Homecoming

This weekend is homecoming for our city. Where I grew up, homecoming was a high school thing - big football game, a dance, etc. But just at the high school. Here, everyone gets in on the homecoming fun.

At my kids' school, the PTA put on a special lunch for the teachers - stadium foods including hot dogs, popcorn (somehow the most unhealthy thing offered) and nachos complete with cheez (because "cheese" its not) sauce from a can. Of course the teachers were thrilled.

On Friday afternoon I got an email from our cheerleading coach letting me know that the girls' parents would be giving them "mums" before the game the following day, and then the girls' would be giving little gifts to the boys. I suddenly realized that I had no idea that this was a big deal at all and better do some quick thinking.

I actually found some little stuffed alligators a while ago, and was planning to give them to the cheerleaders at some point. A late night trip to Wal-mart yielded some goody bags, and we were set.

The cheerleaders had handmade, numbered cookies for each football player. We managed to pass out our little gifts to the girls, despite hands being full of drinks, snacks, and the cookies.

I still have so much to learn about Texas culture...

Its hard to see, but if you enlarge this you can see the mums on the girls' uniforms - a big (I'm pretty sure fake) flower adorned with copious amounts of ribbon. I googled this and see that its big business around here and if you are buying one for a high school girl, you could easily spend $100 or more.

Ben's cookie - #10!

And Ben got two touchdowns again and led his team to victory!