Soccer Mom

Carter had his first soccer practice today. I was a little worried because there were some tears shed when we went to register him a few weeks ago, but as soon as he got his new shin guards on, he was psyched and ready to go. The women who are coaching his team are SAINTS. It was mass chaos. Carter kept saying "I just want to make a goalie." I tried to convince him that what he really wanted was to make a goal, but he wasn't buying. When we got there, his coach was standing in the goal, having kids practice kicking it in. She would stop the ball and kick it back to them. Carter came up to me and said, again that he wanted to make a goalie and then, he turns to me and says "I better go tell her to stop kicking the ball back to me so I can kick it in."

I tried several times to video tape the practice, but I was laughing so hard, I didn't have much success. Carter did, in fact, end up making lots of "goalies" (some of them were even in the right goal!!) and he also found that he was really good at throwing himself on the ball and picking it up with his hands (which apparently is frowned upon???) while someone else was trying to kick it. Also running and throwing himself against the padded wall of the gym was a big highlight (he must have done it a million times, and at one point, he even ended up tackling the goalie who had picked up the ball he was trying to kick in. Although in all fairness, I think the goalie was really just getting in the way of Carter's attempt to throw himself at the wall directly behind him. I'm pretty sure no harm or malice was intended.

In any case, he was so thrilled with his first attempt at soccer that he has not stopped grinning all night long. I told him I was really proud of him to which he replied, "yeah, I'm pretty proud of me too."

First game on Saturday...wish us luck! I will try to get some decent video this time.

Do the Puyallup

We spent the day at the fair together last weekend. And by "spent the day at the fair," I mean "ate our way through the fair." It was fun, but I think I'm still recovering.

There were the corndogs...
The ice cream...The curly fries...
The caramel apples...The elephant ears...
The sugar-induced coma...Carter had a blast riding the kiddie rides - or at least any kiddie rides that were not deemed by him to be "too fast."

Please excuse the cheesy music and slightly nauseating effects (and camerawork)



In other news, as you can probably see from my pictures, I got my jogging stroller that I had been wanting. I LOVE it :) Gotta love craigslist. We've been trying to go running every day, which has been really fun. (and necessary after our day of over indulgence at the fair!)

Finally, I will leave you with this video that seems to sum up life for us lately:

Runner's highs and lows

As I've mentioned before, we have started taking long walks each night after dinner. These walks have turned into jogs as of lately and, while I've never considered myself a jogging type person, I've actually kind of enjoyed it. Yesterday I bought new running shoes (I won't even tell you how old my last pair was) and even got the Nike+ chip that syncs with my ipod so we can time ourselves and keep track of distances.

Our nightly jogs have been so successful that today we went to the park and I decided to go for a little run with the kids. Bad idea. I put Bella in the stroller and had Carter run along side of me, like usual. Neither of them wanted to have anything to do with it. Carter didn't want to walk or run, Bella didn't want the stroller, but didn't want to walk either. Halfway through the trails, I was pushing Carter in the stroller, carrying Bella and doing my best power walk. Not for the exercise, but simply just to get the heck out of there and back to the playground.

I've been looking for a double jogging stroller on craigslist, but they're so expensive. If anyone knows someone who is looking to get rid of one, keep me in mind.

Where's Martha Stewart when you need her???

In the past, decorating for the holidays has been a non-issue. We just don't do much decorating. I'd get home from work late, spend some time with the family and go to bed. I wasn't home enough to even notice that the house was the bah-humbug house on our street. I mean, we put up decorations just before Christmas. And by "decorations," I mean a tree, maybe a wreath, and one year, we even put up lights on the outside of the house. We even turned them on a couple times. And by "just before Christmas," I mean sometimes the week of.

Now that I'm at home during the day, we've spent much more time outside playing in our neighborhood. It's also becoming glaringly obvious that our house needs a little shot in the arm of festivity. So, when I saw one of our neighbors hanging their Halloween decorations yesterday during our nightly after dinner walk, I kind of got excited about doing some decorating myself.

We went shopping today and as soon as we got to the Halloween aisle at Target, Carter started getting upset. He refused to go down any aisle that had a witch or anything else scary. Great. I tried having him stand at the end of the aisle where I could see him, while I walked down the aisle looking for decorations, but that only lasted until he decided that "stay right there and don't move" could easily be interpreted to mean "hey, I know you're bored, why don't you wander around to where I can't see you and find something interesting to look at." I know, he's only four. What should I expect???

Luckily, Target also had a section of decorations that were more Fall oriented than Halloween, which I think I prefer anyway. I found a really pretty cranberry vine wreath - I think the "cranberries" were made out of Styrofoam, or something like that, and I hung it on the back of Bella's stroller and we kept walking. Next thing I know, I hear, "Mommy, could you please tell Bella to stop eating those berries." Awesome. (Hey, I had to give him credit for being polite). I look down and there's a trail of fake berries behind us on the floor and Bella has a very satisfied smile on her face. I fished around in her mouth to see if any were actually in there and it appeared, luckily, that they all fell on the floor before any of them actually made it to her mouth.

Good thing Halloween is still a long way off. Otherwise, I may never get this house decorated. If anyone has any easy (and not at all frightening) decorating tips, let me know...

Conquering new frontiers, daily

Last Friday I had surgery.
Doctor's orders: take it easy.
What do I do?

Well, Wednesday morning I looked out the window and realized, the lawn MUST be mowed. Now I have never mowed a lawn before, per se. But I'm looking through the vast jungle that is our front yard thinking, "it can't be that hard, right?"

HA.

I won't tell you the whole story, but let's just say it included me crawling to my next door neighbor's house, clutching my side, asking her to come help me start my mower (mind you, my neighbor is pregnant), and my neighbor across the street (whom I've never formally met) yelling instructions to me from his garage. And I can't be entirely sure, but I think he might have been laughing a bit too.

WHATEVER.

Now my lawn is pretty. well, prettier.

Go, me.

This is *not* me, but I felt about as dumb as this person looks.

A picnicking we'll go

Ok, the kids looked nonplussed, but they had a good time, I swear!

Today I was feeling about 90% (ish) back to normal. Then my pain medication wore off. Now, I'm thinking I overdid it just a wee bit. Hey, my surgery was a whole two days ago, why would I not want to run out and enjoy a full day picnic/family outing???

Dave's company had a picnic at Remlinger Farms today, out near Carnation, so we loaded up the car and made the trip out there. There was a hay ride, pony rides, a bouncer, good food...we had a lot of fun.

I had my new video camera in hand all day and put started playing around with some of the features, so here's the resulting movie. It's kinda goofy, but fun. Enjoy :)

The further adventures

I'm finally recovered (and lucid) enough to write a short update. I had a minor surgery to have my gall bladder removed yesterday and have pretty much been sleeping ever since. Don't get me wrong, the idea of sleeping all day has been a big perk, could I just have it without all the pain? :)

Otherwise, things have been good around here. On Thursday, we took an impromptu trip to Mt. Rainier to go hiking with the kids. Carter really wanted to go to the top of the mountain. Namely, he wanted Daddy to drive him there. We quickly found out that if you drive up to Paradise, and don't park quickly enough in the new parking lot, you will eventually find yourself winding back down the mountain and it's a four-mile trek back up to Paradise.

So, once Carter realized that we couldn't drive to the top, he insisted that we hike to the top of the mountain. We grabbed a bite to eat before beginning our mountainous trek "to the top," which amazingly enough, was listed under one of the "easy" hikes. :) I made the unfortunate mistake of telling Carter that we were taking one of the easy hikes and he started stomping his feet. "I DON'T WANT AN EASY HIKE! I WANT A HARD HIKE!!!" After hiking for about 20 minutes he changed his tune. "THIS IS TOO HARD! I WANT TO GO HOOOOOME!!!" So much for reaching the top of the mountain.

Bella, not to be outdone by her brother's dramatics, decided to throw her own fit, Bella style. "pick me up, put me down, pick me up, put me down..." Every time I put her down, she would make a run for it. About half of the time, her "run for it" was in the wrong direction. She had a couple of good spills along the way. Finally I picked her up (against her will) and decided to entertain her by dangling a video camera (the super cool new one I got for my birthday!) in front of her. Here is what resulted...




This worked great for a while, until, inevitably, she wanted to be put down again. About every five feet, she flopped down on the ground like this:



The next day we went to get our pictures taken and so I'll leave you with these: