The Heart of a Football Mom

    
     It ended as quick as it began.  How did we get here already?  Was I prepared for this? Was he? I walked a little slower that night knowing it would be the last time.  With blankets and camera in hand, I walked through the stadium gates one last time.  Up the ramp, up the steps to my seat with the other varsity parents.  It was senior night and our son was being introduced along with 14 other players, honoring them on their last night.

Zachary Ryan Anderson, #81, and my amazing son

    The freshman team was still playing, so all the senior parents began reminiscing about getting to this moment.  Zach, our son, number 81 had been playing football since he was in 3rd grade.  First it was flag, next, in 5th and 6th grade, it was tackle.  He barely fit into the uniform.  Weighing in at a whole 50lbs, he was by far the smallest on the team.  Most moms would be panicked about their son being crushed, but not me.  I was one of the loudest parents in the stands.  Zach continued to play in 7th and 8th where they divide the boys into the heavy weights and light weights; he, of course was on the light weights and still one of the smallest and still not fitting into his pants.  He played some but not as much as he would have wanted.  Coaches loved him because he worked hard and one skill he had over all others was learning the plays.  It took him maybe a week to get them all down and then he was set.  He would take plays in to the QB play a couple of downs and then back out again.  Not exactly what he wanted but he would live with it for now.  There was still high school.

    While in 7th and 8th we discovered another skill Zach was blessed with...running fast.  When he was younger, Zach had the awful habit of walking on his toes.  No matter what we did or said he just could not stop.  At one point he even went through some physical therapy due to the fact that while toe-walking he had managed to shorten his Achilles tendons.  But, to no avail, he just could not remedy this problem.  It did, however, provide him with very strong muscular calves (which is his nickname), giving him the gift of running fast.  We knew that this would come in handy for high school football.  Being one of the fastest on the team, tends to give you an edge.   He dreamed of being a receiver - reaching out and snatching the ball from the air and taking it to the end zone.

     Zach's biggest obstacle was his size and being a tad worried about being flattened on the field.  His first two years in high school he still rode the bench a lot.  His fears seemed to be coming to life.  Getting bigger seemed to be the goal, so his dad had him work with a trainer working on lifting and stamina.  Zach sucked down protein shakes and lifted on an almost daily basis.  And then it happened, almost overnight - my son was taller, stronger, and faster.  His junior year he was the back-up receiver and towards the end even began starting.  His blocking still needed work but he had proven he could catch the ball and run.  In track he was running the 4x4 relay and the open 400 (meters).  While he really liked the relay, he would have much rather ran in the 200, but his coach had faith that he could make the 400 his race.  And he was right!  Zach went down as an alternate for the state track meet.

    Senior year, Zach was one of the two starting receivers for varsity.  My husband, Shawn and I decided we would get to every game - home and away.  His dad did the same.  We wanted to savor every second of his last year of Dodger football.  The year began with frustration; he was not getting the ball as much as he wanted but giving up was not his nature.

    It was time for the parents to report to the field and take their place next to their sons.  "Zach Anderson number 81" went out over the intercom.  God, this can't be his last game...please let him score...give him that one shining moment.  This field has been his second home for 4 years and this will be the last time he runs onto it with his uniform on.  After announcing the seniors, all the parents take another minute to hug the other players and wish them luck.  These are our boys, our sons, Zach's brothers and even though this is their final game the bond they have formed over the years will remain with them for many years to come.

    We made a line on either side of the tunnel, Zach was at the front of the line ready to lead the team onto the field one last time.  I held the tears back; it was hard but I managed.  We were only a few minutes into the first quarter - the QB steps back, looks down field and throws the ball.  My heart stops and I hold my breath.  Zach catches it and runs the remainder of the yardage for a touchdown.  The tears come.  A friend comes up the stairs and hugs me along with all the parents sitting with me.  One taps me and says, "that is the one he will remember".  I could not have been more proud.  The moment was bittersweet.  Our boys lost that night but I still walked away smiling.  A few weeks later Zach shared a little more about that moment.  He told me that he had put tape around his wrists with my dad's initials written on it.  My dad had passed away earlier in the year and Zach was very close to him.  When he hit the end zone he pointed the ball to the sky, giving my dad the ball.  Yep...I cried again.

    Now Zach is visiting colleges - a few that are recruiting him for his route, running and catching skills.  It is hard to believe that he will never dress in the Black and Red of the Dodgers again, but maybe, just maybe my time as a football mom will continue.

The Beauty of Fall...Sometimes I Want to Kick it in the Teeth!

      Ahhhhh fall - football, bonfires, sweaters, and cool breezes! Shades of green, brown, yellow, orange, and red paint the trees.  The beauty autumn presents us is sometimes breathtaking.  And then............. the cool breeze turns into a strong wind, which causes the leaves to detach from the branches.  You all know what that means - yard work.  Now I don't mind dragging the rake and lawn bags out but the thing about leaves is they do not drop all at once.  I also swear that all our neighbors leaves blow into our yard - ON BOTH SIDES.  We also have a burn ban in our town so we have to bag it all.  Last year at this same time we had raked up a huge pile of leaves after my husband came home from work.  It was getting dark so we left the pile vowing to bag it in the morning.  However, when you live in Iowa the weather is very moody. When we woke up the next morning there was 5 inches of snow on the ground and the leaf pile was completely covered; it was not until spring that we were able to finally get to the leaves. Of course there was a huge dead spot where they sat.
   Before we moved here we lived in a newer area with no trees. Then we find this beautiful colonial home with trees and a huge yard.  We loved the trees until fall.... I sure miss a yard with no trees. 

 

A Confession of Some Sorts

Okay we have direct TV with hundreds of channels and yet there are times when we can find nothing on that we want to watch.  I am a guide flipper... I put the guide up and skim through it 2-3 times before I settle on something.  Well one day I decided to settle on A&E, which just happened to be showing an episode of Duck Dynasty.  I am almost embarrassed to admit this but I was hooked in less than 10 minutes!  Once I was hooked, I passed the addiction on to my husband and children; we have officially become Duck followers.

I have never been a fan of reality TV but for some reason this show is different.  No one is being voted off, running a race, facing horrible fears, or trying to be the ultimate hero. There is no money to win or fame to gain.  Just a close knit family who hunts, plays, works, and cooks together.  So since I managed to get my family addicted...I thought I would tackle a bigger audience.  Mwahahahahaha!

Cleaning Your House While the Kids are Home is Like Brushing Your Teeth While Eating Oreos

My House will never be clean!!!!!!!!!!!

 I have found that having kids and a having a clean house are like oil and water - THEY DON'T MIX!!! I find myself apologizing to people for my messy house constantly. My worse offenders are my oldest and my youngest. The two in the middle TRY to pick up after themselves. This Lens introduces you to my world and the attempts I have made to keep our house fairly clean. I am still on that journey but love to talk about it.

You should have been here last week when   the house was clean....

 I remember clearly taking my daughter out to a friend's house to stay a while back; right outside the door was a sign that said "My House was Clean Last Week...Sorry You Missed it!" This made my husband and I chuckle to ourselves because that could be our family motto.

We live in a 5+ bedroom colonial brick home. Everyone has their own bedroom equipped with a dresser, TV, a place for their shoes, toy storage, and yes, a laundry hamper. Now within this household lives two adults (my husband and myself), a 16 year old boy, a 13 year old boy, a 9 year old girl and a 5 year old girl. If that isn't enough we also have 6 dogs (border collie/lab mix, vizsla, German short hair/lab mix, border collie, mini long-long haired daschund, English lab) and 3 cats. Insanity you say? Well for the most part we love living with a full home, fur and all. However trying to keep the house organized and clean is a task that would drive most people crazy and I do have my moments of wanting to crawl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb until the house is spotless.

Now my husband and I have done several things to keep our house somewhat systematic. When we first moved in to our house we had a closet in our entry way that could hold four jackets and two pairs of my husband’s size 14 shoes. We also had hooks for the kids to hang their coats and book bags on. For 5 years I dreamed of having cubbies built in place of the closet. Each kid would have their own cubby to store coats, bags, sports equipment, and a couple of pairs of shoes. I just knew that this would cause the kids to be more orderly with their belongings.  

 

My house is clean enough to be healthy but dirty enough to be happy

As I was saying I believed that this would keep the kids more organized, as well as, keep my floor clear of shoes, coats, and backpacks. Unfortunately I did not take into account that my kids have some sort of a blind spot on their left side. The reason I say this is because when they walk in the front door the cubbies are to their left, so you would assume that they would walk in the door and place their things in their cubby. Wrong!!! My kids walk right past the cubbies and begin dropping whatever they are carrying, leaving a trail behind them. As this happens I follow behind saying "You have cubbies!"

Now I know what you are thinking...we are the adults and we need to lay down the law. However, we are clearly outnumbered with 4 kids, 6 dogs, and 3 cats. Each kid has their own issue when it comes to picking up.

First there is the 17 year old boy. He is the stripper in the house. What I mean by this is that from the time he enters the door, after whatever sports practice he has been, he begins removing articles of clothing. His shoes, socks, sweats, sweatshirt, and last his shirt are scattered throughout the main floor of the house. After eating supper (leaving the dishes where he ate) he will take a shower forgetting about taking the clothes up to one of the 6 hampers provided for him upstairs. Now besides being a stripper, he is also has some sort of disability that keeps him from putting the towels he uses into the hamper in the bathroom. It is not unusual to find a plethora of wet smelly towels littering the floor. We have tried several attempts to cure him of this habit but to no avail he still cannot seem to find a normal place for his laundry. I would like to say that when we do point it out to him, he will immediately pick up his droppings and put them in their proper place.

Next we have the 15 year old boy...he has a condition called extreme laziness. Unlike his older brother, he does normally put his things into his cubby. However, he is plagued with the attitude of why clean up when it is just going to be a mess again. This belief applies mostly to his room and the kitchen. Just last night he was asking me to wash a bowl for him so he could make some soup in the microwave, claiming that he is just not good at washing dishes. I laughed and told him that if he wanted soup, he needed to clean his own bowl. He finally did but not without some groveling to get me to do it first. As for his room...have you ever seen a person walking around picking up cans to take to the redemption center? Well lets just say that if they somehow found their way in to my son's room, they would hit the bottle/can jackpot. He claims that he forgets to throw them away, but we know that it is the fact that he has to walk downstairs and throw them away in the kitchen. He has even used the I am waiting until I have more than one thing to throw away excuse. One thing? It is more like a whole garbage bag full - hefty size. He also has an aversion to making his bed, which he claims he does not know how to do. Now I realize that every morning when he gets up it looks like he was in a wrestling match with five WWE stars, but to pull up a sheet and comforter really is not that hard, yet he still rarely makes his bed. He also contributes to the towel chaos in the bathroom but tries to convince us that he does not use towels. The one thing we do not find of his around the house or on the floor of his room are clothes. He does somehow manage to put them in hampers strategically placed throughout the upstairs of the house.

Thirdly we have the 11 year old diva, I mean girl. She is the forgetful one...or so she would have us believe. If you ask her why her things are not in her cubby the answer we get is "I forgot", if you ask her why the game she got out 10 minutes before is not put away she will say "I forgot", if you ask her why her clothes are still in her clothes basket waiting to be put away, yep you guessed it "I forgot". Out of all the kids she is the one who will get out something to play with, use it for 10 minutes, then get sidetracked, and move on to a whole new activity forgetting about the one she had just gotten out. By the end of a Saturday you will be able to locate all the areas in which she occupied because of the items she has left throughout the house. Now while she is by far the largest contributor to our organized mess, she is also the one who helps the most when it comes time to clean it up.

Last is the 7 year old girl. Everyone has heard of the terrible twos, but let me assure you that a seven year old trying to become her own boss is far worse. Her idea of picking up is picking herself up and walking to another room. She has the attention span of a gnat, like many her age. She will start playing in one spot and end up in another with a whole different set of toys. She loves to help me clean but when it comes to picking up her own mess you would think that the sky is falling. It is something we work on daily.

While this whole article seems to be geared towards my personal experience, I want to take you back to the beginning and the sign I read "My House was Clean Last Week...Sorry you Missed it" that was on the outside of the door. I told the mom of my daughter's friend that I loved the sign and needed to find one for my house as well. She laughed and then passed on some advice; she told me that there would be plenty of time for a spotless house when the kids were grown and that she would much rather spend her time having fun with her kids instead of making sure every thing was off the floor, dusting, vacuuming, and making beds. Little did I realize that her time would be cut short. She passed away 5 months later.

The advice she gave me was right. I have watched people become so immersed in keeping their house spotless that nothing else matters. My house is a home, better known as an organized mess. I have learned to walk past the book bags on the floor, the shoes on the couch, and the empty plastic pop bottles left around. I do ask them to pick up after themselves but I also realize that kids make messes and when there are four of them plus whatever friends are over for the day, spending all my time following after them is time taken away from just having fun. So when you feel like screaming when things are not just so, realize that there will be time later, when the kids are grown, to have the perfectly clean house.

How My Blog Got its Name

     Anyone who knows me is well versed in my obsessive behavior when it comes to certain things - especially writing.  I will write, rewrite, erase, and then write again.  This is actually my second try at this post.  Anyway I wanted to begin a new blog with a great name.  And so the struggle to come up with a name begins.  I started with researching short quotes and sayings...nothing there inspired me.  Than I tried blog name generators...nothing really jumped out at me.  So after a few hours of  finding absolutely no inspiration I decided to go do laundry, which I despise.

     I began collecting the baskets in all of the bedrooms upstairs, taking them to the laundry room, and sorting them out into their proper containers.  Yes I am that person that has a container for each type of laundry load.  Anyway...once I sorted all the baskets I then went back to each of the rooms and gathered clothes off of the floor, since apparently walking two steps towards the laundry basket is an energy draining task.  Last, I hit the two bathrooms. Of course the boys bathroom is littered with socks, wet towels, and underwear.  Our bathroom, which we share with the two younger girls, and of course it is the same story only you need to include hair ties and head bands.  I begin to pick up and under one of the towels is the hairbrush, of course because putting it in the drawer does not make sense.  

    Now this is where it gets good - I pick up the brush, which makes me think about the morning.  Why, you ask.  Well every morning I brush my youngest daughters long blond hair; it is always full of ...are you ready...TANGLES! And when there are a lot of TANGLES there are lots of TEARS, which is where I came up with the name.  Who knew that doing laundry would inspire me?  After settling with the name, everything came together.

    When going through life we deal with a lot of tangles and shed a lot of tears.  Each tangle is something that helps us learn and push forward, to untangle what ever obstacle gets in our ways.  Then there is the tears...some are out of joy, some out of sadness, and some for no reason we can fathom. Each drop carries a strong emotion leaving a watermark on our memories.

    This blog will be a way for me to share my tangles and tears with the world and hope that what I write about touches the reader making them smile, laugh or even cry.  Welcome to my life Of Tangles and Tears.