XXXVI: Back to School
Greetings all,
I received the following email earlier in the week from my aunt Jeannie and her family in New Palestine, Indiana:
"Will we be receiving a Watson Update highlighting an early birthday present of tickets to the Manning Bowl at the New Jersey Meadowlands? We joked all night that we thought we saw you in the crowd!!!"
This made me feel like that ubiquitous chap from the children's' books, the one with the striped shirt named Waldo. I think the man's name was Waldo, not the shirt. The shirt was Bill. Which of course reminded me of a good friend of mine at Notre Dame that dressed as Waldo during one Halloween. He spent the evening watching for people posing for pictures and would jump into the background of the photos at the last minute. This then reminded me of how I'm sure my father winces every time he hears stories like this, and reminisces about the value of the tuition check. Which reminded me of other things that make my father wince. Like the Watson Update! Which brings us full circle, as they say, and that's we're all about here.
I did not attend the recent Colts-Giants game in the aesthetically unpleasing Meadowlands Sports Complex. I watched the game from the comfort of my couch, having just completed a 10-hour drive from South Bend, Indiana, where I watched the Fighting Irish defeat some school from Pennsylvania.
The summer has come to an end and we're back to the fun-filled frivolity that only a budding new school year can provide. Jimmy is an old pro at the academia thing now, and is loving 2nd grade. He's enjoying the return to big-man-on-campus status and "hanging with his crew" which I'm sure he finds preferable to "hanging with his younger sisters and Dora the Explorer." Maggie has joined Jimmy as a full-timer this year, as she attends the Pre-K class at the same school, five days a week. This leaves Annie as the lone Watson child at home, and provides for some quality mother-daughter bonding time. The bright side to this being that the bars in Jersey don't ask for identification unless you are served. Just imagine the learning that all three children will be doing!
Recently, I stayed home from work in order to accompany Regis to Annie's gymnastics class. Nine months into the year, this is the front-runner for the coveted "funniest 45 minutes I've spent in 2006" award. I will try to explain. The gym was full of the usual gymnastics apparatuses (apparati? Can I get a ruling?) that you would see in the Olympics. There were also trampolines, pits filled with foam, and other tumbling toys. Annie, resplendent in her hand-me-down purple leotard (which is partially felt, very sheik), skipped around with the help of her coach, climbing over the various obstacles, doing summersaults, bear-walking (which involves having the feet and hands on opposite sides of the even bars), and jumping on the trampoline. Another similarity to the Olympics was the Romanian instructor. Since she is the only one in her class, or at least the only one that showed up, Maro the Romanian was Bela Karolyi to Annie's Mary Lou Retton. Or perhaps Evel Kneval. Especially when Annie got to the main event, which involved her swinging on a rope out over the foam pit. Yes, that's right. There was Annie, all 3 feet and 25 pounds of her (management asked that I put that in the update since previous updates may have led some to believe that Annie's caloric intake has resulted in her being, well, a chunk. She is not. In fact, I think she's hollow), swinging out about 6 to 8 feet over the pit, laughing hysterically. She would drop into the pit, then yell "again!" The only thing more entertaining was Maro saying at the conclusion of the lesson, "your daughter, she not afraid anything."
In other news, as you may have read in the papers, Maggie won the Candy Land world championships, which were held here today at Davis Avenue (while Regis travels to South Bend). Her timely pull of the Queen Frostine card ("Why is she a queen? She's a princess! She's a princess in ice cream! I like chocolate ice cream but she's in vanilla ice cream") led to a crushing defeat for her father, who was stuck in Molasses
Swamp. We are busy fashioning a championship belt out of construction paper.
Recent rains forced the cancellation of the other big event in the Watson household, that being the boy's football practice. We'll have to send some pictures because it almost defies explanation. He participates in what is called the "clinic" league which means that they wear full pads but do not have contact (except with the tackling dummies) so the kids get used to the gear as well as the fundamentals of the game. He loves it. I will say he is ready to hit someone though. He blind-sided me the other day when I came out of the kitchen and we had to consider assessing a 15-yard penalty.
Hope all is well. Think of me this weekend, as I will be home alone with the kids. Don't worry, the local authorities were alerted by wife sufficiently in advance.
I received the following email earlier in the week from my aunt Jeannie and her family in New Palestine, Indiana:
"Will we be receiving a Watson Update highlighting an early birthday present of tickets to the Manning Bowl at the New Jersey Meadowlands? We joked all night that we thought we saw you in the crowd!!!"
This made me feel like that ubiquitous chap from the children's' books, the one with the striped shirt named Waldo. I think the man's name was Waldo, not the shirt. The shirt was Bill. Which of course reminded me of a good friend of mine at Notre Dame that dressed as Waldo during one Halloween. He spent the evening watching for people posing for pictures and would jump into the background of the photos at the last minute. This then reminded me of how I'm sure my father winces every time he hears stories like this, and reminisces about the value of the tuition check. Which reminded me of other things that make my father wince. Like the Watson Update! Which brings us full circle, as they say, and that's we're all about here.
I did not attend the recent Colts-Giants game in the aesthetically unpleasing Meadowlands Sports Complex. I watched the game from the comfort of my couch, having just completed a 10-hour drive from South Bend, Indiana, where I watched the Fighting Irish defeat some school from Pennsylvania.
The summer has come to an end and we're back to the fun-filled frivolity that only a budding new school year can provide. Jimmy is an old pro at the academia thing now, and is loving 2nd grade. He's enjoying the return to big-man-on-campus status and "hanging with his crew" which I'm sure he finds preferable to "hanging with his younger sisters and Dora the Explorer." Maggie has joined Jimmy as a full-timer this year, as she attends the Pre-K class at the same school, five days a week. This leaves Annie as the lone Watson child at home, and provides for some quality mother-daughter bonding time. The bright side to this being that the bars in Jersey don't ask for identification unless you are served. Just imagine the learning that all three children will be doing!
Recently, I stayed home from work in order to accompany Regis to Annie's gymnastics class. Nine months into the year, this is the front-runner for the coveted "funniest 45 minutes I've spent in 2006" award. I will try to explain. The gym was full of the usual gymnastics apparatuses (apparati? Can I get a ruling?) that you would see in the Olympics. There were also trampolines, pits filled with foam, and other tumbling toys. Annie, resplendent in her hand-me-down purple leotard (which is partially felt, very sheik), skipped around with the help of her coach, climbing over the various obstacles, doing summersaults, bear-walking (which involves having the feet and hands on opposite sides of the even bars), and jumping on the trampoline. Another similarity to the Olympics was the Romanian instructor. Since she is the only one in her class, or at least the only one that showed up, Maro the Romanian was Bela Karolyi to Annie's Mary Lou Retton. Or perhaps Evel Kneval. Especially when Annie got to the main event, which involved her swinging on a rope out over the foam pit. Yes, that's right. There was Annie, all 3 feet and 25 pounds of her (management asked that I put that in the update since previous updates may have led some to believe that Annie's caloric intake has resulted in her being, well, a chunk. She is not. In fact, I think she's hollow), swinging out about 6 to 8 feet over the pit, laughing hysterically. She would drop into the pit, then yell "again!" The only thing more entertaining was Maro saying at the conclusion of the lesson, "your daughter, she not afraid anything."
In other news, as you may have read in the papers, Maggie won the Candy Land world championships, which were held here today at Davis Avenue (while Regis travels to South Bend). Her timely pull of the Queen Frostine card ("Why is she a queen? She's a princess! She's a princess in ice cream! I like chocolate ice cream but she's in vanilla ice cream") led to a crushing defeat for her father, who was stuck in Molasses
Swamp. We are busy fashioning a championship belt out of construction paper.
Recent rains forced the cancellation of the other big event in the Watson household, that being the boy's football practice. We'll have to send some pictures because it almost defies explanation. He participates in what is called the "clinic" league which means that they wear full pads but do not have contact (except with the tackling dummies) so the kids get used to the gear as well as the fundamentals of the game. He loves it. I will say he is ready to hit someone though. He blind-sided me the other day when I came out of the kitchen and we had to consider assessing a 15-yard penalty.
Hope all is well. Think of me this weekend, as I will be home alone with the kids. Don't worry, the local authorities were alerted by wife sufficiently in advance.
posted by Watts at 8:07 PM
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