The Sump Family: Homecoming 2009 and College stuff!

Well Homecoming 2009 is now history. It was a pretty busy week for the house but we managed to enjoy it all! It started off with the Homecoming Games hosted by the After Prom committee on Sunday night. Dana and I decided this year in stead of being in charge of a game we would just go up and enjoy watching the kids participate. They had a lot of fun playing some crazy games! Monday we were in Adel for a XC meet which the boys won! Thursday was the Powder Puff football game which pits the Senior girls against the Junior girls. This was the first one we have been able to attend because usually there is a XC meet that same night. This year Jordan was asked to sit in the press box and give commentary. He was really funny and had a great time! It was really weird and cool to hear our son's voice over the sound system. The Juniors beat the Seniors. The most entertaining part was the Junior XC boys dressed up as cheerleaders!! Later that night there was a bonfire. The first ever in the school's history. We didn't stay as it was mostly for the kids. They must have thought that Jordan did a good enough job in the booth earlier because they asked him to emcee the events going on at the bonfire....the cheers...speakers and such! Football Friday was a busy day so I took the day off of work. I went over and watched Abbey run the mile and Jordan and the other varsity XC runners came over to run with the kids for encouragement. Abbey did a great job. She looked so focused and on a mission. Then it was off to the parade and coronation. We took Carson out of school early so he could ride in the parade with the Booster Club and throw candy. He was in heaven! The coronation crowned King Eddie and Queen Dani. Jordan was not named Homecoming King but he remains King of our hearts! (I know....kind of cheesey!!) He found a partner for the dance in Courtney P. He threw it out on Facebook on Wednesday night to see if there was anyone out there that wanted to go to the dance with him. A little unconventional but it provided results.

Our XC boys have been on a roll!! We have won the last three meets we have been at. Adel, Nevada, and North Polk. We are ranked 6th in the state for 3A. These boys have been working really hard to get to the state meet. We were lucky to find out that we will run at Perry for our district meet in 2 weeks. We have had to go to Atlantic the last 3 years. We will run at Perry next week for our Conference meet so our boys will have a chance to know the course before districts. They have been running no matter what the weather conditions are. Their sights are set on Ft Dodge on October 31st! In their district they have the 3rd highest ranking and they only take the top 3 teams so they will have to run very well to get there! Jordan ran a personal best at Neveda of 17:51.

Show choir has started for Abbey. They had a week of early morning practices last week and then auditions this week. We are fairly certain she has a spot. She is in heaven that it is starting. On September 26th she had a really cool opportunity to be an extra in a movie that they were using the DC-G Middle School to shoot in. The movie is called "Smitty" and has Mira Sorvino, Louis Gossett, Jr, and Peter Fonda in it. She spent about 5 hours at the school waiting to shoot some cafeteria scenes. She hopes she doesn't end up on the editing room floor. We spent most of the night texting back and forth and she was just giddy! She met someone named Boo Boo who is apparently in the Twilight Movie series. For a teenage girl it doesn't get any better than that!! She took photos with her cell phone and he signed the phone for her. She was over the moon when I went and picked her up. Not sure how much she slept that night!

Carson and Emma have been great. They both really enjoy school. This week has been all about Fire Prevention so they have both made a trip to the Fire Station and have been busy comparing stories. They have been going to all the XC meets and love running around. They also love the attention the high school girls shower them with! I spend alot of the meets trying to prevent my small children from running into the path of the big kids while they run! We ran at TCI (a very nice local golf course) this week and they had a blast picking up golf balls from the driving range. I am pretty certain that we weren't suppose to be removing said golf balls and my children are now considered criminals but it kept them happy.

Since my last post, Dana and I have both turned another year older! We celebrated with meals from out favorite restaurants in between Homecoming activities. We have bowled our 3rd week as of last night and are having lots of fun. We are bowling really well and my average keeps going up. Which sounds great, but eventually it will just become an unreachable number. Both our guys are bowling in the 200's and Krista and I have been known to bowl in the 160's and up. I kept it real last night with scores in the 1 teens and 120's.

Dana and I took Jordan to the Golden Circle College Fair on Sunday. There was over 140 colleges there and we were able to talk to people from the colleges he is interested in. We spent an hour collecting info on colleges and financial aid and then we took him to our favorite Mexican restaurant, held him hostage in a booth for an hour and discussed what we had received and what he has going on in his head. It was the most productive conversation we have had in a long time! We got out of him his top 4-5 choices of schools. He has been getting calls from college track coaches to see if he would be interested in running track at their school. He is interested in running but the best information we received from our pow wow was that he is interested in communications/broadcasting. He said he had a lot of fun up in the booth at the Powder Puff game. He is interested in pursuing something along that lines. He is going to see if he can shadow the local sports director at one of the major network news stations here in Des Moines to see if that is the direction he would like to go. He mentioned "sports management". Not quite sure what that is but am thrilled to death he might actually have a path now. He refers to it as an "narrow dirt road" but, hey, at least we are headed in the right direction. The next month finds us making at least 4 college visits. Hoping that by actually seeing the campus and speaking with the Track and Field coach that my indecisive teen will have an easier time making a decision!

Finally....a little food for thought. Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue!

Enjoy some pictures from the past two weeks!