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Happy Mother's Day: Post 1

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As my mom, my dad, and I were driving home from the temple, we did one of those silly Facebook quizzes that asks you questions about your significant other, and you answer them as best you can. One of them was: "What does your spouse collect?" and Papa had a hard time finding something that Mama collects. If anything, Mama usually gets rid of stuff, to which Glo can recently attest. :-) Mama, however, had a pretty good response to this question She said that she collects memories. You can see that this blog is a great example of this, as it has been going on for several years and is full of experiences that we have had together as a family. So, for Mother's Day, I wanted to post some of the memories that have made me who I am, all of which connect to my mother and are attributes that come specifically from her. :-)

This first one is pretty straightforward from her: a passion for sports. While my dad loves sports, he's much more into playing sports. Watching a sports game on TV or even live? Not that interesting for him.

My mom, however, has always loved watching sports or talking about it. I have distinct memories of watching the 1997 Michigan Wolverines National Championship game when we lived in Ohio (I know, just wrong to be a Wolverines fan in Ohio). I don't know that we all watched the entire thing, but we definitely all paid attention to what was going on, and I think that comes from my mom.

My most distinct sports memory with my mom comes from right before my mission. We went out to Utah for Mark and Hannah to go to a music festival at BYU. We stayed at a family friend's house in Utah, and I think we spent a lot of time at the Family History Library. Each night, however, ended with us going back to the house and watching the NBA Finals. These were the finals between the Lakers and the Celtics, the year after the Celtics won the title. We had SO MUCH FUN sitting there, watching Kobe and the Boston's Big Three go at it each night. I also remember that Mama thought it was funny how the Celtic players, dressed in the green finery of leprechauns, were all huge, tall African-Americans, that did things like bang their heads against the stanchion of the arena for their pre-game routine:
Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen were legit back then. 

The Lakers beat the Celtics in seven, but we had a BLAST watching this every night.

I also can't mention sports and my mom without talking about all of our games at the Big House over the last two years. I think Mama was up in AA at least every other week to go to a game there and watch the Wolverines, typically when they WON. I have so many good memories from being together at Michigan football games, and I attribute those to mama, since she's the first one who got us connected to Michigan sports.

I think this is the ONLY game to which all six of the original Kennedys went.  Maryland game last year.
Thankfully we won by 25 points, so it felt pretty good to be there.

Happy Mother's Day mama! Can't wait for more of these to come!

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