Soccer Mom

So with practices 4 nights a week for my 3 oldest boys, I am officially a soccer mom. It makes me feel a bit old to think of being a soccer mom. I even have the minivan to go along with the soccer mom persona.

It is fun to watch my kids in their practices though. It's fun to watch Ben when he gets all excited and starts doing a little dance when his team scores a goal in their scrimmages. It's fun to see how athletic Alex is and how well he keeps up with the other players on his team who have already been playing for a couple of years. He seems like he'll be a good defender. It's fun watching Chris's practices because they're 3 year-olds and sometimes have a hard time paying attention to what they're doing. Often one or another will jump on the ball and grab it with their hands. I'm looking forward to seeing what will happen when they actually start their games next weekend.

Here are some pictures of the boys at their practices:

These first two are at Ben's practice:



These next two are at Alex's. He's practicing throwing in the ball in the second picture:



This last one is Chris at his practice:

The Dangers of Waiting For the Bus

Ben's bus comes to pick him up in the morning at about 7:50, sometimes a little before, sometimes a little after. Some mornings we get there and have to wait for a few minutes. Other mornings, we're running a bit late, and just have about 30 seconds before the bus arrives. Today was one of the latter. I actually kind of like it when we time it like that, although it makes me a little nervous to think of what would have happened if we had been 2 minutes later.

Usually waiting for the bus is a pretty uneventful activity. The kids all just line up on the sidewalk and wait for the bus to arrive. There's typically no pushing or shoving or horsing around, even despite the fact that there are mostly boys waiting in line.

However, occasionally there are some dangers involved in waiting for the bus in the morning. Here is a picture from this morning to demonstrate:



Yes, in case you can't tell or aren't sure, those are mosquito bites on Alex's legs. In the 30 seconds we were waiting for the bus to get there, Alex got 5 bites on one leg and 2 on the other. It's a little amazing to think of, considering that Alex never sits still. You'd think the mosquitoes would have gone for someone who was standing still, who would have been a better target. But maybe Alex's blood was pumping faster and therefore more enticing. Whatever the case, they decided to go for him.

So you can see that waiting for the bus to come in the morning isn't without its thrill of danger. Who wouldn't love to take the risk of possibly being infected with West Nile Virus?

I do think that we'll make sure we all get some mosquito repellant on before we head out to the bus stop the next time we go.

My crazy kids

Okay, I thought I'd do one more post today while I'm posting and just include a few pictures of the boys doing their normal everyday stuff. They can be pretty silly when they want to be. :)

Here the boys put the futon cushion on the floor and wanted to pretend to go to sleep. Alex is actually hiding under the cushion here, so you can't see him:




Here, Ben got out the camera and would "get" Chris with it. Chris was kind of trying to hide on his bed:



Ever since we got the pool, swimming is a common activity for the boys. In the first picture, Ben and Alex wanted to show off their skills of swimming under water. In the second one, Chris was just drying off on a break from swimming. He's so skinny that he gets cold while he's swimming and shivers a lot, but doesn't want to stop swimming. He will usually get out of the pool, dry off, then get back in.




Now if I had only remembered to take a camera to soccer practices, I could show pictures of Ben's first soccer practice and Chris's. And just in case you were wondering, it's kind of comical to watch 3 year olds in a soccer practice. Half the time they refuse to do what the coach (who is our neighbor from across the street) asks them to do, part of the time they're looking around at other stuff (the playground right next to the field is a big temptation), and the other part they're actually kind of trying. It will be very interesting to see their first games on the 6th.

Big 1st Grader

Ben started his first day of first grade today. He's been pretty nervous about it for the last couple of weeks. He didn't think he'd like going all day, he didn't want to do harder stuff, and I think he was afraid he wouldn't know where to go.

Last Friday they finally posted the class lists, so Ben and I drove down to the school to see who his teacher would be and who was in his class. He was happy to see that there were quite a few from his kindergarten class in his class with him. His two best friends were in other classes, but he was okay with that.

On Monday they had a meet the teacher night, so we went over to meet his teacher and she let him pick out where he was going to sit today. She wrote his name on a post-it and had him put it on the spot where he wanted to sit. He first put it at a table where no one else had put their names, but when his friend Juan showed up and put his name at a table, Ben moved his to sit across from him. He was happy to know that he'd be sitting by someone he knew.

Last night, Bryce gave Ben a Father's Blessing and told Ben that he wouldn't be apprehensive or nervous, that he would be excited. He said he'd be excited to learn and be able to learn what he needed, that he'd meet up with old friends and make new friends, that he would want to be good and obey his teacher. Ben actually has strong faith when it comes to prayers and blessings. He surprises and impresses me quite often with how strong his faith is. He started feeling a bit better after the blessing, but this morning when he got up, he said he wasn't nervous anymore, that he was just excited. He kept asking when it was time to go and made sure his brothers were up so they wouldn't make him late for the bus. He did get a bit nervous when the bus came and wasn't sure where he wanted to sit, so I had to go help encourage him to sit and that he would be fine, but he was still excited to be going to school.

Here are a couple pictures of Ben ready to go on his first day.

Ben wanted to look grumpy for the first one, mostly because he didn't want me to take his picture because he was afraid it would make him late:


Now he's finally smiling:


Here he's waiting for the morning bus (his first time on this morning bus) with Alex and the other kids:

Chasing tires

Since our dog is very large, he tends to chew through his toys fairly quickly. It almost seems like a waste to get him balls or toys like that because he usually doesn't have them for very long. So last spring, we bought him a tire to play with. At first he wasn't sure what to do with it, but lately he is always carrying it around and chewing on it and wanting us to play tug with him with it. Of course, that's not so fun when I'm trying to mow the back lawn and he thinks the tires on the lawnmower are fair game.

Here are some pictures of Ozzy with his tire: