August 25th, 2012.
This will forever be the day Kaelob took his first steps onto a “real” football field.
Unfortunately I will also remember that those steps were made with ratty old dirt covered tennis shoes and NOT his brand new bright blue football cleats. I will remember the crazy ass drive trying to “safely” speed all the way from Ramona to Encinitas to grab his cleats off the dining room table and beat the clock back out to the stadium again before warm up was over and the game whistles blew. I will remember. I will remember.
The day was also filled with great moments. Some of these great moments began the evening before…
My daughter and I prepped two bags of Apples purchased from Encinitas Whole Foods Market thanks to their generous donation to our team. We decided to try something simple yet sugary and sweet for the first game. I had many heated discussions with my husband, who is truthfully my go-to-source for anything and everything football related about the fact that he thinks, “no kids are going to want apple chips over a candy bar”. I promised the coach healthy, natural, non-processed ingredients but still a treat for them as a post-game reward.
Making Cinnamon and Sugar Apple chips was surprisingly easy. I do believe a few things could have made it easier though…. some lovely little contraption called a mandolin… NO not the musical instrument…. the slicer. Cutting almost 20 apples by hand got to be quite a sport in itself. Not to mention the fact that I also do not have an apple corer so all the seeds and apple cores were cut out by hand as well. PHEW!!! BUT once it was done we had some wonderful treats for the animals; I think the pig liked them the most.
Once I had sliced the apples as paper-thin as I could possibly do so by hand we got to mix the cinnamon and sugar, one of Haylee’s favorite things to do! She gets to come up with the correct mixture. I give her a measuring cup, a bowl some sugar and a shaker of cinnamon and she goes to town filling the bowl (there’s really no way to go wrong). Once she’s done stirring it all together she then takes a handful and sprinkles it all over the apple slices that are laid out evenly on a foil lined cookie sheet. Again she get’s to decide just how much to sprinkle over the top. I will generally oversee the project but don’t usually have to step in unless it suddenly looks like shes literally pouring the entire bowl over the top. Once efficiently sprinkled, the cookie sheet then goes in the oven at 250 degrees for 2 hours. After ONE hour I pull the cookie sheet out and turn them all over and coat the apple slices one more time. They cook for another hour and then…
Wa-La! Crunchy, sugary apple chips straight from the oven!
Due to my previous discussion with my husband I ended up also making some chocolate chip cookies to go in the baggies with the apples. In the end, cookies or apples alike the kids turned their noses up at the neatly filled baggy of cinnamon apple chips and gooey choc chip cookie goodness. They seemed to very clearly prefer pre-packaged sacks of junk.
That’s okay though. I am 100% positive this is one battle I will win!
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Here are a few more amazing pictures from this day filled with memories.
We beat the Ramona Bulldawgs 21-6!
