Nothing says I love you like Sports Center

Those of you that read my blog regularly know that I was destined to be a mom of boys. I love the dirt, the energy, the sports talk and yes even the crop dusting. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily like crop dusting, but I love the fact that when my kids do it, they laugh hysterically each and every time, like it was the first time they had ever done it. I’m more of a mom that likes to throw the football around in the back yard than play barbies. I would much rather be creek walking than taking the dolls out for a stroll, and I would definitely rather make mud pies, than bake cookies in the kitchen. And the thought of taking my daughter clothes shopping completely overwhelms me. I know how I was as a kid, or as an adult, for that matter, when it comes to shopping. Right now, I’m glad that my boys like T-shirts and sweat pants…easy peasy lemon squeezy!

As you can imagine, the most difficult thing for me to deal with as a single mom is the fact that I don’t get to spend a lot of quality time with my boys. If you take into consideration that I work full time as well as the amount of time that they spend weekly with their dad…all in all, I get only a good quality 30 hours or so a week of time to spend with them. And with two boys currently in three different basketball leagues, it cuts away from our quality time together even more.

Bottom Line: every waking moment with them is very valuable!

Another frustration is that I am limited in my ability to participate in school functions, like volunteering in their classrooms, or meeting them for lunch in the cafeteria, or even being a chaperone on a class field trip. So I had to find a way to participate with them and their school functions in other ways. Lucky for us, every month our school has nights at local restaurants where you can donate a portion of your check back to the school. I’m all about this kind of fundraiser. Not only does it include quality time with my kids over a meal, but it also allows me to give back to the school financially.

It’s a win win situation in my book.

So the other night we bundled up and went down the street to a local restaurant full of excitement to spend quality time together. Ok, I was excited, but Hamilton and Gibson, not so much. They were ticked at me that I made them turn off Sports Center so that we could go somewhere else to “talk about our day”. Gibson wondered why we just couldn’t just “talk about our day” during the commercials.

This did not make me happy. (Mental Note: starting Jan. 1 we are back to our old rule of ½ hour of TV a night before bed…no more)

When we get to the restaurant Hamilton is pouting because I made him turn off the TV before we could see the recap of Peyton Manning throwing about a gazillion interceptions…who wants to see that over and over again? And Gibson was ticked because I wouldn’t let him bring his DS into the restaurant. He justified it by saying this:

“But mom, you are going to tell me your day was great, I’m going to tell you that I loved gym and lunch the best at school, Hamilton is going to tell you how bored he was at school and that will take 5 minutes. What are we going to talk about after that?”

The kid had a point…but I wasn’t falling for it. I remind them again how much fun we are going to have and asked them kindly to remove the frowns off of their faces before we entered the restaurant. They obliged…but not happily.

Until, of course, we walked into the restaurant. I had no idea… it was a sports bar! Their eyes lit up like they had just seen Santa on Christmas morning. I believe this picture below is a good representation of how much fun we had spending quality time with each other that evening.



Good times…good good times!