He planned his own party and forgot to mention it

  We are the hugest Auburn fans there ever was.  Really.  They boys know the players, the coaches, the mottos, the cheers, the names of the buildings on campus, they LOVE Auburn.  I grew up rooting for the other team....the crimson and white one.  Except, I didn't ever really care who won.  I kept cheering for Bama for years after I married Bradley.  Bradley is the root of all the Auburn hoopla.  I thought it was fun to be the adversary.  I liked to poke at him and cheer loud when the crimson team scored.....even though, I really didn't care.  But when the boys came along, I felt kinda bad cheering against their team that they loved so much.  The boys and their Daddy had this thing together....it was the Auburn football thing.  I didn't want to tarnish it by booing them or rooting for the opponent, so I got pretty quiet about liking the crimson team.  After a while, I began to cheer along with them.  And then, Tucker, my oldest, went to a football camp at Auburn and I spent the day with him when it was time to pick him up.  I felt the magic that my boys and their Daddy felt.  The campus was awesome and the coaches were fabulous with the young football players.  I fell in love with Auburn along with my gang of boys.  From that point forward, we were ALL IN as a family.  The whole gang of us.  We are the hugest Auburn fans that ever was. 

    We had never had the opportunity to actually attend an Auburn game at the stadium with the boys.  We always thought that would be a pretty spectacular experience.  The problem was that Tucker was always playing football on Saturdays, and we couldnt go to the games.  And when he had a week off, it always worked out that Auburn played one of those big name schools and we couldn't afford the tickets.  Have you ever tried to buy a set of 5 Auburn football tickets to a big name team?  It's not cheap.  But this year, Tucker moved up to Junior High Football and we had Saturdays free.  The opening game fell on Carter's birthday weekend.  We asked Carter, "Would you like to go to an Auburn football game for your birthday?"  He answered with a huge smile and a great big ole "Yes!"  His brothers thought this was the greatest plan ever to be mentioned.  I ordered the tickets.  Since they were playing a not-so big name team, we could afford it.  We knew we wanted to take part in all the Auburn football traditions.  We HAD to do "Tiger Walk" where the players walk from the field house to the stadium in kind of an football player parade where they give high fives to all the people standing there.  We wanted to eat at Cheeburger Cheeburger, the most famous Auburn restaurant where you can custom build your cheeseburgers.  We wanted to roll "Toomer's Corner" after the game if Auburn won, which is some trees on campus that the fans throw toilet paper on to celebrate a victory.  And we wanted to get to the stadium early enough to see all the pregame stuff they do at a football game.  We decided that since we had a 3 hour drive to Auburn and needed to be there at about 8 am, that we would go the night before, on Carter's birthday, and spend the night there. 

     In my mind, this would be Carter's birthday celebration.  This would be Carter's ONLY birthday celebration.  Carter had another idea in HIS mind.  I remember when we were planning the birthday trip, he asked if his friends could still spend the night.  I kind-of blew him off and said, "Yeah, they can still come over sometime."  Carter took that sentence and ran with it.  I got home late on Thursday night before we were leaving on Friday.  The answering machine was blinking.  I pressed it.  This basically is what it said, "Hi.  This is Jaxson's mom.  I hate to call and ask about this, but Jaxson insist that he is suppose to spend the night with Carter on Sunday.  He says that Carter is having his friends over to spend the night and that his Mom says it's ok, but she isn't sending out invitations.  I wanted to make sure he is really supoose to come over on Sunday."

Oh dear heavens.

"CARTER???!!!......Come in here."

Carter comes in smiling.  "Carter.  Did you invite your friends over to spend the night Sunday."

"Yep."

Oh my.  "Who all did you invite?"

"I can't remember."

This could get scary really quick like. I firmly explained to Carter that he couldn't invite friends over without telling me or asking first. He looked defeated and looked like he was about to cry when he said, "You told me they could come over." We clearly had a misunderstanding, but instead of raining on his party, I just gathered up the pieces and went with it. I started naming off his friends asking if he had invited them. I got a "Yes" only 4 times. This would be manageable. My 3 boys added to Carter's 4 yeses plus a bonus brother to one of the yeses equals 8 boys. It would be a wild night, but definitely manageable. I quickly facebooked and phoned the invited boys and let their parents know that their sons were welcomed to our home on Sunday when we returned from our weekend at Auburn. Everyone was game for the spend the night with us, so we had a party planned....it was planned by a 6 year old, but he did a pretty good job. Maybe next time, he will run his plans by me first.



The boys are in full "GO AUBURN!" mode.

We were waiting for "Tiger Walk".  This was the most awesome of all the Auburn experiences.  The players walked down this path next to us and all of them gave us high fives.  To us, it was much better than being near the Red Carpet at Hollywood.  Football players are way cooler than actors.

I think I had my arm out farther than anybody.  I hope I didn't take any of the the high fives from my boys.  That would not win me the "Mother of the Year" award.

After Auburn won, we couldn't bring ourselves to leave right away.  Poeple around us were gone, but we just sat there.  We stayed in the awesomeness as long as we could without looking too weird.  Then we went to roll the trees.

"Toomer's Corner"

This is a really great tradition that gets all the fans involved in celebrating the victory.  Next time, I will bring my own toilet paper.  It cost us $6 to celebrate by throwing 3 perfectly good rolls of toilet paper at the trees.  It was worth it, but I will still bring my own cheap paper next time.

Carter's cake that his sweet Nana made him.  What else, but an Auburn cake?

ALL of his friends actually cheer for the crimson and white team.  I am still not sure how he convinced them to put on Auburn jerseys to play a football game in the house.  That is a pretty big deal.

Happy 7th Birthday, Carter!