Local Footy Presentation Night

On Saturday night, our local junior footy (afl) team "The Woodend Hawks" had their presentation night. All three of our boys played this year. Mr J played U14A in the ruck position mainly and improved dramatically throughout the year. He finished with 22 votes in the best and fairest after not getting any votes in the first half of the season. He finished 11th on that ladder.

Mr A played for the U12B and played his first season. (He is much more a karate kid but more on that later). He learnt the game this year and had so much fun that he is already planing his next season.

Mr H played for the U10A and played his 25th game this year. Both Mr A and Mr H play different positions each week as they learn the game.

Each of the boys received a "valued team member" trophy along with all their team mates. They are very proud of their trophys.

My DH who volunteers a lot of time (or at least as much as he can manage) also received an award on the night. The club had 7 teams playing this year, pretty good for a country town. We had U9, U10A, U12B, U12A, U14B, U14A and U16A. Now, the Bs played on different grounds to the As and the U9s played a different draw again. DH was at our home ground around 7:30 to 8am every Sunday to help set up the ground and stayed until after the last game was finished then helped pack up. This meant most weeks he was home again around 6pm. Throughout the day he generally volunteered for 2 / 3 or sometimes 4 games. Whether it was running the boundary, goal umpire, umpires escort, running messages out to the players, running water or something that needs to done so that the game can be played. By the time the end of the season came around there were only 2 teams that he hadn't contributed to on game day. Those two teams were the U9s and U14Bs. Craig also coached a team last season and is hoping to coach again next year. He loves being involved with the club and helping the kids out. For all this he received the "Fred Smith" award for "outstanding service to our great club". He says to me, "but I enjoy it". He received a keyring and trophy. The photo of the keyring is a bit blurred for which I apologise. I need to work on my photo skills a bit. On the back of the keyring, they have engraved "In Appreciation"

I am very proud of the males in my life.

1st posting

Hi,

This is my first time posting and hope that I do ok.

I am sitting here in my kitchen with MY music playing instead of the kids as they are not here. I have the whole house to myself!! A very rare occurance. Craig & J the eldest are at a football breakup, A is at a friends house and will meet us at presentation (for the football; AFL style) tonight and H the youngest is at cub scout leadership camp and won't be home until tomorrow.

I thought I might share a photo of a cross stitch that I completed two years ago. I am in the process of stitching something for each of my boys. This one is a white tiger and was completed for Mr A. He is 12 in October and totally animal crazy. For the last couple of years (and until he says no more) Santa has been sponsoring the Tigers for him at the Melbourne Zoo. Along with this sponsorship, Santa provides entry tickets for the whole family to spend a day at the zoo so that he can go and visit "his" tigers.