Soccer Ball, Soccer Fall

I could also have titled this post, "Suckers for Soccer."  It sure has taken over our lives for the last 9 weeks!

But it has afforded Papa Rooster many opportunities to practice capturing action shots, and he's become so good at it, it's tough to choose just a few.  Especially with four kids playing this year!

(You can click to enlarge any of these great shots.)

Since B16 isn't attending a brick-and-mortar school this year, he joined the recreational league to keep up his skilz.  He's managing to hold his own playing with varsity girls who are there for the same reason, since their season is in the spring.

BOOM!!  This solid kick was one of 5 goals he made in this game.  

B12's team moved up to the biggest field this year, so he spends a lot of time running.

The tongue spends a lot of time out of the mouth, too.

  Here he gets a foot on the ball.  Isn't his body at a beautiful angle?

This is Chicklet's first time playing competitively, and she is determined!

She also has the tongue thing goin' on. 

She also has kind of a ballerina thing goin' on with her arms...

And it's workin' for her!

B6 is in his element on the soccer field.

Such energy!  

They've been working on passing. B6 used to be something of a ball hog, but he's really getting it. Today he was proud to tell me about a team-mate who made his first goal today because B6 passed it to him and gave him a chance.

He loves to use his body.

He also has the tongue thing going on.  

I don't have a pic of B16 to post as an example, but trust me, it's a family trait!

Who is the foolish-looking woman in the background?  That would be me.

  (I just can't stop chuckling over this incredibly flattering photo!)

GOAL!!

Nothin' but net.  And yes, that was my boy who kicked it in.

But he's just as exuberant when it's his team-mate who gets the goal.

I could do a whole post on the many faces of B6.

But maybe I'll just save those photos for next Saturday, our last day of games.  

Yes, I am counting down the days!

The Back-to-School-and-Soccer Blur

It happens every year--the back-to-school blur of scheduling.  It's like putting a puzzle together.  How can I fit all the pieces together?  And my other driver just left for college!  What if Papa Rooster is traveling with his job?

At least B16 is taking his road test in about 4 weeks.  That introduces a whole new set of variables--and costs!  (Car insurance on a teenage male?  Astronomical!!)  But at least we'll have more options for fitting it all together.

I guess scheduling is on my mind because I just got a new planner.  Here's my life.

Mondays:

B16 and 12 have one virtual classroom session each.  I will plan to go to yoga this morning.

We need to have everything ready to leave for B12's and C9's piano lessons, then B12's soccer practice--the minute B6 and C9 get off the bus.  I may end up having to pick them up at school on Mondays, and B12 will probably be late to soccer every week.  But it was the one, best chance at squeezing in piano lessons!  Don't know what C9 and I will do after we drop off B12; we'll either return home for an hour, or do errands until we pick him up.

Tuesdays:

Guitar lesson first thing.  Three virtual lectures for the boys.  Late afternoon, I teach my Drama 1 class; then, for the next three weeks, Papa Rooster, B16 and I are going to choir practice!  We were invited to join a choral arts group for one performance of this incredible gospel mass.

Meanwhile C9 has soccer practice.  If the other soccer family can't bring her home, she'll have to miss it.  At least her team has two scheduled practices a week.

Meanwhile, B16 also has soccer practice.  If Papa Rooster is out of town, I don't know how we'll get him either to practice or to choir rehearsal.  But PR probably will avoid scheduling travel on Tuesdays.  He won't want to miss a rehearsal--that first tenor part is challenging!--and it's a lot of music left to learn in just three more weeks.

Wednesdays:

Three virtual sessions for the Bantams, and then B16's voice lesson mid-afternoon.  Then two soccer practices, staggered, fortunately, so I can drop off one, then the other, pick up one, then the other.  I'll save my errands to kill time in between.

(Still thinking about adding AWANA to this night--it's such a great program--maybe after soccer is over, if we can still join late.)

Thursdays:

Three more online sessions, two more soccer practices.  One is for B16, who is helping a friend coach her son's team, so she provides his ride both ways.  Phew!  I will drive the carpool both ways to C9's practice, in return for them driving her on Tuesdays.  Maybe Papa R and I can do Date Night during her practice?  We'll have an hour and a half, if he's in town.

Fridays:

Nothing!!  How did that happen?  This will be the one weeknight, until soccer is over, that we could actually all sit down together for dinner AT dinnertime.  Better make meal prep a priority on Fridays.

And it looks like time to pull out the crockpot and soup recipes for the other nights; all those soccer practices are between 5 and 7:30.  With C9 and B6's bus arriving after 4 and their bedtime at 8:00, it's going to be tough to get in homework and piano practice, let alone dinner.  I am grateful for B20, who is always home, so at least he can supervise if I'm not there.  That's one silver lining of him not having a job yet.

Weekends:

Looks like we have four soccer games every Saturday for the next six weeks, with a few scattered games on Sunday afternoons as well.  The Saturday games begin as early as 9 and will usually end at 4:30.  So it's the whole day.

I confess I don't plan on watching every game!  Papa R and I will have to divide and conquer anyway, because sometimes we'll have kids playing at the same time.

And once the weather turns colder, I am a wimp.  I far prefer having theater rehearsals on Saturday mornings, when I can drop the kids off and go enjoy my quiet morning at Panera--indoors, with a hot cup of coffee, and no guilt about missing anything.  When it's performance time, I can be right in there with the kids, being creative with my makeup responsibilities and watching my kids perform...in the comfort of a cozy, cushy theater!  Even if I commit to helping out during rehearsals, I'm with friends.  It's hard to make friends with other parents on the soccer team when we are all trying not to miss our child's one goal or great assist.  Too often I've missed those moments because I've been chatting...and then I ask myself why I've been shivering out here in a lawn chair for the last hour!  So now I'm a quiet soccer mom, except to yell encouragement at the kids whose names I know, but the time does go slower then.

Papa R took lots of great soccer photos last weekend.  I should post some soon.

I should also take a shower.  While I have the chance!

B5 the Soccer Engine

It's been a new thing for this theater mom to enter the soccer world.

It's c-c-c-colllllder, for one thing; it seems no matter how appropriately I think I am dressed when I leave home, by the time I've sat for 10 minutes at the soccer field, the wind has whipped its way through my clothing, finding all the cracks in my fragile armor.  Give me cushy indoor auditorium seating any day.

There's less to do, too.  I guess I could take a turn selling refreshments sometime, but other than that, you can watch the game, or you can watch the game and yell helpful things while you watch.  But you'll be one of the only parents taking the latter option, so you'll feel a little silly, especially if you don't know what you're saying.

Because there's all this vocabulary to learn, like "header," "punt," "off-sides" and "yellow card"--all the official lingo.  There are the coaching strategy terms that I have no idea when to use, like "up the middle,""pass" and "turn it." And we have colorful, descriptive terms used to compliment a player:  "I'm telling you, that guy has got a foot" means "He can really kick."  "That kid has wheels" means "That player can really run."  I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

So one Saturday morning at one of Bantam5's games, I enjoyed talking to one of the other parents with a son on the same team, who happens to be B11's coach. He told me B11 has wheels, and a foot, and he just needs to play more soccer to pull it all together.  Then I told him B5 was my son too, and he said, "Oh, you're B5's mom? Man, that kid...that kid has an ENGINE!"

That is about the best description of B5 that anyone has come up with. On or off the soccer field, that kid has so much energy.  It's focused energy.  He's not bouncing off the walls. He's not hyperactive. But he's as full of beans as they come.

And on the soccer field, he's a joy to watch.  He loves to run so much that he can hardly stand to stop play. He'll hop in place, in a little skip of joy, while waiting on a throw-in.  If the coach tells them to spread out, he'll run to the far side of the field.

It's a little field.  In fact, he came home from his first practice delighted to be playing, but concerned about one thing:  "There was something wrong with the field, Mom.  It was TINY!" He wants to run and run like the big boys do, but instead, they play on about a 1/8 size field.  They play four-on-four with no goalie, and nobody really keeps score but we all cheer when a goal is scored, about every four minutes. Compared to the big kid, low-score games, it's much more fun to watch these little guys traveling around in a pack near the ball, with the coaches on the field with them, shouting encouragements like, "Remember our goal is over THERE!"

By the end of his first game, B5 had found his groove.  His eyes hardly left the ball.  When all the bodies clustered 'round, he'd be the one to get a foot on that ball and send it in the right direction. A few more games, and he was analyzing his own goals: "I saw some kids on that side, and some more kids on the other side, and I saw a hole in between, so I kicked it right through that hole and into the goal." He has a foot, and wheels, and something rare among the five-year-olds:  he has focus.

And energy to spare. Anybody need an engine?

As Promised...Pictures!

I can't believe that I just figured this out.

Papa Rooster takes some pretty amazing pictures--and lots of them--more than I can keep up with--and he's gotten pretty good at posting the best on Facebook for our friends and family.  And I only just realized that I can grab a photo from his Facebook album, stick it on my desktop, and upload it to my blog--all by myself!  Without needing him to convert it from a RAW image in Lightroom to a .JPG which he must upload for me, because Lightroom doesn't like me. (A feeling which is mutual.)  He says the image quality won't be as good.  But I think only the techie photographer types will be able to tell, and the rest of us, we'll have pictures!  Yeah, baby.

Okay, let's commence with the pics!

I believe I mentioned homecoming?  Here is Bantam15 with his lovely date.

The dress was casual--can you tell?

Here's Blondechick with her special friend, the same one she went to the spring formal with. He graduated last year, but he's still around, living at home and taking classes at a local college. We like him a lot.  So does she!


And here she is with 17 other friends, in our back yard--all senior girls.  I posted this partly just to show off the background!  It's the view I am blessed with every day, and I am thankful for it.

I know I mentioned an ordination.

This is part of a wonderful family that we've loved for a long time now; Father R--'s wife there is one of my dearest friends. When I met her, she was pregnant with the daughter on the far left...and I delivered Blondechick17 just three months later.  Those girls have grown up together, just as the other daughter (second from left) is one of Bantam15's closest friends.  Those two girls are their youngest children; their middle child, another daughter, is getting married next summer and Papa Rooster will be performing the ceremony.  That is their oldest son, with his wife and child, on the right, and their second-oldest is also a son. They have always been the kind of friends we can completely let our hair down with.  We have spent countless hours laughing, crying and praying together.

Here are all the clergy who attended.  Most of these men are also friends from waaay back.  We are a little grayer, a little more wrinkled than when we first enthusiastically began doing ministry together in our twenties and thirties!  But these men, representing five Anglican churches, are still enthused and energetically full of the joy of the Lord.

I think I mentioned soccer?

That's my boy, #23, on the JV team of the Christian school he attends.

And here's Bantam11 on the area soccer league team.

He hasn't been playing as long as most of the other kids who have grown up in the league, but he's learning fast, and he can run! Always a plus.

I am totally saving the best action shots of Bantam5 for another post.

But aren't these too unbelievably cute?  Just like the big boys.

But with cool sunglasses.

Soccer Season

Auditions for Schoolhouse Rock were last Friday night...and we weren't there.  It would have been Chicklet's first show too.

Instead, we are playing soccer!  Bantam15 has been playing with the Christian school's JV team since before school started, and he's doing well for a kid who hasn't played in years.  He's had a couple of notable firsts:  He made the first JV goal of the season, and while playing in a varsity game for just a few minutes, he got the first yellow card of the season.

Now, you may wonder what that means...and so did my boy.  He had been running after another player who had the ball, when that player stopped suddenly with the ball.  B15 couldn't stop, plowed into him and knocked him down.  He heard the whistle and saw the yellow card, so he went over to the ref and tried to take it.  The ref stared him down and made it clear that it was HIS yellow card and he would keep it, thank you very much.  Meanwhile B15's coach and all his teammates were falling off the bench in laughter.  Then play resumed, and one of the other players had to tell B15 that he needed to get off the field, he wasn't allowed to play for a time--that's what a yellow card means.

The next day, for a joke, the coach gave him his very own yellow card, that he can keep!

He's the blondest member of the family, we like to tease him.

Bantam11 kept asking me if there was somewhere he could play soccer too.  I had just begun looking into it, when a friend called and invited him to play on the same team!  And that was that.  Then B5 said he really wanted to play soccer, and his friend wanted to play too, so his mom and I signed them up on a team together.  They missed the first game, but they were given their uniforms, and now B5 wants to wear his all the time.  He even wants to put on his shinguards and hand-me-down cleats (from B11's days on a 5-year-old team), though it takes him forever.  But he looks unbelievably cute in his red-and-black, oversized official attire.

Chicklet8 said she was fine with not playing.  I'm not sure why, since she loved the soccer camp back in June.  But I didn't press, since I really didn't want to add a third night of practice a week, and a third game time, and another fee, if she wasn't that eager.

So for a season, I guess I'm a soccer mom!