we walked behind the parade to the community pep rally at school:

To wear on Friday during school & the football game, I made Annelise’s first Texas hoco mum! She is fiercely unique & didn’t want the same blah white flowers as everyone else; so she picked navy hydrangea, instead:

The actual game was a nail-biting win 21-18 with 22 seconds to go!!! Sooo stressful!!! But it sure did leave the boys in a great mood = more voluntary pics for me!!!

Saturday was their actual homecoming dance, (back to the first pic at the top!) Pre-hoco dance pics were a slight sunlight fiasco (we begged the boys to go later: lower light = better pics, but they would not budge on 6 pm dinner reservations, so extreme sun + squinty eyes & shadows won. :-P)

The football field they almost all began on…

Squintingly sun-drenched fam (minus JB & Bailey, b/c football was on TV & dogs aren’t allowed on school property :-P)

Love that this looks like an album cover! (Combatting sun shadows with hyper-stylization! ;-))

Annelise & her new wrestling BFF, Luna:

It was a joyous success, Will with his gang (& even danced with the principal! :-D) and Annelise with her new wrestling friends. It has literally taken us days to recover… I’m still exhausted…

I am *all in* celebrating Will‘s senior year, but no “boohoo, it’s the last this, boohoo, it’s the last that” allowed = no focusing on lasts, only joys!!!

Non-Football-Related Delights:

•Donating more A+ at Proud Pie’s mobile blood donation event, pumping it out in a new PR: 4 min 21 sec, & scoring a free piece of pie - I chose the pumpkin special of the week: Pumpkin White Chocolate Silk

•Grasping (ha!) the bind in Marichyasana C & savoring sweet Savasana with Bailey B in the sun

•Astros advancing to the ALCS!

•Hearing (& sobbing happily through) 3 of my most favorite Broadway numbers performed live on the Tony’s by their original actors (forever grateful my college theater professor got tickets to this original “Ragtime” cast = our March ‘98 trip)

•Making my favorite Korean food (tteokbokki) at home as good as a restaurant

•How soft my new Lilly shorts feel (that I got in the sale + with my gift card from Grandma & Grandpa that I had saved from Christmas!)

•Catching up a bit (still way behind on season 2 - not rushing! we’re savoring!) on Ted Lasso as a family

•A new song by our beloved BTS (ARMY!)

•Thunder & rain during yoga

•Watching the gloriously satisfying new season of The Great British Bake Off

•On the Bake Off, they made cake rolls = I craved! At my wrestling team parents meeting *just an hour later*, they served luscious pumpkin cream cheese cake roll! :-D