Flag Football week 2

We are gradually starting to figure out the rules of the flag football league. I was incorrect last week when I said there were five kids from each team on the field at one time. It's six against six. Each quarter is nine minutes long. No one manned the scoreboard in the boys' game today, but the Panthers definitely lost to the Cardinals. Ian played center quite a bit; Oliver was nose tackle again for part of the game. Nadia's team (Chargers) soundly beat the Falcons. I think the final score was 34-14 or something like that. Her coach asked her to rush the quarterback several times on defense, and once the opposing QB had to get rid of the ball because she was about to "sack" him (pull his flag). She also was given the ball once on a rushing play for a two point conversion. She didn't succeed, but it was nice to see her being given the ball once. Unfortunately I didn't have my shutter speed high enough (and trust me I had it WAY higher than usual) so the photos I took of her running are blurry. I'm still learning as a sports photographer. If they give her the ball again, I'll get a better picture next time. Hopefully by the end of the season at least one of our three kids will have either pulled a flag to "tackle" someone, run with the ball for positive yardage, or caught a pass. Obviously seeing one of them score a TD would be really exciting, but I'm dubious that will happen. The games were at 9:00 (boys) and 10:15 (Nadia) which was very convenient. Last week out of the 32 kids on the four teams there were 3 girls. This week out of the 32 kids on the four teams, Nadia was the only girl. There are fourteen total teams in this league (fewer than are in the Upward basketball league the kids play in each winter).

Paul missed only the beginning of the boys' game. He had gotten up at 1:45AM to go into work, but he was only there for about four hours before he drove back home. We ate lunch when we got home, and Paul fell asleep while the kids were eating lunch and he slept the entire afternoon and slept through dinner. Oliver woke him up at 5:15pm. He hasn't been getting much sleep lately. I feel tired because I'm getting less sleep than usual, but I'm getting a lot more sleep than Paul. Part of my problem is that my body likes to wake up at the same time seven days a week. I've never been one to sleep in on weekends. My roommates teased me about this in college. So if I'm getting up early on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my body is now waking up early every day. The bottom line is for the next three months I need to go to bed earlier and just get up when I wake up instead of lying there hoping I'll go back to sleep. Sleep does a body good! I truly wasn't expecting Paul to come to many football games this season because he didn't come to their soccer games last fall. Ironically that was part of the reason I switched to flag football because it was impossible for me as one driver to take three kids to games at three different locations, especially when some games were at the same time. So I picked a sport I could handle on my own because all the games are at one location, and now we are going to the same game in two cars (because we leave the house before Paul gets home from work as the kids have to be at the field 30 minutes before the game starts). I still don't regret this choice because of the fact they only have one night a week of practice compared to four nights a week with soccer. Plus it's nice to expose them to a variety of sports. Speaking of football, we had the cable tv reinstalled at our house yesterday morning (cost us $52 just for them to turn it back on!); we are now ready for the NFL season to begin this weekend. Two of the teams in the Upward league are the Steelers and the Giants, but they are both middle school teams (6th-8th grade).

I had planned for us to visit T&D Cats this afternoon. We've never been there, and it's not very far away, but since Paul was sleeping we skipped it. Similarly, we didn't go on a field trip at Camp Susque yesterday even though they were doing a program about bees (we're studying insects this semester) because I just wanted to stay at home and get schoolwork and housework done around here. I think we'll be going on FAR fewer field trips this school year due to exhaustion levels (both Paul and I) and also my having less time available due to taking on a full time job. Overall I think it's a good thing that I've gone back to work, but there are some negative consequences. I'm certainly far more tired than usual. I'm planning to go to bed at 8:00 tonight after I put Oliver down. My goal is to wake up without a headache tomorrow morning.