The Weekend is Over!

I made it, I survived. It was an extremely long weekend but now the best thing is it's over. When Zach takes a nap today, I'm taking one too!

Saturday
Lauren's team played at 8:30, 11:00 and 5:15. She had to be at the field by 7:45 so that was the first of the early mornings. We had originally planned to all go as a family and stay for the first 2 games and come home between the 2nd and 3rd games. But that all changed when Paul got up sick very early (1:00 am!) Saturday morning. He had some kind of stomach bug I guess, it didn't last long but no way was he going to be able to go spend a day at a soccer field! So after being awake from 1:00 on I took Lauren to her games by myself.

The first game was excellent, the girls played great and had probably a dozen scoring chances. The problem was the goalie from the other team was just so darned good. It was amazing some of the saves she made. So that game ended with a score of 0-0. Okay, a tie, better than losing right?

The 11:00 game was also a good game to watch, lots of excitement, the girls were playing great. They were playing a really good team from New Jersey and at the half they were tied 3-3. Unfortunately with 5 minutes to go in the game the other team scored not once, but twice to end with a 3-5 score, a loss for Lauren's team. Still everyone was okay with that since the other team was a much better team and Lauren's team didn't do that bad.

Here are a few of the pictures from the second game:

Lauren's teammate staying out of the way of a ball she kicked.

We had a nice break between the 2nd and 3rd games, almost too long. I once again headed back to the field and this time she was on the turf field. They won that game with a score of 5-1, another good game to watch.

The weather that day started out raining but it stopped before her first game. Very dreary looking all day though and lots of mud everywhere. I think we did luck out though with the weather, it could have been worse, it could have been like Sunday...

Sunday

It poured overnight so now it was even more muddy than before plus there was a drizzle/mist most of the morning. I saw a couple of showers off and on but it didn't bother us since we were under a pavilion. I wouldn't have wanted to play in that though, nor be a spectator. It did eventually warm up and get sunny though.

Today was our day to do our volunteering. In this tournament the girls played on Saturday and the boys played on Sunday. So basically the boys teams cover the girls day and the girls take over everything on the boys day. Lauren and I were scheduled to work the concession stand at the field closest to our house from 7:00 - 2:00. We got there right at 7:00, helped set up and then watched as everyone began arriving. Lauren was given the job of pouring the coffee and hot chocolate so she was quite busy first thing in the morning. I didn't do much until the grill got started around 10:00, my job was to take the hamburgers and hot dogs off the grill, wrap them, and then hand them off. I will tell you that from 10:30 to about 1:30 the time flew! Since they were so busy I decided that at 2:00 I would take Lauren and a couple of her friends back to the house to get changed for the game and then come back to help out some more. The girls then were carpooled to the game, I stayed and helped till the end and was home by 5:00.

I told Lauren to call me when her game ended and guess what? She scored the first goal of the game! She hasn't scored in years, of course it's hard to score if you're on defense most of the time. They've just recently begun putting her back to being a forward. (She used to play forward years ago.)She got the goal after another one of her teammates took a shot and it hit the crossbar, Lauren got the rebound. They ended up winning 2-0 against a team of 16-year-olds. They're playing up this year, in the senior division.

So that was a good ending to the day and great start to the season. Hope they keep up the winning streak!

Spring is Here!

Well at least inside my house after the kids made spring decorations for me today. Outside it's still kind of cold, maybe next week the spring weather will be here.

The girls have off from school today so I put them to work making art projects. We made project after project after project. Even as I type this Megan is still in there fooling with the craft stuff. We started out finger painting paper eggs. Megan and Kristin were all into it and then there was Zach just staring at his egg with the paint on it, his hands under the table. He wanted no part of putting his hands in the paint. Kristin showed him how to do it but he kept saying "no." I had to go get him a paintbrush to get him to do anything!

Here Kristin is showing him what to do, do you notice that his hands are nowhere near?

Once I gave him a paintbrush he was all into it, his two eggs are the ones to the right.
I was getting a little adventurous with the next project. After not wanting to touch the paint I was expecting him to not like this one either but he surprised me and loved it. I painted his hand with red paint then his forearm with green to make a flower print on paper. He just laughed as I painted him. His "flowers" are the ones on the bottom. Kristin's is on top and Megan's is in the middle. They painted their hands/arms by themselves, I just had to help Zach.

We did another hand print project that we turned into sheep. Megan made one first then wanted to help Zach do his. I didn't have to worry about glue everywhere since Megan wouldn't let him have the bottle! Probably a good thing. He did fluff the cotton balls before placing them on his sheep. He even put his googly eyes on by himself.
The finished sheep. It's a little obvious that Megan's is on the left (the bigger one) and Zach's is on the right.
I was really into hand prints today, here's another project we did. Easter lilies, it's a hand print rolled into a cone and then you curl the fingers down. Once I traced his hand I pretty much did Zach's for him. Megan did her own. Here's our combined flowers in a vase.
Megan did another project that I didn't take a picture of. It's an egg tree. She drew a tree trunk out of brown paper then decorated small paper eggs that she glued to the branches. It's cute.

Then the last thing she's working on are paper flowers glued to a popsicle stick and she's going to put faces in the middle of the flower when she's done. Here she is working on that.
So I got quite a few spring decorations now and at least Megan was occupied all morning.

Pajama Day
As a fundraiser for the PTA Kristin and Megan's school had pajama day yesterday. Anyone that wanted to pay $1 could wear their pajamas to school. I hate when the school does that, I'm not a big fan of "pajama day". Now bring back "wacky hair day," that one's fun.

Megan posing in the car. It was a rainy day so I drove them to the bus stop. Don't want their pajamas getting all soaked. :)


Soccer Stuff
There's a big soccer tournament this weekend that Lauren's in. She gets to play on Saturday and then volunteer all day Sunday (and so do I, volunteer that is, not play). Her age group (both the boys and the girls teams) get to run it this year but at least after doing all that work they get a share of the money from it. This is supposedly the "travel year" for them. So the money we get will help pay for her team to travel somewhere with probably everything paid for. That part will be nice. This is just going to be a long weekend for us. I've never wished a weekend to go by quickly before but I'm hoping Monday gets here soon!

Enjoying the beautiful day

A taste of spring today! We just had to get outside for awhile and enjoy it. Zach has been wanting to ride his tricycle that was given to him but it's just been too cold to stay out long. So today he spent plenty of time on that bike. Here he is sporting his new "Cars" helmet he got for Christmas. No more hand-me down ladybug helmet for the big man.
He's not very good at pedalling yet so we'll have to work on that. Megan and I tried to help him out the best we could. He didn't put much effort into it though, I think he liked being pushed.

Megan loves riding her bike. She goes so fast I had to get a picture of her just starting off. She's spent alot of time the past few weeks out riding her bike. It's the first thing she asks to do after school once her homework's done.

I dug out all the Easter stuff today, you know, decorations, the kids baskets, all those plastic eggs that keep multiplying every year. So on the day after St. Patrick's Day we had our first egg hunt. By the time all the local egg hunts happen Zach should be pretty good at it by then.

Hope this spring weather is here to stay!

And the winner is...

...Kristin! She came home from school yesterday wearing her medal from Odyssey of the Mind. She was very proud (as she should be!) so I had to post a picture.

A lot of hard work went into getting that medal. At the awards ceremony we had all pitched in to get her coach a gift card to a local restaurant and presented it to her. Today Kristin came home with a thank you note that was from her Odyssey coach. Her coach had mentioned several times over the course of the practices how much the kids loved using duct tape. They used it for everything! Well the thank you note was made from strips of duct tape and she wrote on it with a sharpie marker. Too funny! I'm hoping she coaches again next year, she's great at it.

Play Zone fun
We went to Play Zone today like we usually do on Tuesdays and Zach was the only one there. He had the whole place to himself and he didn't know what to do. To be quite honest I think he was a little bored, he's used to chasing someone around. His friends Annie and G that usually come were sick, I think Zach missed them!

I remembered to bring my camera today, figures it was just him. He's always loved this mirror. He used to be able to stand there with plenty of room, now he has to bend over to keep from hitting his head.
We have to enjoy our Play Zone days since they're coming to an end soon. Play Zone is located in a local church and the church is being renovated so Play Zone will be closing after this month. Not sure how long it's going to take, hopefully only a couple of months.

Kum Ba Yah

The children were scheduled to sing this past Sunday and wouldn't you know that Kristin woke up sick that morning. She had a fever and felt sick to her stomach so she stayed home while I took Megan to church. There were only 4 kids singing but Megan sang really loud, you can hear her singing on the video.

Whatever Kristin had it only lasted one day, she woke up fine Monday morning which was a good thing, I could send her to school! One of these days she's going to be playing her clarinet for one of the songs, she's practicing and is getting better but she still has a little ways to go before playing publicly.

Odyssey of the Mind

Megan and Kristin both participated in the Odyssey of the Mind competition that was held at the University of Delaware today. If you don't know what Odyssey of the Mind is you'd better look it up since I'm not sure I can explain it right. :) I'll try my best though. The kids are on teams with a coach and they have to choose a problem (there's 5 to choose from) and interpret and perform it. They formed their teams shortly after Thanksgiving and have been meeting and planning since then. My two girls were on separate teams so they really kept me busy getting them to their meetings and picking them up. The last 2 to 3 weeks have been especially busy since they were trying to finalize everything.

Anyway, back to the whole idea of today. The kids on the team have to do everything themselves, from writing the script to designing the scenery to making their costumes. And I mean EVERYTHING, there is to be no "outside assistance" from anyone, they only have their coach for guidance, even she can't tell them what they should do. We as parents couldn't even comment when we saw their props, it is so hard not to say, "wow, that looks really good" or "what are you going to do with that empty spot over there?" We had to keep our mouths shut! Very hard for me to do.

So Megan's team was the first to perform today. Their problem was, "The Lost Labor of Heracles" and they were to reenact one of the 12 labors as well as make up a Lost Labor that was forgotten in history. There's more to it but that's the gist of it. Here's my gal waiting with her team to go on.

Another thing they had to do themselves was to move and set up the scenery. Here's a little blurb of them moving everything on stage. Megan's in the pink pajama top.

Here's just a portion of their play, I only included the beginning because that was where Megan said most of her lines and the very end. I'm sorry, you won't get to see the main part of the play, it was really neat but too long to put on here.

Here's Megan's team after their performance. What a great group of girls.
Then it was Kristin's teams turn. Her team chose to do "Teach Yer Creature" as their problem. This was to be a humorous performance about a mechanical creature that learns lessons, one that is purposely taught to it and one that it accidentally learns.

Here's my Kristin helping move the props from the storage area to the staging area. She is a doctor's assistant in her skit.

We could help them get everything to the staging area but then it was hands off for us parents, the kids had to take it from there. So here's Kristin helping to set up the props. Her team didn't have nearly as many as Megan's team.

I only included the set-up videos because I was really impressed with what the kids did. I'm sure it's not as impressive on these short little clips but them having to do everything themselves and learning to problem solve on the spot when something fell down was neat to see.

Then of course here's part of her play. I put two clips together, one where Kristin is acting and the other, well just watch and see.

In case you didn't catch it the polar bear accidentally learns to fart. Yes, I said fart. The kids had a fart machine inside the polar bear and one of them is holding the remote. The things kids come up with! It was pretty funny and they got a lot of laughs from the judges. Afterwards the kids said that the judges wanted to hear it again! Oh, speaking of judges, they all wear funny hats, not sure exactly why, but that's what you see in the videos. It's a cute idea but not for all the parents with their video cameras!

Here they are after performing.
I won't go into it but not only do they do their "Long Term problem" each team has to do "Spontaneous." Parents cannot watch Spontaneous though, we're not even allowed in the building. The scores from both events are what's used to determine the winners in each category.

Which now brings me to the awards ceremony. Even though Megan's team did an awesome job they didn't place in the top 3 for their group. Megan was a little upset about that (and so were her teammates) but they were the youngest age team in their group, they went up against 4th and 5th grade teams. So maybe next year she'll have her shot at winning. Kristin's team on the other hand won 2nd place! They were so thrilled!

You go Kristin! The team got a trophy and each teammate was supposed to get a medal but because they tied with another team for second place they now have to wait for them. The other team was given the medals and I assume they now have to wait for their trophy.

Kristin was smiling non-stop the whole way home and Megan was crying! What a fun trip that was. Congratulations Kristin! And Megan you'll kick butt next year, I just know it.

Bananas

This will be my shortest post yet but I just had to get this on tape. Listen to how Zachary says "banana."

Nothing else needs to be said about that one!