Our Retirement Plan

For the last 6 weeks or so, Jessie has been playing on a basketball team at school, and last week we trooped on over to the school to watch what ended up being their only home game.

Here she is, #55:
She was fouled twice and got to shoot 4 free throws. Sorry it's blurry; a sports photographer I am not.
And here she is in action. Yes, she is related to me, ergo, she is all leg. The dream of her life has been to get taller than Aunt Katie, Kevan's little sister (I am showing great restraint making no commentary whatsoever about that adjective I just used), who is 5'2". When we went to Utah in March during Spring Break (and the first time in over a year that we had seen Katie), Jess was anxious to measure herself against Kate to see if her wishes had come true. Alas (and alack), she was half an inch shy of her goal. At the end of May, she had her annual physical, where the nurse measured her and pronounced her to be 5'3". I think there was squealing involved (from Jess, not the nurse). I said to her, "So I take it that all you've been doing for last two months is squeezing your eyes shut and saying, 'Grow grow grow!'" Then in August, she had to be measured for her health class, and she was 5'4". Just now I put her up to the tape measure and it said 5'4 3/4". Needless to say, I think she's living her dream. Sorry, Kate. Heck, she's closing in on Aunt Kristen now. That was a really long lead-in to a picture. It's a good picture though. Worth the wait. Those long legs are very useful for getting down the court quickly.
I thought for sure that Sam would looove the game, since besides numbers, his main love is throwing and/or kicking balls. I was wrong. He spent most of the game like this:
Want to know why he was so unhappy? Because HE didn't get to play. The hollering you can imagine that was coming out of his very loud mouth was along the lines of, "THAM!"--he has a lisp, remember--"TURN! HOOOOOOOOOOOP! THAM! HOOOOOOOOOP!" That translates roughly to, "GIVE ME THE BALL!" Roughly. He calls a basketball a "hoop," fyi. A soccer ball is a "bid! shawtaw! bame!" ("big soccer game")(he speaks as if every word is its own sentence)(yes, all the time), a football is a "foopaw," a baseball is a "bayth-baw," and a tennis ball is a "pep-uth baw." Now you know. He loves them all. Loves. So you can imagine his severe disappointment at not being able to suit up and join the team. Because of this, after the half we spent the rest of the game like this:
I guess if things don't work out with Jessie's basketball career and therefore our chances of resting on her financial laurels, we can always hope that Sam will turn out to be the Bo Jackson he seems to be gearing up to become.