Lacrosse, Howie, and Me

A trip home to visit my family is generally pretty predictable.  We hang out, go to sporting events, watch movies, and eat food.  A lot of food.  One of my brother's friends told him that the Peterson Family eats more than any other family she knows.  Boy am I proud of that :)

As I mentioned, sporting events play generally play a large role in our family gatherings.  When we were younger, it was dance events that took up a lot of our time.  But now, with Lindsay & I married and living far away, my mother is left home with Rob & my dad who both play hockey in addition to Rob playing lacrosse.  Somehow I got out of a trip to IceWorld this time, but I did manage to fit in one of Robbie's lacrosse games.

Hockey has been a part of the Peterson family for about 10 years now, so I know most of the rules and follow the game pretty easily.

However, Rob started playing lacrosse not too long before I moved out of the house so my knowledge of the sport is a bit limited.

Really, it's not too hard to understand the "get the ball in the net" strategy.  However, I've never been able to understand why you can hit people sometimes but other times you can't...

Or how you can whack someone in the arms but not from behind... or from the front... or from the air... or something like that...

Robbie graciously wore his Fresh Prince of Bel Air shorts so that I could easily identify him.  Actually, I think he wore them because he thinks they are stylish and goofy-- his two qualifying factors in picking out clothing.  Easy identification was a bonus.

Robbie scored two goals and I saw both of them!  This is an incredible feat for me as I'm usually distracted when exciting things seem to be happening.  Common distractions at sporting events include clouds, grass, people's clothes (good thing Rob was the one with the distracting clothes), shadows, cars, anything that lives.... oh and this dog.

I don't remember his name, so I'm going to call him Howie.  After Howie Mandel.  Who, by the way, is way better in Bobby's World than on Deal or No Deal... in case you were wondering.

But this was a different Howie.  This Howie was slobbery and skin-foldy, and had beautiful droopy eyes.

Squirrel!

Howie filled my dog quota for the next... let's say... three lifetimes.  I mean, dogs are cute to play with every once in a while... but the whole feeding, pooping, cleaning, and slobbering thing... Not a fan.  Hmm... that sounds strangely like a baby.  Except it doesn't look like you (hopefully) and you can't teach it how to play sports, do math, or read A Bargain for Frances.  I'll pass.