Thanks and Gig 'Em

Well, it's Saturday, which of course means it's Aggie Football Day in the Seward house. And today was definitely a biggie. We played Alabama, ranked #1 in every poll out there. All week I've been hearing old Ags talking about how great we're playing this year and remembering the last time we beat the #1 team in the country, almost 10 years ago to the day. I still remember very vividly that Saturday night when we upset Oklahoma at Kyle Field. I was sitting with Ben in the Aggie Band section, so I was about 2 rows up from the field around the 40- or 45-yard line. The mayhem and celebration at the end of that game is a once-in-a-lifetime memory, and one of my favorite memories from college.

All that being said, I have been tentatively excited but mainly very anxious for this game today. The Aggies have the potential to be a great team, but they have been known to be sprinters and not distance runners, starting the game off great but fading at the end. I was also a little worried about my children, who know that we love our Aggie football but have not seen many games of this importance. Sure enough, there were several attempts to draw attention from the game to themselves, and frustration as Ben and I pretty much told them if they weren't dying it could wait until a commercial break. The last 10 minutes of the game, however, all three girls were in the room with us - Ava sitting in my lap, Molly and Jocelyn taking turns playing on my tablet. When we intercepted that 4th down pass from Alabama's quarterback, Ben jumped up yelling and I started shaking Ava around shrieking. All three kids looked at us and LAUGHED hysterically. They had no idea how to react to their parents acting so nutty, but were all for jumping up and down yelling "Go Aggies!!"

It has been a very long week, full of ups and downs. Tonight was great because my football team won (I'm not even going to trivialize how stoked I still am, hours later). But what made it even greater was sharing this event with my kids. They will almost certainly not remember watching this game tonight, but I hope they learn to love the tradition of watching college football with us on Saturdays. It is fun now that they are growing up and I can start sharing with them things I am passionate about. It will be even more fun as they start to become passionate about the same things - well, a Momma can dream anyway.