Packer-mania!

It was bound to happen. After living here for almost 5 years, Packer-mania finally penetrated the walls of the Lundgren home. At the beginning of December, Claire's school (actually, all the public schools in the state of Wisconsin, I think) had "Packers Day" on the day the Packers played the Cowboys. I was not aware of this and as I was walking Claire and Matthew (the boy with whom we carpool) down the hall to their class (because we were late AGAIN - all the snow has completely thrown off our schedule in the morning - as if getting all three kid's coats and snow boots and hats and gloves on isn't enough, inevitably one of the kids slips and falls in the snow, or loses a glove, or their hood is blown off, or they can't roll their backpacks through the snow, and on and on and on - I WISH I STILL LIVED IN TEXAS! Ok, enough parentheses talk...on with my story) I heard Matthew ask Claire if she had a Packers shirt on under her coat. She said no, she didn't have one and then Matthew said he didn't either (his family is also not from Wisconsin). I asked them if they were supposed to wear Packers shirts today and they both said yes. Sure enough, as I peeked into the classes we were passing in the hall, my eyes were flooded with green and gold. After I dropped the kids off, Grant called and I mentioned that it had been Packers day at school and Grant responded, "Oh, yeah. It's Packers Day here at work, too." WHAT?!?!?!?? In all of my years growing up in Houston, which had three professional sports teams, I have never heard of such a thing! So, anyway, when Claire got home from school she said she wanted to watch the Packers game that night and wanted to wear a Packers shirt while watching it. I asked her if she knew who or what the Packers were to which she responded "no." That didn't seem to matter, though. Since we had to go to Kohl's for something I said we'd look for a Packers jersey when we were there. By this time Cole had gotten all excited about getting a Packers jersey, too, even though he had no clue what the Packers were either. We looked at both girls (they make pink Packers jerseys) and boys jerseys, but they didn't have the right sizes, so I said that we could tape a 'G' onto a shirt for them to wear during the game. Cole said he didn't want a 'G' but a '4' on his shirt, because he'd seen a '4' (Brett Favre's number) on the jersey at Kohl's. When we got home, Grant taped their shirts up and they watched almost the whole game. Then, they each slept in their shirts and the next day both of them wanted to wear their shirts to school. I tried desperately to fight this, but finally gave in. So, below is the picture of them in their "Packers shirts" before school.

How could anyone see those excited faces and not let them wear those horriffic shirts (which were also both on backwards and neither of which were even green - I have no idea what their teachers thought) to school? I would have felt better if I could have taped a sign on them that explained some things about the shirts, but oh well. That day, when Claire got home from school she informed me that "The reason the Packers lost the game was because Brett Favre got injured." Did that sentence really just come out of my daughter's mouth? Apparently the game was all the kids talked about at school that day. She then told me she wanted to watch the Packers game again, to which Cole echoed, "Yeah! Let's watch the Packers basketball game again!" :)