Happy Birthday! Jasper. Jasper likes to try new things--sometimes they work well, like learning to play soccer last summer and making big goals for his team; and sometimes they don't. Sigh. Now Grandma is trying new things--Blogging. I hope it works well. Today is Jasper's birthday and he is beginning a new year of life and Grandma is also beginning something new. So Jasper gets the first HAPPY BIRTHDAY blog from Grandma. I hope you have a fantastic day! I love you Jasper.


Grandma's Sports Story
When Grandma was a little girl , about 6 I think, My Mom enrolled my sister and me in a Recreation program run by our small town. We had to walk about a mile to the high school and we played games like Mother May I, and played on the swings and slides and other equipment at the elementary school on the same block. The older kids knew how to play tennis and badminton and basketball but Naty and I just had to watch because we were too little and didn't know how to play. But one day a week we would get on a school bus and go to the swimming pool in Redmond and play in the water--I didn't really learn to swim but it was fun. It was a fun program. I remember learning to do cart wheels and summer saults on the mats. ( I learned a lot of the crazy songs I know on those bus rides back and forth from the swimming pool.

But one day at Recreation, Naty and I were watching the older kids play Badminton in the gym and when they left, they didn't put the rackets and birdies away. So Naty and I tried hitting the birdies over the net. Of course we didn't know how so we soon tired of it. We had no idea where the equipment went or how to check it out and return it, so we found a place between the bleachers that were folded up against the wall (we were little enough to squeeze in between two sets of them) and put the rackets on a shelf made by the bleachers. Another day that week the older kids left a volley ball out when they finished playing so we added it to our stash. I don't remember how much equipment we actually ended up with but for a few days we had fun playing with it. We didn't learn how to play the games.

Then one morning the leaders of the program--mostly High School kids--called us all together and told us that some of the sports equipment was missing and that if they didn't find it we might not get to have the recreation program. When everyone went to activities Naty and I showed them where our stash was and told them we just found the things laying out and didn't want them to get lost. The teachers were happy to have the equipment back but they never did teach us how to play the games. They did set up a check out program for equipment so there was some responsibility for returning it.

I'm glad that there are programs for little kids now where they really do learn how to play the games.