Friday night lights

I took Eldest to a high school football game tonight. I'm not working Friday nights during the fall, and I haven't seen a game in a long time. Eldest has never seen a football game outside of what I try to get him to watch on TV. With early Saturday soccer games the next few weeks, tonight was the best night to go if we were going to see a game this season.

When the game first started, Eldest was simply taking it all in, I think. Football might be one of the tougher sports to explain to a 5-year-old, so I don't know how much he understood, but he seemed to follow some of it. The game unfortunately was a bit of a snoozer -- the visiting team took a 35-0 lead by halftime, and we were sitting in the home bleachers.

In the first quarter, we walked to get hot chocolate, and Eldest saw a souvenir table where glow sticks were on sale. For the next quarter and a half, all I heard was "Is it halftime" because I said we could maybe buy one then. After getting the glow bracelets and wandering around a bit, Eldest seemed energized. I bought him a hot dog, which he ate quickly. He seemed to be more excited to watch the game and was clearly having fun. Eventually, he asked to go -- it was getting chilly, the game had slowed down to 35-7, and he was getting tired. But it was a fun night, and I'm hoping to take him to one more game before the end of the season.

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