Counting by fours

Four years ago I was moving from West Virginia, where the Mister and I watched the US-Ghana game with almost one-year-old Dianthus in the scary bar we'd never been in on a Saturday afternoon after the moving van had taken away our stuff, to Oklahoma.  But when the moving company let us know our stuff would arrive two weeks later than we had been told when they left, we went on to Colorado where we watched the Germany-Spain semi-final at a local bar with my family from Colorado and Germany.

Eight years ago we were moving from Lawrence, Kansas, where we watched lots of games with lots of friends at the Red Lyon, (except the US-Ghana game because the Red Lyon was packed, so we crowded into Buffalo Wild Wings with dear friends T and J for breakfast), to West Virginia, where The Mister and I watched the Italy-France final at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Morgantown, WV, on a househunting trip.

Twelve years ago, neither the Mister nor T's wife J was in our pictures.  T and I drove from Lawrence to Arrowhead Stadium (in Missouri) in the middle of the night to watch the US beat Mexico.  I rushed back from field work in Nebraska to throw a 6 a.m. breakfast party as T, J, C, B and I watched the US lose to Germany.  My brother and I watched the final (Germany - Brazil) in Princeton, Illinois, following my cousin's wedding (Happy Anniversary C and K!).

I don't remember any football 16 years ago, but my brother did get married that summer (Happy Anniversary J and C!).

Twenty years ago I watched, with my family, a close US game from a small diner in Concrete, Washington, as my brother pined for the woman he thought had just left
life (and is now his wife).

Micheal Dalder, Reuters,
Obviously Not Taken or Owned by Me

I relayed some of this to a friend I was visiting in Kansas this past weekend, and she replied, "I had no idea you were such a soccer fan."

Come to think of it, I didn't either.

But one of the highlights of an altogether fantastic recent trip to Missouri and Kansas was sitting in the Red Lyon in Lawrence with the Mister and feeling the place erupt every time they showed the replay of the Van Persie's flying header goal, knowing that friends all over the world were doing the same thing,
Men's World Cup Soccer doesn't get me choked up the way that Women's World Cup Soccer does, but it does get me pretty excited (and apparently moving state to state).