a Tunnel Cat....or not

 

Tonight, Samuel was supposed to be a "Tunnel Cat".  This is a program our school district does to encourage positive behavior in the elementary kids.  They are awarded the great privelege of running onto the field through the tunnel with the football players & breaking through the big paper thing if they have good behavior, good citizenship, etc.  They get to run down the full length of the field with the "big guys", cheering & yelling.  Samuel got to do this once last year & he loved it, so when he was given the award to do it this week, he was SOOOO excited.

 

He almost lost the privelege at home because, for the past week, he's been grounded from TV for having a horribly messy room.  Every afternoon after doing homework, he's been in his room "cleaning" (which interprets to goofing off & playing with his toys).  Today we cracked down & said "get it done or we're not going to the football game".  Boy....the right motivation is all ya need.  In less than an hour's time, he did more toward cleaning that room than he's done all week long!!  ha ha!

 

We left the house about 6:40, thinking that 30 minutes was plenty of time to drive 2 miles to the stadium & get into the gates on time.  (He was supposed to be there at 7:10.)  Turns out, it wasn't early enough.  We didn't realize it, but tonight was the first home game of the season & apparently the people of Whitehouse were very excited about that.  The traffic was horrible.  At 7:10, we were still out in the road trying to get into the stadium gates.  It was 7:15 before we got into the parking lot driveway.  Larry let the kids & I out at the gates & we took off running to try to get Samuel to his spot.  We had to stand in a long line to buy tickets.  [NOTE:  Larry tried to buy them in advance at the high school today but they had sold out before he got there.]  While standing there, a friend of mine  who already had her tickets walked up & offered to take Samuel in for me while I stood in line.  Hooray!!  I sent them in, praying I'd get through the line in time to see him do his thing.  It was too late.  They went in & came back out moments later.  The Tunnel Cats were already running down the field when they walked into the gates.  We missed it becauseof the traffic. 

 

Talk about a let down for all of us.  Samuel was crying when we got there because he was worried about being late.  He was watching the clock in our van as we approached the field, saying "we may as well go home...we're going to be too late" but we kept encouraging him that we were doing our best & would get there as fast as we could.  Turns out, he was right.  We were too late.  We were all heartbroken.  Poor Samuel was sooooo upset, crying & disappointed.  Rather than sit through a game that we really didn't care anything about (we had planned to leave after Samuel ran the field anyway), we made a U-turn, went back to our car & left.  We tried to cheer him up by going to get icecream at Dairy Queen, but he held his milkshake & cried all the way home.  I hate to see my babies brokenhearted.

 

Ugh....poor kiddo.