Monday, September 14, 2009

Fall Soccer

It's that time of year again...when standard equipment for soccer games includes not only a ball and water bottle, but umbrellas, raincoats, bug spray...the list goes on and on.  It rained all night on Friday, and continued Saturday morning.  Adlani's game was cancelled but the U8 (under-8) girls are obviously made of tougher stuff because their game was held despite the downpour.  I stayed home (and dry) with Adlani, but Ben and Norah went to cheer Aliya on, and the report was that she kicked butt. 

Today was the annual soccer fair, and we had to be at the field for the first game at 10 a.m. and the second game at 2:30 p.m.  Luckily it turned out to be a beautiful day, because I spent 7 HOURS at the soccer field.  There just wasn't enough time between the games, team photos, and free hot dogs to justify trying to get out of the parking lot and back in an hour later.  I am really feeling my age tonight - actually, I'm feeling my grandmother's age.  When I got to the field I realized that my soccer chair was in the trunk of Ben's car, so I spent the whole day without a chair.  Poor old me.
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The day started off a little rocky when I realized at 8:45 that both soccer uniforms needed to be washed and dried within an hour.  For a while it looked like Adlani might show up for the team photo in his Batman underwear, but the uniforms eventually dried and we even made it on time. 
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I'm pretty sure I'm the worst soccer mom ever because I'm always screaming at Adlani to run, kick, DO SOMETHING!!! 
It's becoming more and more obvious that he may not be the next Ronaldo, but I hate to give up this young.  I'm just afraid that eventually his team-mates are going to hold him down and give him a good pummeling since he just runs around out there in his own little world.  At the soccer fair they were playing music so he was doing the robot all around the field.  Thank God it was still during the pre-game warmup.
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In these photos he's actually A) running, B) going in the right direction, and C) keeping up with the pack:
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But it's much more common to find him A) with his shirt over his head, B) using his shirt like Laura Ingalls used her apron, or C) distorting a body part:
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Aliya was a scoring machine but by the time her game finally rolled around I was sitting at the opposite end of the field from all the action and too tired to move so I have no good action-shots of her.  There's always next week.  And the week after.  And the week after.
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And then there was Norah, who did anything she could think of to try to entertain herself for the day, and she was actually really good.  There were lots of distractions...kids she knew, babies, dogs, food, etc., so she didn't give me much trouble.  I never thought I'd hear myself say that.
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Where was Ben during all of today's fun?  He was in the crawl space under our family room, helping Orzalis re-route the dryer vent.  Did anyone know that you're supposed to vacuum the lint out of your dryer vent every once in a while?  OOPS!
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