Taking one for the team

Today at Monkey's soccer game he got the opportunity to play goalie. This is not a position that he's ever played before and being the competitive, perfectionist that he is, I was a bit nervous about his abilities to maintain his composure if the ball was able to get past him. A few balls got past him and he seemed to be just fine, getting right back into the game and paying attention which is difficult for most 7 year olds, Monkey being no exception.

The Ian from the other team (we really thought we were picking an unpopular name) who proved to be a good soccer player did what I've seen our Ian do only once, he drilled the ball towards the net with all his might. Our Ian being focused as the goalie attempted to block the ball, unfortunately his face stopped the ball before his hands did. I got that feeling that every mother whose watched their child get hurt gets...that awful sinking in the pit of my stomach as I heard the ball hit his face and watched his head recoil from the impact. Both coaches and I ran over to him. I must say I was proud that the rules of the league were running through my mind at the time and telling me to let the coaches handle it. With every fiber of my being, I stood nearby but did not go to him. I gave him the thumbs up with a big pretend smile on my face when he was able to pull his buried head from the coaches abdomen. Meanwhile, I was choking back the tears thinking that if he saw me crying he'd completely lose it. He wiped his tears after a minute or two and continued to play for the rest of the game. Luckily his tenure has goalie lasted only until the end of that quarter...phew.

I did notice that during the rest of the game, his hands seemed to involuntarily fly up to his face any time he got anywhere near the ball, even if he was kicking it. After watching that and looking at him playing on the field afterwards, I said to Dan and I swear this to be true, "He looks older".

Tea Party

This morning the CHF invited me to a tea party at her house. She was in her "Souka" character. Generally she invents her own names but this name in particular also belongs to the large finned star at 6 Flags Discovery Kingdome (Formerly known as Marine World or Marine World Africa USA depending on how far you go back with the history of that particular amusement park). So she called me on her pretend-0-phone and invited me over. She told me she set up the tea party already and that her mom, Tancine said it would be fine if I came over. I asked what her Dad's name was and she said Vishkwishy (pronounced Fish Squishy) and that he was little bit fat.
When I asked her what kind of tea she was serving she indicated that Blueberry was the flavor of the day. After I delished on it some, I told her it was the best tea I'd ever had. She told me she added a bit of hot cocoa. So I was thinking that it was interesting that she would add chocolate to blueberry and thought she was brilliant. She then went on to tell me that she'd also added raw eggs but that I wouldn't get sick.

Mom, I know you're going to think about and bring up the cinnamon meatloaf I made one time and how weird it tasted but at least you can take comfort in the fact that I cooked the food thoroughly and no one got sick.

The CHF will not be cooking for the family any time soon....

2 genes

Even though she looks nothing like me, I caught her reading one of my favorite books.

Or, it could be that she thought the Darwin award was a worthwhile pursuit seeing one of her favorite phrases is "I won". She doesn't care that no one else is racing, she just loves the feeling of getting her there first. I'm glad to see I passed on at least 2 genes.

Jasper heard that I posted Hanna's picture on this site and was feeling a bit miffed, so in order to be fair to both canine members of the family, here's a picture of one of the sweetest, most needy dogs in the world. He's the creature on the right.

What a week

The week started off great with the celebration of the CHF's 4th birthday. We had 16 kids, who knows how many adults, a waterslide, pizza, cake and ice cream and then everyone had junk food toxicity so I sent them all home. Of course I had to deal with Monkey and CHF but they did fairly well afterwards so it was o.k.

Ian took away my leverage and wanted to get his hair cut because it's been >100F and he's determined that it's too hot to have long hair. So now, he's got the threat that if he gets any behavioral notices at school, he gets all Titanic paraphernalia removed from his room, including his Legos because he uses those to build the ship. You can enjoy his singing below

We also had a remarkable event in the backyard a few days ago. Who knew that an almost 11 year old dog could still catch a squirrel. We suspect that she felt bad after she killed it because she laid down next to it and licked it's face over and over again. Dan said she's conflicted because she's still got instincts but she's domesticated. We let her carry it around and be proud for about 2 minutes and then Dan got out the shovel and disposed of it. Thank God today was garbage day!