I decided to chop my hair off in September. Occasionally I just get tired of looking at the same thing in the mirror. The responses I got from the kids were pretty funny. Savannah was mad at me, Nathan said it made me look old, Jared said that I look younger, and Owen & Weston didn't notice anything different. Weston asked if I got new eyelashes!
Savannah had great fun at the back to school picnic - she loves her friends!
I curled her hair for picture day, and she was so pretty!
Jared went on a scout camp out. One of the highlights was seeing a snake.
Soccer started right away the end of August and went through mid November. I had hoped to get out of coaching since I had so many other things to do, but they were begging for coaches right before the season started. It was Savannah's first year to play, so I decided I would coach her team. She was the youngest one on her team and likely the youngest of all the U7 girls since her birthday is late December. They changed the divisions, where if you turned 6 anytime before the end of the year, you were on U7. So even though she was 5 all through the season, she wasn't in the U6 division.
Our team chose the "Purple Grapes" as the team name. It was hard to come up with practices for the girls to keep their interest and to improve their skills, but we only had practice once a week. The toughest thing for me at the beginning was learning everyone's name. A few of the girls looked really similar. All of them had blond or light brown hair. I did learn their names though, and we had some pretty good players. We couldn't seem to win very many games though (even though we didn't officially keep score). I was hoping that Savannah would score a goal during the season, but she wasn't able to. She was lucky to get some touches on the ball. She did get out there and go for the ball when she wanted to. She tuckered out in practice sometimes, and the only way to get her to play was to tell her she could try to take the ball away from someone on either team.
Savannah looked forward to getting snacks at the end of each game.
Nathan was a referee this year for Savannah's team. He decided it was pretty tough to do the young kids, because he had to tie shoes, tell them where to go, and deal with taking turns on the kicks and throw-ins. After the first game, he decided he would take the referee training for the older kids. He did that and then did the lines on the older kids games. He has to earn community service hours for high school, so this was a good service opportunity to earn those.
I made certificates to give the girls at the end of the season party. I gave Savannah the Big Five award, since she had to be the big five year old playing out there. We had cupcakes too!
The way they did the divisions also affected Owen, who had to play U12, since he turned 10 before the end of the year. Any 10 (or turning 10) and 11 year olds were in U12. Owen had a player on his team that was almost 2 years older than him, because he turned 11 in January of 2018 (and Owen turned 10 in December). Owen would have done better on a U10 team, since he was 9 throughout the season. He still had fun though. His coach recognized Owen at the end of the year for always having a smile on his face. Yep! Owen's team did pretty well. They didn't make it in the top bracket at the end of the season, but they won their bracket and got a big trophy for it. Owen was the blue team, named "The Unicorns of the Sea" (sometimes they called themselves Narwhals, which I thought sounded better, but they mostly stuck with the Unicorns of the Sea.)
Jared's team was green, the Unripe Bananas. They had a good season, getting 3rd or 4th in their league. They did well enough to make it in a post season tournament, which still hasn't happened due to recent rain. His tournament is supposed to be this weekend now (4th Saturday in January). Someone on the team offered Go Bananas shirts for a small fee, so I was happy to get a t-shirt. It turns out it's really soft and comfy too, so I like wearing it.
None of the kids scored any goals this season, but I loved watching them play. I'm glad they were busy and involved in a sport. Weston didn't want to play this year, but hopefully he'll play next year. It was tough enough dealing with 3 different schedules though. I might have to coach again next year just to be able to plan 1 practice around the others... I waited until I knew Jared's and Owen's schedules to pick a day for Savannah's practice.
I did a lot of driving back and forth, particularly when Alex was out of town for September or other times. Jared practiced on M and F from 4:00-5:30pm, Owen practiced on M and W from 5:00-6:15pm, and Savannah's practice was on Tuesdays 4:45-5:45. Jared and Owen's practices were about 10 minutes away from each other, and Jared's practice was 7 minutes from home and Owen's practice took about 12 minutes to get there. So on Mondays, sometimes we dropped Jared off at 4:00, then came home for 30 minutes, then dropped Owen off at 5:00, went to pick up Jared, dropped him off at home and then picked up Owen. I would spend a little over an hour driving in the car back and forth. When Alex was available, he'd pick up Jared (and sometimes I stayed at Owen's practice so I didn't drive back and forth). On Wednesdays, things were even more crazy because we had scouts and youth activities in the evening. Owen had scouts at 6:45 at someone's home, so he would often go straight from soccer practice to scouts. Alex was usually gone to take the others to the church at 7:00 by the time I got home. Thursdays and Sundays were my only day off from soccer. Saturdays were always really busy, with 3 games and whatever game Nathan was refereeing. Unfortunately, I missed quite a few of Jared and Owen's games because Savannah's games were scheduled at the same time.
Soccer season is crazy - I'm glad we made it through another season!
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