You’ll have to bear with me a bit this week. It’s been a looooong week with many things happening. I’ll start with Tuesday. The Lincoln High School Prowlers (The local high school here) were ranked #1 in Minnesota in their division going into the season opener at the Ralph Engelstad arena here in town Tuesday night against the Roseau High School Rams. It was our first ever hockey game and we went to see the junior varsity teams playing earlier and watched the first period of the varsity game at 7:30 as the boys had to get to bed for school early the next morning. We ended up winning in overtime, though, with Michael Forney, the team captain, scoring the winning goal in the closing seconds of OT. Lincoln High shares the Notre Dame fight song and they had their pep band playing on Tuesday night.
Come Thursday, Aaron had his winter “informance,” another name for his holiday musical. The play was entitled “Melton, the Warm-Hearted Snowman.” He had several speaking parts and performed them all with grace and aplomb, reciting them from memory with no cues. Of course I was a bit of a distraction to him in between and he couldn’t stop laughing at one point, rubbing his eyes until he could calm down. He was grinning from ear to ear for about 90 percent of the performance and obviously enjoyed himself immensely. His class worked very hard on the program. I got to say hi to the assistant hockey coach while I was there too, as his daughter is in Aaron’s third grade class. He’s pretty optimistic about the Prowler’s season this year.
We ended the school week with our second hockey game on Friday night, this time against the Totino-Grace Eagles. They are so named as Rose Totino of frozen pizza fame donated much of her fortune to the private Catholic school in the Minneapolis area when she died and the school was renamed. Totino-Grace was ranked 6th in the state going into the game and the Prowlers beat them 6 to 2. It was a much larger crowd that night at the arena and the boys enjoyed themselves as usual. I videotaped that game.
I was wondering if we’d have time to catch a single game this year, but come yesterday (Saturday), there we were again at the arena, taking in the Prowler’s third game this past week in a row, this one against the Blaine High School Bengals. The Bengals had been beaten the day before by Roseau by about 5 to 1 or 2. Unfortunately the Prowler’s were unable to salvage that one and lost to the Bengals by a score of 7 to 4. We went with the pastor who lives on our street and his four boys. Pastor Dave had played goalie in college for one year and gave me some background on hockey rules, etc., so I know what I’m looking at on the ice. So it would appear we are well on our way to becoming hockey fanatics, to say the least…
In other news, we have been working on fixing up the youth room downstairs at Trinity so it’s something the youth can be proud of as their own place to “hang.” I fixed the ping-pong table and also replaced a broken man on the foosball table, so those are back in order and they have a couple of nice couches that were donated. At our meeting today, we discussed getting some donations together to purchase a television and DVD/VCR for the room so they can have a movie night sometime. The only other thing left would perhaps be a bubblehockey table to round out the recreation equipment. The youth also have their trip to San Antonio to look forward to next summer, but have a long ways to go as they have only raised about $1,500 and have to reach around $20,000 all told.
Aaron had an unexpected surprise at church today. He ended up playing foosball right across from the varsity hockey captain, Michael Forney, a three-sport athlete who also was captain and quarterback of the regional champion Prowler football team. I told Aaron he’s the one he should get an autograph on his hockey stick from. Michael has signed on to play for the University of North Dakota as a forward next winter. Aaron also played ping-pong with Michael before we left. He’s a nice kid who enjoys being a mentor to the younger kids. He visited Aaron’s school earlier in the year to hand out Prowler memorabilia. I’m hoping Aaron may continue his interest in hockey and after learning how to skate perhaps pursue playing the game next season. All he needs now is a pair of skates as he already has his hockey stick.
This next Wednesday I’ll be practicing again for another orchestral performance at Redeemer Lutheran for their Santa Lucia Festival on Saturday the 10th. It’s an annual Swedish Festival and we’ll be playing Christmas music. It’s been a bear having a cello over here so far, though, as the temperatures get so low that humidity is next to nothing, which can cause a string instrument to crack or become unglued, so I’m constantly monitoring the humidity in the house here and refilling the humidifier. It’s an interesting paradox as the outside humidity is often well over 80 percent while the indoor humidity plummets to the single digits. It was 1 below zero this morning and we’re expecting high temps in the single digits throughout the early part of this coming week. Snow is here to stay for the winter and many parts of town are covered by ice, making driving somewhat treacherous.
I’ll sign off for now so I have time to post a few pictures for you of Aaron’s performance and the recent hockey games. Just three weeks from today until Christmas!!! :o)
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