Friday Night Lights

On Friday night Robert and I went to the Clay-Chalkville/Hewitt Trussville high school football game at Hewitt. This was my brother David's last Paws vs. Claws Bowl as a senior and my brother Ryan's first as a freshman. The game was at Hewitt, and we met my parents over there and enjoyed some free burgers and hot dogs courtesy of the local Baptist church. Once we went in the stadium we sat with my Uncle Ray and Aunt Martha, not relatives but longtime friends of the family. It actually brought back some memories because two years ago when I brought Robert home for the first time just a few months after we started dating we came to this game and sat in almost the exact same seats with Uncle Ray and Aunt Martha. Leave it to then 12-year-old Ryan to say something funny and awkward that we'll never forget. He proclaimed to Robert halfway through the game, "If you marry my sister you can't take her to North Carolina." (Yes, he got the state wrong but his intentions were sweet!) That's one of our favorite memories.

We were trying to get a funy pic of Dad as Robert pretended to push him off the stadium, but he didn't turn around with the surprise face we were hoping to get a shot of.

David is big stuff on campus. He's one of the students leaders who get the other students fired up at the game. They paint up each week and spell out "Blue Thunder" on their chests. David leads the pep rallies before the game and sometimes does the push ups on a piece of plywood the boys hold up in the crowd every time Clay-Chalkville scores. I tried to sneak down and get a pic of him all painted up, but the crowd was so big all I could get was this shot. He caught sight of me and shot me a look like, "I can't believe you're em brassing me like this (but deep down I'm flattered that you want to take a picture of my muscles!)

Not only is David big man on campus but apparently he's also quite the business entrepreneur. When David found out the school's t-shirt for this game wasn't that great, he and his friend decided to design and sell their own. They game up with a cool design, found a printer, and got a ton of signatures of kids at school who wanted to buy the shirts. He then asked mom and dad, who had no idea he was doing this, if he could put $1000 on their credit card to purchase the shirts. My parents asked for some proof he could actually sell that many and recoup the costs and he showed them a list of a ton of signatures of kids who had committed to buy the shirts. So they agreed and David got the shirts, sold them off school property, paid mom and dad back the next day, and he and his friend EACH pocketed $700 in profit! Can we say business degree?

Ryan posed so I could get a picture of the shirts.

I love this pic with Ryan. I can't believe how big my little brother is! He wasn't too cool to hug his big sister in front of all his friends. Thanks, Midgie!