Track and Field

My little Athena participated in her first ever sporting competition - a regional Lutheran School Track and Field event held at our local high school. It just happened to fall on the Saturday morning of the week that Chris (and Mimi) were out of town, otherwise it would have been an all day all family event. In fact, many of the more experienced families were camped out - full on tents and chairs and serious tailgating going on.

As it was, it was just me and three little ones trying to help me lug a blanket, two chairs, a cooler and my camera bag across the parking lot and a football field and to the nearest available clearing. As I was setting up, Jack took off towards the goal post. I caught him and brought him back to our blanket, that lasted about three minutes before he decided to run right onto the track minutes before the first race was suppose to start. Much to my chagrin, the announcer made a purposeful announcement over the loudspeaker reminding us to "keep the track clear, please!" Yea, trying, sorry!

I know of many families who have two year olds that will stay near them and not go tearing off in any direction, but, unfortunately that is not my two year old. It became quite clear that this wasn't going to work, I am only just one Mommy after all.

Luckily, Athena's first event didn't start for 45 minutes, so we hightailed it over to our local drop in play care center where Jack could run around like a madman for $8.50 an hour (he loves it there) and whisked back to the event just in time to line Athena up for the Kindergarten Girls 50 yard Dash.

The little girl with the rolled up sleeves won by a landslide.

Athena came in fifth place.

She didn't qualify for the relay race, but she still had two more events: the standing long jump and tee ball distance.

There were a couple of moments during the day where I felt my competitive spirit bubbling up in me, imagining a huge victory for my child. This day was not about that and I had to stiffle the urge to shout "Run! Baby! Run!" at the top of my voice when the starting gun went off.

Athena didn't care about winning. She just wanted to have fun and the purple "Participant" ribbon came in the best color anyway.

She was far more interested in capturing as many ladybugs as possible in the field.

This one she named Lala.

The ribbon ceremony -
where many a Kindergarten girl was
disappointed by the blue first place ribbon.

Zoe was bored to tears, and besides wearing down the battery on my phone playing puzzle games, she got some significant spinning time in.

This was dress yourself day, and she did, right down to the accessories and criss-cross of her Sketchers. My baby's got style.

We didn't stay for the awards ceremony or the relay races. Right after our picnic lunch I started feeling so guilty about not enjoying the beautiful day with the Dude. So we packed up, went to get our little guy and spent the rest of the day waiting to jump on Daddy when he finally came home - with presents!