Another Soccer Game

After taking almost a week off for her quad injury Lauren was cleared to play today. ( She had to sit the bench for this past Wednesday's game.)  She played the whole game in defense and did an awesome job at it.  Here's a few pics from today's game:

I had to add that last picture only because of the opponent's expression! 

They won 3-1.

First Soccer Game of the Season

Today was Lauren's 1st soccer game of her junior year.  She's moved positions this year and now she's playing defense and mid.  With all the seniors that left last year it left a big hole in their defense and because Lauren is fast her coach wanted her to play there.  She's played defense before for her travel team but it's been years since she's done that.  She's up for anything though.

Luckily I got a couple of pictures of her during the 15-20 minutes she played.  Once she got a sub she came off the field and ran straight over to the athletic trainer.  I had no idea what was wrong with her until afterwards but apparently she pulled her quad.  She was out the rest of the game and was told to rest it all weekend. 

The game ended with them winning 5-2.  After every game the teams always slap hands when it's over.  This team was so nice, they handed each one of our girls a gatorade. 

Here's something else I've never seen before either.  After they went through the line and slapped hands they all headed out to the middle of the field and formed a circle with the other team mixing in with ours.

It finally dawned on me then that the other team was a christian school and that they were praying.  How neat!  After being injured Lauren sure could use prayer!

Happy (Late) St. Patrick's Day!

I never got a chance to pose my kids with these silly wigs yesterday so I was determined to get a picture of them today, even if it was a day late.

It would have been cuter if they had been wearing green too.  

Enjoying the Nice Weather

We spent the morning playing over at the park with Ryan and Alex.  It was a beautiful day to be outside and the kids had a lot of fun.  Here's the one picture I have where they are all together.

From left to right:  Alex, Kristin, Zach, Ryan and Megan.  Lauren was still home sleeping, I don't think she even knew that we left!

Here's a few other pictures from our time spent at the park:

Once it got to be lunch time we went back to our house, ate and then the boys played awhile.  They're playing Mario Kart here.

The boys went back outside to hit a few baseballs before Ryan had to leave.  (Katie took Alex home earlier for a nap.)  What a fun day!

Little League

Zach had his first Little League practice tonight.  I can't believe he's old enough to start doing sports!  There are 10 kids on his team and 9 of them were at practice tonight.  They warmed up and then ran the bases. 

They listened to the coach give instructions (as much as 5 and 6-year-olds could).

There was some throwing practice...

Of course they also practiced hitting off the tee since it is t-ball.  I don't have any pictures of that though. 

Here's a little video of him throwing the ball against the fence.

A couple of times he got distracted and started playing tag with some of the other boys but other than that he did an awesome job.  Paul helped coach so there were 4 people helping with 9 kids.  That was probably a good thing too with the attention spans these kids have.  

Take Your Kids to Work...

No, it wasn't officially take your child to work day, my kids just didn't have school today so Kristin and Zach came with me.  Megan doesn't want anything to do with my M/W/F class (they're quite loud!) and Lauren wanted to catch up on her sleep so they stayed home. 

Kristin and Zach picked a good day to come since we were celebrating St. Patrick's day. Snack today was Irish soda bread which I normally am not fond of but this one was really good. (We also had it yesterday with my T/Th class!) Before snack though we took the kids on a walk to see if they could find a leprechaun but they didn't see any so we headed back to the room.  Would you believe that a leprechaun came in while we were gone and messed up our room?  He threw backpacks on the floor and knocked over chairs and even left footprints on the bathroom door.  Kristin got a big kick out of the kids reactions.  Most were super excited but a couple were more hesitant.  That silly leprechaun even turned our milk green!

Later the kids all turned into leprechauns.  Here's my cute little leprechaun:

We put Kristin to work, here she is gluing pages into the kids letter books.

Now she's vacuuming.  Yay Kristin!  I might bring you every day.

Now to hope that none of the kids picked up any bugs while they were there.  I'm always a little hesitant on taking them with me for that reason but I know Zach loves going.   

Concert Time

Kristin had her second concert of the year tonight.  Luckily for me it was just band performing and nothing else, no orchestra and no chorus.  Yay!  It's not that I don't like listening to the others, it's just so time consuming every time they switch from one group to the next and that makes the concerts last really long.  Tonight the only switch was after the 6th grade band finished and the 7th/8th grade band took their place. 

Kristin sat in her usual seat, second row right on the end.  I got a really good seat too so had she bothered to look out into the audience she would have easily seen me (or PopPop, he came too.)  Here's a few video clips from 2 of the 4 songs they performed.  This song is called The Water is Wide.

The third song they performed was called Around the World in 80 Measures.  This featured 19 different songs that we were supposed to identify.  Here's 2 different clips, the beginning of the song and the end of the song.  See how many countries you can identify.



The United States ones are easy, Stars and Stripes Forever and Yankee Doodle.  Other easily identifiable ones were:  The Mexican Hat Dance (Mexico), Can-Can (France), Waltzing Matilda (Australia) and O Canada (obviously Canada).  There were other songs from Japan, Israel, Germany and Korea just to name a few.  That was a cute piece and neat how the band director got the audience involved. 

Not once during the performance did Kristin look out into the audience.  Not even when she took her seat when they switched.  She didn't see us until the very end when the whole band stood up. 

Yet again another successful band concert.  She has one more to go during her middle school years and then she moves up to the high school band.  That should be interesting!