Waiting for fall

Well, I'm done with summer. Finished with it. Unfortunately, where I live I've got about two months left of it.

*sigh*

For me, summer will officially end (high temperatures or not) after our annual post-Labor Day beach trip. It's the big, final hoorah before I can begin to put the hottest, most miserable five months ever behind me and look forward to an awesome mild-mannered fall and winter and spring. Which in the South kind of comes off as one big season with a few weeks of extreme low temperatures. Like a fwing or fallsperwin. And, of course, with the beginning of this fallsperwin is the beginning of college football. Namely Crimson Tide & Big Red football. (I look so good in those colors!)

People have their own rituals to gear up for the season. Sugar Daddy is watching reruns from last year's games (and still rewinding them to question a close call or point out a dirty cheater...just like he did the first time he watched them...), football posts are popping up all over the blogosphere and Facebook like late-summer freckles and I'm on the hunt for classy crimson/houndstooth/red/white hats, apparel and accessories and planning great Game Day parties.

The P-Man is even getting into the action (Liv is more of a basketball girl). Apparently, he has started his own ritual to prepare for football season which includes, I think, a request for some divine intervention.

My kids aren't exactly poster-children for Sunday meeting reverence so it's not unusual for Mom or Dad (usually Dad) to take them out for a stern "talking to." For Price, last Sunday was no exception. So while the boys were out, Olivia and I sat in our pew in front of the organ quietly looking at maps of the Holy Land I have conveniently included in my set of scriptures. We were simultaneously listening to someone speak on service when out of the corner of my eye I saw a young boy approaching the pew. At first, I thought someone had escaped from behind us and was making his way up to the stand. Then I turned to look at the boy head-on.

I saw in front of me two big, brown, bashful eyes and a head of dark blond hair peaking at me from over the top of a football. 

PRICE!!

 His red-headed guardian was nowhere to be seen. I've been told the look on my face was almost as funny as Price walking into the middle of sacrament meeting alone and with a football. I'm glad he found me without incident. It seems he came into the chapel in the back on the opposite side of our pew. Then he walked down the long isle, walked across the front and found us. He also happily climbed on my lap without incident. I half expected him to initiate a game of catch.

He sat by me for a good three to five minutes quietly holding his ball before Aubrey came sauntering in and sat down. It seems this spiritual little athlete escaped from the "watchful" eye of his Daddy while the "disciplinarian" was scrolling through Twitter catching up on ...football.

So my question is this: since Price brought the football into church does it somehow make it a lucky ball? Is it better than the others in the gym overflow because it attended a meeting? Should we somehow get the Crimson Tide to practice with it for luck? Or at least hold it during the games and play with it at halftime? Of course common sense tells me no. I doubt that any heavenly residents (The Bear excluded) care much about whether or not Alabama has a winning season.

But still...is that a chance we really want to take?

It's a difficult question. But while I sort it out I can rest easy knowing that my (almost) two-year-old now has the reputation of being the biggest, most endearing football fan in the neighborhood. Roll Tide!