Closing out November

Well, I haven't been posting enough, mostly because I don't seem to get pictures loaded here to post about. Now, I could say this is because my dear wife is using "My" computer in the evenings and I generally post from there rather than the laptop. Tonight I will post from the laptop, you'll have to wait for pictures until another post. Basically, this is just a boring, catch-up on news post.

The kids (and my lovely wife) had all of Thanksgiving Week off and we kept busy. Now, last weekend was supposed to be taken up by a soccer tournament for DD and DS#2, but that was cancelled due to bad weather. The weather ended up okay on the weekend but there was so much rain Thursday night through Friday morning that they had to cancel the tournament Friday afternoon due to all of the teams traveling in from out of town. Right now it appears that they are trying to reschedule the tournament for Dec 12-13th which is actually a bit disappointing as we thought we were done with soccer for a little while. DS#1 isn't done with soccer tough, he has High School try-outs this week. I expect he'll make the JV "A" team-and it sounds like that is what he expects too. He has an outside chance of making Varsity but on the JV A team he'll likely be a starter, if he made Varsity he would be on the bench and he pretty much just wants to be able to play.

Back to this week, Tuesday DS#1's team had a get-together at a San Antonio Rampage (minor-league professional Hockey team) game. I took DS#1 and DS#2 to the game and we had a great time. I found it hilarious that they played against the Milwaukee Admirals. I went to a few Admirals games when I was a kid and I believe that every time I went to see them they lost. Well, now when I watched them in San Antonio I got to see them win. Of course, I was rooting for the other team. The really nice part about this is that the kids got to go down to the hallway the players come through and "high 5" the Rampage players as they came out on the ice for the second period.

Wednesday we went to Houston to spend time with family. We got there on time for the kids to play with my niece E before she went with her father for the holiday weekend. The cousins all get along so well that it is fun to watch (though a bit noisy sometimes). DS#3 LOVES the constant attention and the fact that he can pretty much eat anything he wants.

Thursday we had Thanksgiving dinner at C's house which has a bit more space for the kids to play in. It was a very relaxing day complete with more food than I should have eaten and several football games to watch. The three older kids stayed behind while my dear wife and I went home with her parents and DS#3. DS#3 was completely exhausted and slept through having his clothes changed and slept fairly late the next morning.

Friday I had lunch with my good friend Jim Bone who recently moved back to Houston. The move hasn't been great for him so it was nice to be able to talk, and give him someone to vent to. After lunch I came back to pack up the van and head back to San Antonio.

Today was a fairly boring day of errands and tree decorating. We did have a family breakfast at IHOP and my dear wife and I went out for a late lunch and ice cream together (sans kids!). After church this evening I ran DS#1 off to see some of his friends from the Atonement Academy at the ice skating rink. He hasn't ice skated before so we were a bit concerned, but I guess he got the hang of it after a half hour or so and ended up having a really good time.

I will try to have a "mostly pictures" post sometime tomorrow to make up for all of the boring text (sorry CB!) but I haven't posted in so long that I felt like I need to get back in a pattern.

Small But Fierce!

Okay, reusing a title here, and, well, typing the actual post after hitting the "return" key and posting a blank post.

This is a soccer family. I would try to tell you that I played soccer as a kid and was a superstar but that simply isn't the case. I was a swimmer, and I played some baseball. I coached and taught swimming for quite a while. In fact, one night after coaching some swimmers when we lived in Illinois I told my wife, "Don't let me make the boys (only DS#1 and DS#2 were around at the time) swim just because I was a swimmer." We have always tried to encourage the kids to be involved in sports, but the sports that they choose.

DS#1 was initially involved in martial arts, something that, quite honestly, he was much better at than the soccer that he seems to have fallen in love with. It has taken hard work for him to get to his present skill level in soccer, and his desire to improve continues. When DS#2 got involved in soccer I was initially concerned that he would move away from soccer the way he moved away from martial arts because he saw an older brother that played the sport. Instead, DS#2 wants to continue with soccer (and someday American football, but that is another story). Okay, we aren't that surprised, DS#2 is a good soccer player (playing against his older brother clearly helps).

What about DD? Well, last year she decided against soccer in favor of gymnastics and dance. We thought, "Wow, she IS a girlie-girl." This year she is playing soccer again. Not just playing soccer, but playing on a "U8 Academy" team against U9 girls teams and some boys teams. We love watching her develop as a soccer player, and laugh about the things she has clearly learned from watching her brother's games-and maybe hearing her papa's comments. Today she had a 4v4 "Fun Fest" where the split teams into smaller teams to play 4v4 games. DD's team played against older girls and did very well.

DD scored a goal in the first of their 4 games and was pretty excited about it. She returned to her defensive mindset later and clearly got tired out (she had a 7:30 PM game last night and didn't get to bed until late). I just love these few pictures as they show much DD, who is either the smallest, or tied for the smallest, on her team pairs up with "the competition." Our little girl has gotten far more aggressive on the soccer field than her brothers were at this age--maybe older brothers ARE a bonus!

My dear wife took a number of pictures, and I have some "captions" in mind for a few of them so look forward to an addition to the family webpage with a few of them sometime in the near, er, few years...

Mud Bowl (x2)

Well, it looks like Halloween just blew by without me posting anything about it, let alone everything else going on. Fortunately, my dear wife posts much more regularly and you can find pictures from Halloween, report card news, and more on her blog.

This past weekend was filled with a number of soccer games, with most of those games scheduled for Sunday. DD had a game on Friday night, with a start time of 7:30 PM. She played her best game ever and has shown HUGE improvement this year. We believe her team is going to be "disbanded" for spring and that she'll be placed on another team. The short story is that there are some "problem parents" on that team and the coach, and the club, just don't want to deal with them anymore. We are hoping that she'll be on a "new" team with some of the same girls (sans problem parents) and with the same coach.

DS#2 had a very difficult schedule this weekend, something I, as team manager, was personally very frustrated with. We had 3 of our 6 "regular season" games this weekend. We had 10 games for the season, but 6 games count for the standings. All games had to be finished by Sunday, Nov 8th. We had to have some games rescheduled due to rain cancellations, and rescheduled games are the responsibility of the "home" team, well the two games we needed to reschedule were "away" games for us and I ended up dependent on other people to do their jobs, they didn't do their jobs properly and we ended up having to play half of our regular season games in a single weekend. In addition, one of our main players could only make it to half of one of the two games on Sunday.

Saturday was our first "regular season" game with a full roster of healthy boys. DS#2's team won that game and dominated control of the ball. They "found the back of the net" but are still having problems getting balls into the goal. That will come with time and practice. We are getting much cleaner shots on goal now than earlier in the season and those shots will, eventually, find their way in.

Sunday was time for our two rescheduled games and due to some rain it was a muddy, sloppy mess. DS#1's game was canceled, but DS#2 was able to get both of his games in (as I said above, we really had to). Our first game was against the top team in the division that has yet to win a game by less than 5 goals. Basically, that team should be a division up, but this happens fairly often. They beat us pretty handily, with a little bit of luck on a few goals, but we were able to score against them-we are one of only two teams to score against them. In fact, we had a number of opportunities to score and just couldn't.

Our second game was on a completely different side of town several hours later. Field conditions there were even worse than the field we played on earlier. I could ALMOST say it was the worst field I have ever had kids play on, but, it didn't quite make worst. We controlled the ball pretty well in the second game, but clearly didn't have the energy we needed. Several opportunities to score simply went wide, or were stopped by the mud. The picture above was taken after that game while DS#2 was trying to clean some of the mud off of himself.

I know that DS#2 is a bit disappointed with his team right now, and I feel for him. At the same time, his play has improved tremendously, and his team as a whole has improved. We have a tournament in a few weeks and with several weeks of practice before it, I think that they boys should do well in the tournament and, hopefully, go into the winter break feeling good about themselves.

Next weekend DS#1 has a game scheduled Sunday, and probably a make-up for yesterday's canceled game. DD has a "4v4 Funfest" Saturday morning, and, so far, that is about it. This means that several more things will clearly have to be scheduled, otherwise we might actually be able to rest.