a little nostalgia this week...

I work at Alpine Bank in Basalt, CO. This town is sort of like a second home-town for me since I grew up in Carbondale, (just a few miles northwest of Basalt) but went to high school at Basalt High (go Longhorns!). This week is homecoming week for the Longhorns, and since I teach Art History on Tuesday nights I got to venture up to my old stomping grounds and hang out at the school for a few hours while we discussed Greek art. (Funny enough: their homecoming "theme" is Grease!...hahahahahaha...ok, so it made me laugh.) Anyway, while there I noticed there were no decorations, no schedule of events, nothing. I mean, nothing! You couldn't even tell this week was "special". I was shocked.

I mean, as an Alumnus, I didn't really expect to get an invitation home for homecoming, however, after thinking about just this, I felt really sad that the tradition of homecoming has pretty much been lost at my high school. I graduated in 2003, it wasn't that long ago. But when I was in high school we had huge signs in the front entranceway to show what the schedule of events was for the week; and that was posted at least a week in advance. We had an event every night; whether it was Brutte Volleyball, Powder Puff Football, Talent Show, Bonfire, etc. Literally, we had something every night. And each day was filled with theme dress-up days: Cowboy/Cowgirl, Pajama, Twin, "Theme" day (whatever that year's theme was) and Spirit days were usually our most popular. I remember having a whole slew of people come out for the parade Friday afternoon, and then joining us for the volleyball and football games that evening. I remember our Alumni getting recognized for being goold ol' BHS alums at the game. Maybe I'm just crazy but isn't homecoming about community and sense of belonging somewhere?

On the flipside of this, this week is also homecoming for Colorado State. Sami and I will be attending the game Saturday afternoon, proudly wearing green and gold. I have known about CSU's homecoming since May when I got an invitation to attend the 4th Annual Associated Students of CSU Alumni reunion.

Now, as backwards as Basalt is with no announcment of homecoming at all, CSU is all about it. (Gotta bring back those donors!) But really, I feel like my alma mater of BHS should try to involve the alums and the community. I think if they did that, we might be more apt to donate to good causes. Plus, the kids do better in school and sports, if the community is behind them.

So, this week, I ask you, where do you come home to?

...and Samantha can walk!!!!

So, over the past few months Sami has been doing her darnedest to cruise the furniture- let go and grab onto something else. She's gotten pretty good at making her way across the living room (although it's a pretty small room) several times creating a loop for herself. She has been able to pull up since about 7 months; about the same time she started to do the fast crawl, (she really started crawling around 6 months-ish).... For the past couple weeks we've really been working on balance and standing by herself for a couple seconds. She accomplished this task very well by being able to stand up for a few seconds by herself before she decided she didn't know what she was doing and she'd latch on to some one or something, or laughing and falling on her butt...Over the weekend Greg decided to start standing her up and letting her balance and seeing if she could take steps...She did it only once this past weekend, but her problem is that she's so proud of herself she starts to giggle and can't focus so she falls!

Tuesday, when I took Samantha to her daycare, Nicole (our wonderful daycare lady), asked me if she had been taking steps at home...I paused and said that yes, we had tried over the weekend to get her to do it and explained that she had taken a couple steps but that she got so excited she laughed and fell over. (This also meant to me that she had started taking steps with Nicole, both heartbreaking and fantastic for me all at the same time...I get that feeling a lot because we have to take her to daycare). Over the past couple days Sami has advanced to being able to balance, relax and take a couple steps! Without giggling too much and falling over! Of course, there is some giggling because she is just too proud of herself to contain her excitement (which is totally fantastic!).

And so Samantha walks!

Which, as you can imagine, has a whole new set of "Oh My God, what am I going to do with this?!" feelings attached to it. I'm so excited for her to be a "toddler" and the new things ahead, however, I'm suffering from the not-so-baby blues. And the closer her 1st birthday gets, the more I have those feelings. Which is normal from everything I've read. However, I'd like to scream at the top of my lungs "STOP GROWING UP!!!". Which reminds me of all the times any number of relatives decided to say the same thing to me, and then I feel really like a parent (some of the time I feel like saying "who is this child and why doesn't her mother come pick her up?!"...but only some of the time...).

So, as totally thrilling and amazing as it is, I now have a walking child. Oh shit.