Catching Up, Randomly

It seems as though getting back into the swing of life this fall has found me falling behind here in blog world. Slowly I am going to try to start catching up here.

About a week ago we were all outside playing various things. The little boys were doing chalk, HB and I were playing volleyball, and Zach and Elizabeth were.....well working on Elizabeth's pitching. Upon agreement to participate Zach left momentarily in order to don this. It seems that his trust levels were low and pad levels were high.


Zach has really been enjoying football lately. This is his first year playing tackle football and he has taken a liking to it. It has brought out and new found confidence in him and it has been really fun seeing a new side of him. After his last game he came home with his dad fully clad in his hulking bulking attire. His younger brothers thought it was great! They took turns hitting him just to see if all those pads worked.

The next morning Zach needed to get all his gear back to school and insisted he still ride his bike. I tried to talk him out of it, partially for his sake as his load was cumbersome and partially out of fear of ridicule. Maybe I should just own that one as a pride issue. Anyway, he had a great time messing with me when he told me he was "ready to go." I turned to see this!

I gasped mildly and told he might, just might get made fun of. He laughed and admitted he was joking. He did say that he could then leave his bike helmet at home.


Instead, this is what he looked like as he left for school. Notice he even has his blue mouth guard in place. I decided to rest in the fact that the young man was determined enough to get to school on his own, load and all, and self-assured enough not to care what people think (for the most part as at least the helmet came off).