Soccer Season

Princess Sparkley and Buddy started soccer last week. This is the first year either of them has played soccer. They are on different teams in different age groups through the same church sports league (not our church) that Buddy played t-ball with.

I've forgotten my camera for two practice days and one game day now. So these are all cell phone pictures. And the one with B lined up with our three kids, is just our family playing soccer together for practice one night before the game, not even an official soccer practice.

Princess Sparkley's team is the Purple Panthers. Her coach has been coaching for years and is really great with different practice ideas, and learning the kids' names. Buddy's team is the Red Runners (the kids elected a much longer name like the Red Super Duper Fast Runners, but the coach shortened it). It is Buddy's coach's first year, but he's going pretty well figuring everything out. Buddy's dream position is goalie. Unfortunately, the 5-6 year old league doesn't use goalies yet even though every kid on the team is super paranoid about having an open goal and wants to guard it.

The two really cloudy pictures are from tonight's practice. There were supposed to thunderstorms so Buddy's coach canceled practice, but it hadn't actually rained yet, so Princess Sparkley's coach kept practice. They only got sprinkled on a tiny bit at the very end. And he was nice enough to let Buddy, and a couple other kids from Buddy's team that showed up, practice with his team. Before practice, Buddy was sitting on his soccer ball at the other end of the field watching PS practice. It looked like such a cool picture, but the cell phone camera couldn't handle it.

Little Guy Stories and Pictures

Sorry, these are all cell phone camera pictures so blurry and low quality.

Little Guy says, "And me" to everything we say. He doesn't want to me left out.
Stuff like, "After dinner we'll have ice cream?"
"And me?"
"PS and Buddy have soccer practice tonight."
"And me?"
"We're going to the library."
"And me?"
Sort of hilarious. Sort of sad. Sort of annoying.



He LOVES swinging lately. He used to hate it. I had to push him really softly or he'd freak out. Now he insists that I push him high. And when he gets to the summit, he yells "I upside down, Mama." And cracks up.

The other day we went to a park that had "woods" right next to the swing set. At one point after I'd given him a good push, I walked over to see if the pathway actually led somewhere and we could go on a walk in there. When I got back he told me, "Bears not get me Mama?" It turns out that while my mom was here, she sang Jerry Garcia's kid song, "The Teddy Bear Picnic" to him a few times and he's now terrified of there being bears in the woods. Or Target. Or our car. Etc.

When he sees a dog on a leash he tells us "Doggy not lick me." We think it's his way of saying it is on a leash.

He only has a binky at bedtime now. I've tried to conveniently "lose" binky at bedtime, but that hasn't gone over well yet. The past few weeks, he's gone back to having times during the day when he desperately needs a nap (which he gave up months ago) so he gets sent to me bed to cuddle with his blankey and doggy Bubble and look at books. The other day I found him like this. He'd found two binkies to use during quiet cuddle time.

Summer Bike Riding

These videos were taken on my cell phone camera, so they aren't fabulous. One of the kids' goals for the year was learning to ride their bikes. I meant for B to bring Little Guy's tricycle with us to the school parking lot, he thought I meant the little bike with training wheels that used to be Buddy's. Little Guy LOVED this mistake. And amazingly, he can pedal it.

Kids Take Over the Camera

First Day of School

I see on a lot of blogs first day of school pictures. And even though we homeschool, there are a lot of things about regular school that I love and miss, so we still do first day of school pictures. Although we DON'T have the kids wearing backpacks, which I've seen on some homeschooling blog first day of school pictures and just seems sort of weird. B thinks it's hilarious because most first day of school pictures are on the outside of the front door, not the inside.

Little Guy did not want to be in the group picture and hid on the couch. He has been quite the grump so far this school year (you know, all two days of it) but he smiled for me later in the day. Probably sometime after he got to have calm down time watching Elmo.

Hiding Spot

The other day we were sitting reading a book near our table while the kids had their night time snack and B pointed out that if he was a kid, he'd totally lie down on all the pushed in chairs and hide. So he did it. And then Princess Sparkley and Buddy did it. Crazy people.

Random Pics

Top left: Little Guy (what is it with kids and laundry baskets?)
Top right: Buddy, with help from Princess Sparkley, dressed as a pumpkin*
Middle left: I sewed this apron for PS's friend A's birthday. We got her some fun cookie cutters, some recipes, icing, sprinkles, etc. and this apron. PS picked out that fabric and then modeled it for me.
Middle right: Little Guy
Bottom left: Princess Sparkley
Bottom right: Buddy



*The kids, knowing that Halloween is the next holiday, even if it is 7 weeks away or something, have started planning. The other day they set up a Halloween shop and PS put on her witch costume from last year. Buddy's past Halloween costumes are all service people (mailman, fireman, UPS man, etc.) so he was disappointed that he didn't have a costume to put on that was more festive. So I dressed him in one of B's shirts, orange, and PS helped make a Jack-O-Lantern face and stem for him.

Princess Sparkley's Pet

For Princess Sparkley's birthday/baptism, PS's cousin G insisted she buy PS a pet to match her new one. The end result, a thrilled Princess Sparkley, and a fuzzy white dog named Strawberry (or, according to Grandpa L, Whitey). And then, of course, there was a photo shoot put on by PS.

Grandma and Grandpa Go Home

It was fun having them here these past two weeks. The kids all warmed up to them really quickly, which didn't happen last summer at the cabin... maybe because they were busy being friends with their cousins.

Things the kids learned from their grandparents:

Eating chips with lunch.
- I rarely buy chips, but Grandma and Grandpa kept us well supplied while we were here so we could have chips with our sandwiches for lunch. B took Little Guy to the grocery store with him today and Little Guy pointed down the chip aisle and yelled, "There's grandma's chips." Princess Sparkley told me last night when she saw me eating some chips, "Don't eat all the chips Mom, we need to have some left for lunch tomorrow."

7-Eleven
- Our town has a crazy amount of 7-Elevens. Like, four within half a mile of us crazy and three more just past those. Included in this count is two that are NEXT DOOR TO EACH OTHER. My dad had us take him to 7-Eleven most days for a fountain drink and a newspaper. He'd by the kids Slurpees. We jokingly made a point of trying to go to different 7-Elevens each time so we'd hit everyone before he left town. Now when we see a 7-Eleven Little Guy yells out "7-Eleven, Mama. We get drinks. I want Slurpee."

Eating Ice
- My mom is an ice chewer. She tried to convert my kids but I don't think any of them was very fond of it. They do always want ice in their drinks now and ice is something else I rarely have on hand.

DC Trip

Our plans for this week have changed a little bit so we took a trip in to DC today after church and dinner to see a few more sights we wanted to see with Grandma and Grandpa before they fly home this week.



B was with us, and my parents have a handicap parking pass (three knee surgeries between them) so we drove in and parked near the Lincoln Memorial, sort of. We started with B requesting that I take his picture giving the Federal Reserve Building two thumbs down and and stuck out tongue. Then we went to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial. Princess Sparkley and Buddy requested pictures of the signatures of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock and John Adams.* We got lots of pretty Washington Monument pictures (some repetitive because B had the camera and then I took some pictures, not realizing that we were taking the same pictures).

Then we headed to the World War II Memorial which is new since my parents' last trip to DC (Mom in 1993, Dad more recently on a business trip, but still several years ago).


Next we walked around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. You can see in some of the pictures that it has cranes and such all around it. It's been under construction (at least since the Cherry Blossom Festival) because the sea wall for the Tidal Basin was sinking and needing repair. And the sun was setting, meaning no more decent pictures from my camera tonight.



*I forgot to include John Adams's in the collage, sorry.

Ice Cream Goatee

We went to a local ice cream place tonight and Little Guy got covered in his chocolate/vanilla twist kiddy cone.

Great Falls National Park w/ Grandparents

We took Grandma and Grandpa L to Great Falls National Park today. Buddy wanted to hike a particular trail that let to a wooden bridge that we saw, but didn't hike on last time. He and I ended up hiking ahead, finding it, running across and back, and then back tracking to where Grandpa, Grandma, Princess Sparkley, and Little Guy were waiting for us and then we headed back to the car. It was VERY humid, a little hot and we had a time limit and holiday traffic to contend with, so we were only at the park about an hour and a half.

Red Sox Game

Part of the reason Princess Sparkley's baptism was pushed back to the end of August (her birthday was the 10th) was so that my parents would be in town when the Red Sox played in Baltimore. Grandpa took us to the game last night (9/2) and the Red Sox WON!!! Red Sox 6, Orioles 4.