Soccer: Year One Down

Emry has the athletic look and build I wish I had. She also has the fearlessness to try new things I had when I was five. Combined, she proved to make a pretty good soccer player. Which I had supposed she would.

 

Okay, no we’re not ready to take on the World Cup. And the United States Soccer Women’s team being what it is…well, I’m not going to encourage that level of sports. She still doesn’t grasp all the concepts of the game. It will take her a lot of practice to really be good. Playing as a team is always elusive at age five. And she has to get rid of some of her little OCD habits. However, by game 7 of 8, she was a roll. Not only did she achieve eight goals, but she was also playing good defense for the first time. She went after the ball. She took the ball away from the other team. She played a good game.

 

Then game 8 rolled around, and she barely got two goals. She couldn’t seem to get her head in the game, and we had at least two rounds of tears. I didn’t know how we were going to overcome this slump except…well, a trophy works wonders. Her very first trophy! And, boy, was she proud!

 

I’m still not overly fond of soccer, but we’ll probably be back on the field next year. Emry will want to play again, and Ethan will be four so he can also play. All I can say is: watch out world!

 

Our little soccer player.

 

Playing defense.

 

Emry and her friends Autumn and Alexis with their trophies. (And Autumn’s brother Jacob as the photo bomb!)

Kids!

Sharing stories of my kids may bore some of my readers. But I share them for two reasons: 1) they’re usually quite cute, and 2) I don’t want to forget the funny things they did and writing them down helps me remember.

 

Ethan:

 

This past weekend, I took the kids out to my parents house for a “Mug Party”. (Interpretation: my mom was cleaning out her kitchen cabinets and wanted us all to collect the mugs that belong to us and take them out of her house.) On the way home that evening, the kids noticed the moon “following us” in the sky. I can remember being that age and thinking the same thing. Usually when they point this out, Ed teases them and says in a funny voice, “That’s no moon – that’s a space station!” But Ed was at work that night, so he wasn’t with us. However, Ethan took up the torch and stated loudly:

 

“Papa would say: That’s no moon – that’s a gas station!”

 

Emry:

 

I don’t like peas. My mom says I did when I was very young, but I can’t remember ever liking peas. Hence, my kids have had them but once or twice and probably at Grandma’s house. They certainly haven’t eaten them enough to even know what they are.

 

But I do like The Princess and the Pea. It’s one of my favorite fairy tales. And while I have read them a very different version of this, I haven’t read the actual story to my kids. Tonight we were reading another version of the story where pigs play they main characters and nearly every other word starts with the letter “P”. We got through the whole story and Emry even giggled at the funny parts, but just as I closed the book, she asked:

 

“Mom, what’s a pea?”

Happy 38^thBirthday, Katey!

My little sister: age 5

American History 101

Being a homeschool mom is not the easiest task in the world…and I’ve only got one to teach…and it’s first grade. But already I am being stretched. I flip through her science book and sigh at the little experiments with magnets or fingerprints. Really? Do we have to do the experiments? Can’t we just read it? Or her vast interest (and talent ) in all things art. Since art was never my favorite class, I bought an art book to keep me on task. But wouldn’t that half hour be better spent reading a good book? In Emry’s opinion: no.

 

But one thing I don’t have to stretch myself in is history. It delights the very depths of my soul when she expresses a desire to see the Statue of Liberty or Washington Monument. I can’t wait to show her all the things I desired to see when I was in first grade. In fact, her history book seems too short…but it sure is informative!

 

We are only a few weeks into it, of course, so probably about 10 pages. But already we have covered things Americans seem to have forgotten: the freedom to worship and the freedom to assemble.

 

I’m sure all of you remember what happened in March. A virus shut our world down – including church. And while I don’t have all the correct answers to how the church should have responded, I do know this: I was very sad at how quickly the church closed its doors in response to a government mandate that took away one of our Constitutional rights. We have the right to worship as we please. We have the right to assemble. And nowhere does it say a virus (or anything else) can take away those rights from us, even temporarily.

 

As I was reminded of that, I was also struck by how the book explained to Emry our freedom to assemble. It stated very simply that we have the right to gather in a group (assemble) and, within those assemblies, state what it is we are assembling about (protest) as long as no one gets hurt.

 

Emry, at the age of five, is not equating the freedom of worship to being away from church for four months. And she certainly doesn’t understand the significance of the freedom of assembling in relation to Black Lives Matter (which she knows nothing about) and the physical harm these protests are causing so many. But I did. And it crossed my mind that perhaps every leader in the United States of America needs a copy of Emry’s first grade history book.

My Husband

The other day in the midst of some conversation, I mentioned something I did in elementary school around 1991. 

 

“You were in elementary school in 1991?” my husband responded, somewhat surprised.

 

“Yes,” I replied. “I turned eleven.”

 

He paused for a moment and the said, “I was driving then.”

 

Today is Ed’s 46^thbirthday. In a lot of ways, that doesn’t seem all that much older than my 40 years. After all, we are now both in same decade. But sometimes we have conversations like the above and it makes you realize that six years can be a significant difference. 

 

When Ed’s Aunt Sandy passed away a couple of months ago, his cousins and he started passing around pictures via text, e-mail, and Facebook. Sadly, Ed does not have a lot of pictures from when he grew up, but he pulled out the ones we had scanned onto a zip drive when we were in North Carolina and started going through them. Here is my husband in his senior picture in 1993:

 

Yes, mullet and all – a hairstyle his wise Aunt Sandy told him he would regret. I shook my head at it.

 

“If I had known you then, I wouldn’t have married you,” I stated. “I would have agreed with Aunt Sandy.”

“She was right,” he admitted. “I should have never had a mullet.”

 

But, I have to say, I might have married this cute little guy:

 

 

Of course, I wasn’t even born when that picture was taken!