Tag: Children

Holidays and tournaments

Columbus day Weekend and our new lives of travel soccer tournaments for every holiday. Megan’s team had two games scheduled for yesterday.  They have been a bit tough to watch.  They have only won one game and that was the first one they ever played together way back at the labor day tournament.  Since then it has been all down hill with some of the losses being signed sealed and delivered before the half.  There is a rule in the league since they are so young,  there can not be more than a 6 point gap.  Almost every team we have played have had to instruct their players to stop shooting on us since we have lost most games by 6-0, 6-1.

They are young and learning the game.  We like the coach and how he deals with the girls. Before practice on Monday this week, coach came to me to see if I had changed my mind about Megan playing goalkeeper.  Initially I had said no  because I did not want to see her get hurt.  She plays piano beautifully and I could not stand it if those little fingers were injured or worse kicked in the head.   I was out numbered, Megan was dying to try it, my husband thought she would be great back there and coach felt she would be stronger than the little girls currently in goal.

I said she could try it so with 30 minutes total practice in goal at Thursday’s practice, yesterday she suited up and took to the goal.  I have to say it was an exciting game but so nerve-racking!  She did great and we WON! 2-1.  More importantly is the thrill on my little girls face and  the confidence earned by the team.  She played the entire time in both games, the second did not go as well but they get another shot at it today.

When we were leaving the fields for the day, coach whispered to my husband that they found the new starting goalie for the team.  We went out to the sporting goods store for better gloves but of course no one carries anything in stock anymore so at home I placed an order for gloves with spines in the finger that supposedly protect from hyper extension. If she is going to play back there I have to do what I can to protect my baby.  Would a football helmet be too much?

To celebrate a nice tournament day and the big position move we went out to dinner.  Instead of the normal diner or chain restaurant we went a little higher scale.  The girls were so excited they both put on dresses and jewelry.  Just a little high maintenance :-).

The season is finally changing but it is in the blink of an eye. When we went to the tournament yesterday morning,  the season felt like late spring.  Warm, bright sun and a slight breeze.  There was a 2 hour gap between games where the parents set up a base camp.  We had food, games and just enjoyed a nice day together.  (I am sure the munchkins and soft pretzels did not help their play in game 2 :-)).  By the time we got home we all had red cheeks since no one thought about sunscreen.  By dinner time last night we were reminded that fall was here with a drastic drop in the temperature and by this morning a smack in the face by fall with temps in the high 40’s and rain expected.  One more game today.  Going to be a chilly one!

And action…

I love to play around with video editing.  When I was still with Best Buy, I won a trip to LA as a reward for  holiday sales performance.  During that trip we were given cool media items and had an opportunity to make a mock video for the then just up and coming, little know group, Maroon 5 who was playing later that night for the group.  I am sure getting them to play a gig like a Best Buy achievers weekend would be out of the question these days.  Although the video made by my group was terrible, we all were given the software and ever since I have been hooked!  Now movie making software is much more user-friendly especially with my much-loved MacBook.

I just finished making a small movie from all of the videos of Madison’s first year.  What took so long you may ask?  All of the videos we had taken of my baby were stuck on old virus ridden or basically dead windows based computers.  During the week I sat and moved them over to my laptop, it took many, many hours.  I was so happy to get them back!  So now hours of video spanning a year of life have been cut into a 9 minute movie set to Disney songs.  What was really fun was having the girls help put it together.

I would bet if I had a therapist, they would say that my fascination obsession with my scrapbooks and videos of the kids would be some type of statement about my own childhood.  I have a small shoebox of pictures from my youth that my mother sorted while she was ill.  After she passed we all had a box waiting for us.  My kids will need a dump truck to haul it all out!

Blurred lines

So as we grow older, much time is spent in wondering have we accomplished anything?  Will anyone miss me when I am gone?  Kind of morbid I guess but true.  I can not answer if people will miss me or not, but to the question have I accomplished anything, I think I have or at least I am trying to.  My legacy will hopefully be in my children growing into respectful, productive members of society. More and more today, I think we are way off course.  There is such a blurred line between right and wrong, good and bad.  Between the fight over religion and political correctness gone mad, I feel like we are loosing our moral compass.

I was not put here to be friends with my children.  I think many people have a differing opinion than I do on that statement. I figure that at some point in their lives they will hate my husband and I and that is to be expected if we are doing our job correctly. I am not afraid to say “No” and I really do not care what the other kids are doing.  We are not deeply religious people.  Although raised Catholic, I am totally none practicing but still steer my life along a strict code of moral and value based decision-making.  It is through this lens that we attempt to raise our children.

There was an attack in Chester PA the other day.  Six high school age girls walking down the street come across a mentally challenged woman sitting on her front stoop.  These girls proceeded to take out their camera phones and take turns beating the woman and filming the beating.  They cheered and took close up face shots of themselves high fiving.  They immediately posted the videos to Facebook and with in a day 4 of the six were arrested, the other two were by last night.  They are being charged as adults for several felony counts.  What did we see next?  You know it..the families of these “poor” girls saying how wrong it was to charge them so strongly and that they were just kids.  What in the hell?  Yes families, thankfully the woman is alright.  No, No don’t worry your animalistic girls thankfully did not kill her.

There is another video that has gone viral of a woman explaining that she is voting for Obama because he gave her a phone.  She proceeds to say that Romney sucks.  Well..there we go.  A well thought out rationale to take into the voting booth.  I am not going political here and hope everyone votes regardless on who it is for.  I would just hope that people would actually educate themselves on some issues and make an informed choice one way or the other, over 350 million people’s lives and futures depend on it.

Recently, In my opinion, it seems everyone wants someone else to make the though decisions.  People want the school to raise the children.  We want government to take care of us.  It just seems that everyone wants something. Lots of finger pointing and excuses but no self reflection.  What will our next generation become if we can not take charge of our own?