First Soccer Game!

So I have have a bunch of stuff to blog about that happened before yesterday, but I'm just so excited about Nathan's first soccer experience that I jumped this post to the front of the line!  I played soccer from the time I was five all the way through high school, and learned a lot about staying active and teamwork on the soccer field.  One of my longstanding visions of parenthood has been seeing my child playing peewee soccer, with the bottom of the shorts nearly touching the tops of the shin guards, and all the kids moving around in a clump on the field.  So I knew that I would be signing Nathan up for AYSO as soon as he was old enough.  If he didn't like it, I wouldn't force him to continue on for further seasons, but it was important to me that he at least try it.  In theory, Nay was super excited about soccer, and loved running around in the backyard in his new cleats ("These shoes are SUPER fast!") and kicking the ball with one of us.  

Yesterday was the big day!  The weather was beautiful--sunny and not too hot.  The way that the program is structured for the little ones is that they practice from 9:00-9:30am and play their game from 9:30-10:00am.  There are six kids on each team and three of them play at a time.

Nathan was pretty unsure about the process at first--he had never played soccer, and didn't know any of the other kids on the team.  He was good about getting on the field and trying, which I was relieved to see, as he could have easily decided it was too intimidating.  Coach Joe put Nathan on defense for the first quarter and showed him where to stand on the field. Nathan took these instructions very seriously--so much so that for the first couple of plays he stayed rooted to that exact spot in the grass and didn't move a muscle! :)

 

While the other half of his team played for the second quarter, Nathan watched them closely and soon figured out that it was more fun to run after the ball.

The second half got under way and Nathan was ready to go and having a blast!

 He even got a ball on a breakaway, and...

 Scored his first goal!!!

I love these little ones all lined up cheering on their teammates on the field.

Nathan loved the experience, and dribbled his ball all the way back to the parking lot!  He's excited for his next game next week, and I am thrilled that his first experience with a sport I love was a great one.

Up North Vacation, Part 2

The second half of our week was all about family time.  Stuart and Erin came up for the Fourth of July for the first time, Dan and Nancy arrived in time for the holiday, and we had a wonderful cookout at Florence and Basil's house.

Nathan spent most of the afternoon playing in the back of Basil's truck. Who is surprised?

Basil and Larry manning the grill.

My loves.

A rare photo of all four of us at Music in the Park.

She always has something to say these days. :)

Up North Vacation, Part 1

As we have for the past few years, we spent the week of July 4th at the cottage.  It is such a great week to be up north!  We had beautiful weather this year--no rain, no humidity, cool nights--perfection! The water was chilly, but playing in the sand was great.  The first half of the week Annalee, Dan, Miles and Brynn joined us in Northport.  We spent every day at the beach.  Miles and Nathan were busy, busy, busy with lots of beach construction projects.  Natalie and Brynn preferred to hang out on the towels under the umbrella, playing with beach toys and mooching sips off of our water bottles.

Todd and Dan got in on the boys' beach construction.

I love the fact that these four are already fast friends!