'tis the season...for football

ok, friends. 
brace yourselves. 
for lots of photos. 
lots and lots of buckeye photos. 
last weekend was the 2nd annual Buckeye Kickoff event. 
it is a really fun event for the first year class, held in the Ohio Stadium. 
the boys loved it last year and asked to go again. 


anth was really excited for the event. 


benny was. . . benny. 
he didn't want to pose for a picture. 


check him out. 
this is benny intently staring into the distance and refusing to look at my camera. 
i had to respect the concentration, if nothing else. 

thankfully, one of his favorite buckeye ladies, beth, came around and brought him out of his shell. 

and, of course, The Best Damn Band In The Land can always get him out of his seat. 
he genuinely loves them.
(he is not alone in this sentiment.)

look at them. 
both smiling beautifully. 
fun fact: benny is only smiling this way because there is a bunny-ears-in-progress behind anth's back.
i'll take what i can get. 

this was almost a really cool picture. 

and then the band walked away. 

oops. 

this is bern teaching benny the proper rhythm for the song. 
i went through a similar lesson before my first game in 2001. . . 
in the car from bowling green to columbus. 
almost the whole way. 
festive. . .

if i were a much taller, you might be able to tell that there is a fully formed Script Ohio behind them. . .

after the band left the field, benny was super interested in the rest of the show. . .

although he was happy to join daddy on the field for the first year class picture. 
again, i'm not tall enough, nor high enough in the stands to show what this means. 
here you go. 

timmy siverd was very proud of this photo, so i am giving him proper photo credit. 

he took this one, too. 
come back soon for the tragic Fail Photo version of this one. . .

all 3 of my savvy boys. 
(which, PS, the savvy is short for Savarese. someone admitted they didn't realize the connection between our name and the name of the blog. which brings me back to this post, in which i explain that i am trying to be punny, not cocky. . .)

anth and one of his favorite camp counselors, Danny. 
:)

per usual, not sure what benny is doing. 
but otherwise (minus the random array of first year students behind us) this is actually a decent family photo.
life's little victories. 

Dr. J (Dr. Javaune Adams-Gaston, our Vice President of Student Life) tried to photo-bomb our family photo. 
and just ended up in it. 
genius. 

another gem of a human, Moe Samad, teaching benny some of the finer points of football. 

most of my pictures of these two ended up looking like this. 

with a little bit of this. 

but by the end of his lesson, they were ready. 


perhaps benny was a little too ready. . .

i have about 43 Fail Photos of this one, too. 
all of them are worth a 1,000 words. 
most of the words being along the lines of, "mom, why on earth are you trying to make us hold still on the Buckeye football field?"

and, of course, i ended the night with a few photos with some of my favorite buckeyes.
including jen. 
whose hair is still long enough to make a perfect mustache. 
i was worried. 
(yes, this only makes sense if you know her.)


moe stopped running around long enough for a photo. 

and, of course, a pic with the now most-senior Assistant Director of Residence Life, curtis. 
whose hat i should have borrowed as to not be eating my hair in this photo. 
charming. 

also? 
one of these days i will remember to get a picture of bernie and i at this event. 
oops. 

anyway. 
all of this to say. . .
Happy Buckeye Football Season!

my sister is a punk

if you have been reading My Savvy Boys for a while, you will know that i do not, in fact, find my sister to be a punk. 
as i've written about before, we welch girls must stick together. 
i am actually 15 kinds of excited because katie (forever known to me as "Katie Mae" due to a gift of a nickname bestowed upon her in 2001 by bernie) will be coming out to Ohio for a visit this year.
katie mae lives in kauai.
suffice it to say that neither of us manage the 6 hour time difference very well for phone calls. 
those are a basically minor miracle. 
but an in-person visit? 
that's a flat out act of (insert higher being, or whatever you see fit, here).

anyway, today katie mae sent me an email.
we were in the middle of a group project at work, so i didn't get to peek at it until later in the day. 
she did a photo shoot for a painting this week. 
here were a few pictures she sent me. . .

 

these are the reason i called my sister a punk. 

she is naturally beautiful (inside and out), has a lovely olive tone (with or without living in kauai), and these are the photos of her that exist on this earth when someone pulls out a camera and says, "just act like yourself."

alternately, i am pasty. 

and allergic to so many plants, i would have also been splotchy if attempting the same photo shoot. 

it's a good look.  

add a bug flying in my eye. 

because that would happen, too.

and, in my life, this is the kind of photo you can find me tagged in on Facebook.

because, apparently, this is what "just act like yourself" looks like for me:

neat.

it's official: i'm an embarrassment

to say this was a big week in the savvy abode might be a bit of an understatement.

a rather large understatement, in fact.

let's see.

mom started a new job on Monday.

(kind of. day one was working on the Columbus Welcome Event, so it kind of didn't count.)

anth started 3rd grade at his new school on Tuesday.

and benny started kindergarten on Wednesday.

how much can one heart take?

fortunately, all went swimmingly. . .

per usual, i didn't grab my good camera. 

at least i'm consistent. 

?.

we had no idea how morning drop-off worked, other than that they lined up by teacher behind the school. 

fortunately the herds of parents who knew what were doing guided the way. . .

 

the moment we found anth's line, things changed. 

he instantly stopped talking to us. 

i, of course, realized what was happening and backed away. 

i'm sad to say, friends, it's official...i am now uncool for him to hang out with in public. 

i enjoy this picture a great deal. 

because it was after we realized we were uncool. 

i'm standing on the sidelines. 

bernie is still in the mix, messing with our oldest child.  

look at bernie's grin. 

and anth's "i'm not making eye contact" pose. 

gems.

when bern did step away, this was what we saw the rest of the time.
he didn't even look back when they filed into school.

(note: there are other parents in line. parents are just particularly uncool as the "new kid.")

grandpa savarese joined us that morning.

he knew where to be. 

about 50 feet away on the playground. 

i am sure anth appreciated his sensibility here. 

then, because it was my first real day on the job, these showed up later that afternoon. 

bless bernie's thoughtful heart.

that evening, we took anth for graeter's ice cream to celebrate his big day. 

fact: he held my hand on the way in. 

all is not lost. 

benny on his way in to his last day of pre-school

The last day of pre-school also happened to be jammie day. 

benny.

loves. 

jammie day. 

 

this is benny with one of his besties on jammie day. 

the kids also had the very special treat of watching Finding Nemo in celebration of all the great work they did to fill up their Sea of Kindness bulletin board. 

my favorite? 

apparently benny and izayah cleaned the lego table.

with a toothbrush.

it's amazing the double life he leads while at preschool. . .

and here we are on our way in to kindergarten. 

you will note that benny has his fingers in his ears. 

this was the exact moment when benny got tired of mom and dad telling him how excited and proud they were. . .

i tried to get a picture of him walking to his classroom. 

but he bolted once the door opened and ran the whole way there. 

he is a little excited about kindergarten.

here he is in front of what he calls "all those bones."

i asked him to chill out and take a nice picture. 

like i said. . .

kind of excited. 

then anth took him for a tour of his old stomping grounds. 

this picture is ridiculously blurry, but how sweet are they?

anth spent a particularly long time showing benny the art space, as this was his favorite. . . 

yes, those are sharpees. 

teachers, beware. 

i tried to get one last good shot of the boys.

this is the best one. 

of, like, 10. 

neat.

(note: benny came home and reported to Dad, "i didn't read today." i am fairly certain that my parents heard a similar comment back in the day...)

so, here we are back on tuesday. . .

two semi-normal smiles = a minor miracle these days. 

suffice it to say, this has been a long, but very exciting week. 

the boys are starting new journeys that i feel conflicted about. 

i am excited for them. 

they will learn and grow and make new friends. 

but, each new-school-year-milestone seems to come faster than the last and they are just growing up so quickly. . . 

it was a big week for me, too.

and, as with any major life transition, i have some amazing friends who have listened, advised, grounded and lifted me up through the process. 

i saw this recently, (from the lovely Kelly Rae Roberts, of course), and thought of you. 

you know who you are. . .

here's to an amazing year ahead. 
(yes, i think more in school years than i do calendar. i've lived in them most of my adult life.)
here's to all of us getting to the next milestone with many cherished memories. 
especially all of those beautiful day-to-day ones that sneak right past us if we let them. . .

fail photo friday: one. nice. shot. . .

last friday, bernie and i took the day off of work.

we were home for the day because the boys were getting a surprise delivery.

a swingset. :)

anth had been complaining that we were only buying things for us for the new house. 

really exciting things. 

like curtain rods. 

and hooks. 

and mirrors. 

either way, mom and dad were getting all the "fun new stuff" and the kids just weren't. 

thankfully, bernie, my mom and i had cooked up a little surprise for them. 

it just required some (aka, LOTS) of assembly...

i took many lovely pictures of their return home that day on my "real" camera, but i haven't made the time to export those yet. 

so, here are a few i took on my phone a little while later. 

mind you, this is a fail photo post. . .

first, i said, "let's do a reenactment! what did you think when you saw the swingset?"

pretty accurate. . .

nice. 

then, i made the impossible suggestion of, "let's get a cute shot of the two of you together."

silly me. 

here is the first one. . .



here is anth, reacting to the bunny ears. . .

and here is my littlest problem-solver, completely unphased. . .



buried in my office: banana muffins

just in case you don't read this whole post, please allow me to clarify. 

NO, i did NOT find muffins buried in my office. 

gross. 

however, i did recently get a new job in student life here at Ohio State. 

while it will be strange shift away from the "Residence Life" part of my identity that i have held for the last 16 years, i am very excited for my new adventure at the Center for the Study of Student Life, where i will start on August 19th. 

while preparing for this move, i have found several fun things. 

some of them have included old bits of homework and class projects that made their way to my office instead of my house. 

like this one, from anth, who is rather non-committal in choosing his favorite muffin flavor. 

but clearly felt the need to at least have an opinion on record. . .

fail photo sunday: benny learns a lesson

this week's lesson?
gravity. always. wins. 

always.

LIFE UPDATE: totally. not. settled in.

oh. 
hey. 
how are you?

me?
just in case you are about to ask, no, i'm not settled in yet. 
i just thought i would put that out there, because it is a current FAQ in my life. 
bern and i moved into our new house during the first week of July. 
and we are VERY excited.
we took a week off to get settled. 
these plans were diverted a bit based on some interesting choices made by the folks who lived here before us. 
so we have been unpacking on the weekends between baseball games and trips to the park and, today, getting the boys their library cards. 

so, we are getting there. 
the good news is that we have some very special house guests coming in late september. 
so at least we have a deadline. 

i have friends who have been asking me to post pictures of the house. 
in an attempt to comply, i just walked around the house. 
and started laughing. 
because there wasn't a single room worth preserving on film. 
i'm that good at life. 

so, here you go. 
here is a picture. 
this is the boys' room. 
a few weeks ago, it was pink.
so that's progress. . .right?

yep. 
as you can see. 
it's a work in progress, but we're getting there. 
i promise a full photo tour when we're done. 
in late September :)

(UPDATES! TO A POST I HADN'T EVEN POSTED YET!)

1. i got distracted while writing this post last week, and then completely forgot about it. 
2. yep. 
3. i was talking to a Hall Director today and it reminded me, so here we are again. 
4. but, the good news is, bern and i took monday off and spent 8 hours unpacking. 
5. (no, we're still not done.)
6. but now we are down to random stray boxes in each room, a guest room full of random things, and a lot of artwork that needs to be removed from the floor and applied to walls. 
7. even better? the boys have a very fun surprise coming on Friday, so we will be able to spend a bit more time setting up camp. 
shhh. . .