Andi's first soccer season

Last March, Andi started her first soccer season. It was a hoot, with several VERY memorable moments! Here she is at her first practice with her pink soccer clothes, pink shin gurads, pink soccer ball & cleats with pink butterflies on them. She was more concerned the first practice with finding out who else had on pink shin guards...and if they didn't how come?Me & my girl at one of her games. I LOVED my bling bling soccer Mom shirt!

She turned out to be a very intense little player. I love this shot of her busting through the crowd to try to get the ball. She wanted that ball BAD!

Even when she got knocked down, she was determined to get that ball.

She started a new soccer method. If they are faster than you, just start hollering 'WAIT for me!'

Here she is scoring her FIRST goal!

And, giving me her embarrassed face right after her goal.

Of course, if your entire team wants to walk off the field to play in the ditch that's okay.

Or if you get tired, crawling around like a kitty works nice.

When playing goalie, some good ideas are: playing peek-a-boo inside your shirt, singing & dancing OR just making sure your belly button is still there.

Doing the team cheer, even when you are supposed to be playing, is always a good idea 'GO CROCODILES!'

And, trying to score a goal or two at some point is always a plus.

Of course, the kids favorite part is really the end of the game where they get to run through the tunnell & EAT SNACKS!

Here she is making a good stop as goalie

I love that we got this on video. This was her signature move, that we called the 'Reverse Jump'. So funny. When you want to make the ball go the other way, you just do this flying dance leap over the ball and then you dribble it the other direction.


This video shows off a little of her red-headedness! 'That's MY ball!'

I do have to tell the story about her most memorable soccer moment this season. Keep in mind, she is a fiery red-head. Well, one game there was a little boy on the opposing team who kept verbally taunting her. He was resilient. He kept at it & kept at it. He could tell he was really getting under her skin so he kept on doing it, saying things like 'you guys are going to loose, you are never going to get the ball, I am faster than all of you & we are going to score MORE goals!' Anyway, you get the point. Andi managed to get through the entire first half without attacking Mr. Trashtalker, but during the second half she had had ENOUGH. She was dribbling down the field (all the while Mr. Trashtalker is yelling things), and she just stopped dead in her tracks. She left the ball right where it was & marched straight across over to Mr. Trashtalker and just shoved him as hard as she could in the chest. She totally flattened him to the ground. The funny part was Dawson's reaction to the whole event. As soon as she started walking toward Mr. Trashtalker, Dawson hid behind my back & kept saying over & over 'Oh, I can't watch...I can't watch...' Apparently he is well aware of what she is capable of when pushed over the edge. The opposing coach stomped over to Andi & yelled 'WHOSE DAUGHTER IS THIS?' I still very proudly claimed her. :-) Team work & good sportmanship are hard traits to learn & we are still working on them. I have high hopes for next season. Well, at least I hope we don't do any more shoving that is.

Meet my girls...

These are 'my' crazy 6th grader girls. I am their small group leader on Wednesday nights at church, and they had been bugging me like crazy to have a sleepover at my house. So, here are the highlights of our evening. This first picture, they are in my bathroom making water balloons to ambush Billy with later that night when we wrapped his house. :-)

Here we are doing Michael Jackson's Thriller on the Wii. I am always up for making a fool of myself.

Here is the awesome house wrapping crew. At the first of the year, I had them fill out a 'get to know you' sheet, and every single one of them said on the form that they wanted to wrap a house because they had never done it before. How fun that I got to take them on their first wrapping experience...it turned out to be extremely eventful!

Here they are with the finished product: Billy & Alicia's house. We papered it, forked the yard, shaving creamed their driveway & pegged Billy with water balloons. You see, Billy knew they were coming so he made the mistake of telling me he was going to ambush them with water balloons. Well, since my loyalties lie with my girlies, I told them about his plan & we were completely prepared for an all out water balloon war! Fun times.

Right after this picture, two police cars round the corner, pin us in their headlights & say over the speaker 'STAY WHERE YOU ARE WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!!!'. So, not only did I get to take the girls on their first wrapping experience, I also got to help them get busted by the cops for the first time. They were so cute because they were absolutely terrified. I explained the situation to the cops & then Billy had to come out and verify that my story was true. Talk about a memorable evening. I don't think the girls slept much at all that night with so much adrenaline pumping. I took all of them to church the next morning & the rumors of their criminal record was already spreading like wildfire.

The Flu really stinks

I have made it up to last February on my blog now, which means I get to blog about our lovely flu experience. This picture of my poor baby girl was taken at the doctor's office when she was getting tested for the flu...obviously, it came back positive. Poor thing looks so pathetic! She pretty much layed on the couch for 4 days straight. We tried her on tamiflu & she had a severe vomiting reaction to it. We decided to quit taking it & just ride out the sickness. 3 days into her round of flu, I started showing symptoms...so off to the doctor I go to get tested. Yup, positive as well. I ran 103.7 fever for 14 days straight, and that was with tylenol every 4 hours. On the 14th day of flu torture, my doctor told me that if my fever didn't break overnight I should just go straight to the emergency room the next morning. Luckily, I woke up the next morning fever FREE! I am sure you are curious...had we gotten flu shots? Nope. Will we get flu shots every year from now on? Probably. The weird thing was that Andi & I had two different types of flu. The type she had could have been prevented from the vaccine, but the type I had would not have been. How did that happen??? All I know is that I DO NOT ever want to be that sick for that long again, so I will be getting a flu shot each year to help my chances.

The Challenger Explosion

As you all know, my sweet boy is extremely sensitive. Here is another sweet/ sad story that also occurred from him learning about space at school.

One day he got off the bus & I immediately knew something was wrong. He just looked sad. I waited until we were inside the house before I asked him what was wrong. Fighting back tears, he said 'Mom...did you know that one time a space shuttle was going into space & it BLEW UP? There was even a teacher on there & she died too! They ALL DIED!' Then he really began to cry. My sweet boy is just so sensitive. I was so frustrated that he had been taught about this in kindergarten! Come to find out, I later learned from his teacher that while she was reading them a story about the space program, one little boy raised his hand & said very nonchalantly (trying to impress the other boys) 'Did you know that a long time ago a space shuttle BLEW UP???? Yeah...it really BLEW UP and everyone died...even a TEACHER!' So, Dawson's teacher had to tell the story, but she tried to add the emotion & respect to her version, that had obviously been missing when the little boy told it. Either way, Dawson had nightmares for weeks. But this is how our first evening went: Derek was out of town, so I had to help Dawson with this by myself. He of course asked me TONS of questions. If you have never been around Dawson, you have NO IDEA how persistent he is. I mean, he does not give up until he has all the answers he wants. So, for hours...and I literally mean hours, he asked every question imaginable. Things like 'How old was the teacher? Did she have blonde hair? Was she married? Did she have kids? What were all the astronauts names? Did they have kids? Why did the space shuttle blow up? Where did the fire start? Were they in space by the moon?' You get the point. Hours. of. questions. Then he got stuck on wanting to know exactly how the astronauts died. He could picture the shuttle exploding, but not the people. He said 'But Mom, how did they die? If the shuttle exploded, then did the astronauts just fall from the sky & no one caught them and that's how they died?' WARNING...here comes some of my bad parenting. I knelt down in front of him, held him by his shoulders, looked him right in the face and said 'Sweetheart, I will pay you $5 if you can just completely forget about this. But, you have to totally forget about it...and you can't ask anymore questions until you are like 8 years old or something.' Like I said, not one of my finer parenting moments, but I was desperate. He contemplated the bargain for a minute & then said 'No Mom, I really want to know how they died.' I took a deep breath & said 'Well baby, the ENTIRE shuttle exploded...and everything that was inside of it exploded.' His eyes were huge for several seconds while he processed what I said, then he screamed 'SO THEIR HEADS GOT CUT OFF?????' Oh boy, why oh why didn't he take the money? Or should I have just lied to him? Parenting is so hard. Especially when you have very sensitive little ones. He was upset off & on all evening. I knew we would be in for a rough night, so I was not surprised when he started screaming for me about 3am. I layed down in bed beside him & he said 'Mom, remember when I was 3 years old and I said that I wanted us to go into outer space on a Spiderman rocket ship? Well, I changed my mind. I think we should just stay here, okay?' And, this is why he is only allowed to watch Disney movies until he graduates High School.

3, 2, 1...Blast off!

After Christmas, Dawson's kindergarten class had a 3 week segment on outer space. Dawson LOVED it! He still has some of his space artwork displayed in his room. The left picture is the super cute planet model he made that is still hanging in his room, and the right picture is the cover of the adorable planet book he made. He would even came home from school each day with facts about space & planets that Derek & I didn't know!

Up until Dawson learned about space & planets at school, he thought God lived in Heaven right above the clouds...and that was it. So, learning how HUGE outer space is & learning about all the other planets totally blew him away. I mean, it really rocked his little world. Here is a sweet/sad story that came from his new 'outer space' knowledge.

Dawson became obsessed with asking me one question: 'Mom, where exactly is Heaven?' I would always tell him, that I wasn't sure, that no one knows exactly where it is. But, he kept asking me over & over anyway. 'Mom, do you think Heaven is in the clouds? Or do you think its closer to another planet? Do you think Heaven is on Saturn's rings? Do you think Heaven is where the most stars are?' This type of questioning went on for weeks. One day, while bombarding me with Heaven questions, he finally asked angrily 'Do you think heaven is ALL THE WAY PAST PLUTO????' I looked over at him, and found him trying his hardest not to cry. I scooped him up & asked him why he was so worried about where Heaven was. That is when my sweet little boy began to sob, and he finally sobbed out an answer: 'I just don't understand why God has to be so far away.' I should have known that this was why he kept questioning me. I then realized that I had never really explained the Trinity with him. So, I explained it. I explained how God was three persons. I told him how God lived in Heaven & sent his son Jesus to earth to die on the cross for us. That Jesus rose from the dead and went back to Heaven. I explained how God sent the Holy Spirit to live with us on Earth. I said 'So, he isn't far away at all. He is always right here with us. And...do you know where he lives? He lives right inside our heart.' There were no more tears that day, just one totally amazed wide-eyed little boy who whispered 'Wow...that's amazing.'