Patriots Homecoming 2012

Fall is a big time for football season.  Pop Warner celebrated Homecoming in September, but the High School football season celebrates Homecoming a little later.  It came during the same weekend that the Mity Mites were cheering at an exhibition, so we were juggling football celebrations and extra cheer practices.  Oh, did I mention I work full time and go to graduate school?  Yeah, October was a bit rough...but oh so worth it!!

 October is Florida is perfect.  The girls practiced their routine and I sat on the outskirts of the field creating mock research studies. 

The girls had a "pep rally" inside in the gym to prepare them for cheering indoors in front of a crowd. They are lining up preparing to take to the mat. 

Here's the crew all ready for Homecoming Friday - they got to watch the LBHS Homecoming parade from the school parking lot.  How fun!! 

The Mity Mites watching the Tiny Mites perform.  

Then it was a quick run across the street to the high school football game to grab a snack (yuck, when you aren't used to eating that kind of junk, it tastes awful!). 

The awesome Lake Brantley High School marching band playing "Don't Stop Believing". 

Lining up to bring out the boys. 

The Freshman, Junior Varsity and Varsity cheerleaders all get to cheer at Homecoming.  Megan was so excited to see her Jr. Coaches in action as real cheerleaders. 

Such a social butterfly.  She spotted two of her friends and they (and their moms) came to sit with us.  It was a big moment of trust for me, but they wanted to go get a drink from the concession stand, so I sent Joshua with the 3 girls and told them to all stick together.  They did great.  Baby steps for responsibility!

Megan asked me to take a picture of the Patriot mascot. 

Part of the half-time show included these goofy guys dancing.  It was so funny!  Very much like the Blue Man group.  

We had a great time.  It was just Megan and Joshua and me.  Daniel was still stick, so Keith stayed home with him.  Megan was standing up the whole time cheering from her seat with the cheerleaders.  We were high enough up in the bleachers to be near a group of high school kids that were bouncing beach balls around and having all sorts of fun, brought back some good memories. 

In October, Pop Warner "pinked out" to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness. 

Here are the girls lining up for the boys to take the field. 

That's Megan squatting down to fix her socks. 

On this particular day, we were playing against the Hagerty Huskies.  A friend of mine that I worked with as a brand new nurse when I worked on a cardiac floor...she and I have recently run into each other again (nearly 15 years later!).  Turns out we work in the same service line at the hospital and see each other every once in a while.  Her boys play football for Hagerty.  And a friend from the NICU has a daughter who cheers for Hagerty.  And another friend from Labor and Delivery has a daughter that cheers for Hagerty, so it was fun to see a bunch of people on the opposing side that were friends.  

However, it wasn't so fun when we got our tushes handed to us by Hagerty.  It was a rough game. 

There was a little girl who cheers for Tiny Mites (the next age group down) whose sister is a Mity Mite (our age group) cheerleader...the Tiny Mite cheerleader was very sick with brain cancer.  Our fabulous game announcer had a special prayer for her right before the National Anthem, and during half time, our girls went across the field and instead of cheering for the opposing team, they each released a pick balloon for the Caitlyn and her family.  

Moving on to the Cheer Exposition at the Silver Spurs Arena.  I had worked the night before and came home to take an hour nap before we had to be out the door.  It was worth seeing our team get out there and do their thing!  I'm so proud of them. 

Megan, practically running in ahead of us, because she's so excited to see her friends. 

Our girls are up on in the stands filing in rows.  We could see them the whole time while other people performed.  It was funny to see them all burst out in cheer for each of the groups. 

And here they come, our amazing leaders!

Here come our girls.  They are so excited!!

We had pretty decent seats, thanks to our friend Terri, who nearly jumped over people to save a row.  I don't know how people did this craziness without technology...we were texting people to tell them where we were sitting and how many seats we had left. 

Look at that face!  She knows they hit it out of the park!  

It was a bit bright out there.  

A video during one of their rehearsals.