Our homeschool group does a couple of really neat events each year: a father/daughter dance and a mother/son outing. Last Thursday was the mother/son outing and I had 3 handsome dates!

We split into two groups: kickball for boys nine-and-under, and flag football for boys ten-and-up. I had two boys in the older group and one in the younger, so I started with football. The moms received the first kickoff. The ball hit the ground and I sensed that this could be a moment where we moms might just politely stare at the ball (and then get trampled by a herd of our stampeding sons), so I grabbed it and ran!

Looking over my shoulder to see if my flag had been taken (it had, but didn’t feel it) I lost my balance and nearly careened head-first into the end zone. Fortunately, I regained my footing quickly enough that maybe I was the only one aware of my near wipe-out (otherwise my boys would have teased me to death by now). That was our first down, and I ended up scoring the mom’s only touchdown.

I ran track in jr. high and played softball from fifth grade until my senior year, plus I participated in high school and jr. high drill team and cheerleading. It really felt good to run again and give my latent inner jock a chance to come out and play. With eight kids, I’ve spent most of adult life on the sidelines cheering and taking pictures.

One of the moms switched with me so I could join my younger son at kickball. He told me, however, that “kickball is for losers (pronounced “loosers”)” and would I please just go to the creek so he could show me a snake he’d found and take pictures of him? We never found the snake, but that kid had a ball in the water (check the photoblog). When I asked him if he wanted to go to the football game, he told me that “football is for losers.” I quickly determined that anything that didn’t involve water, rocks, and mom taking pictures of him was for losers.

Here are some pictures of my guys in all their glory: