A different kind of weekend

I had the opportunity to spend the weekend with a very cool kid, Jordan. I first met Jordan when she was in the third grade. She tried out for the UIL Spelling team that I was coaching and she was quiet and shy but always had a smile on her face. I felt pretty strongly that she was a neat kid so I asked my assistant principal to make sure she was in my class the next year. In fact, I believe my exact words were, "I don't care who you put in my class next year, just please give me Jordan." And, through a crazy turn of events, that is exactly what happened. It didn't take long though for me to really get to know Jordan. She is brilliant, caring, sensitive, hilarious, athletic, and pretty darn cool. This weekend I got to see all those things in Jordan and so much more.

One of my favorite things we did was visit Starbucks. Jordan talked about going to Starbucks pretty much all day yesterday, so we made a stop there last night. I'm thinking that we could just drive-thru and be on our way, but Jordan felt like we needed to go inside and drink our drinks so that we would look "cool and mature." Who can argue with that? So, we go in and order our Vanilla Bean Frappaccino (Jordan) and Chai Tea (Me). It took Jordan a few minutes to find the table that would allow for maximum "coolness and maturity." Perhaps now would be a good time to let everyone know we were the only ones in the store! She picked the checkerboard table so we set up a little game of checkers with sugar packets. Here is Jordan looking so cool and so mature:


A little while into the game I was pretty much dominating and Jordan was sure that I was some sort of professional checkers player. I assured her I was not, but she began chanting this anyway:

"Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater, stick your head in poo poo water"

I had to think about that for a few minutes but it sounded so funny to me. I was like, what in the world are you talking about and that caused her to laugh so hard:


It was a great moment. When we got home we had to play Checkers two more times, and she beat me both times.