Hooray...I'm a Soccer Mom!

Up until now, we have not been involved in any team sports. I know...how in the world did we avoid it for so long? Simple...our firstborn hasn't been interested, and he's not athletically inclined...at all. It's fine with us, but that means we've been waiting years to see if any of our subsequent children would ever want to participate in team sports.

I'd signed Joshua and Rebecca up for a soccer camp this past summer, and they both enjoyed it; however, only Rebecca has been bugging us to play again-- Joshua retreated to his Leapster and his Pokemon cards (which we fully expected). So I registered Rebecca for soccer, her coach called last week, and the team roster arrived via email. We have the pink shin guards and pink soccer ball from last summer ready to go, plus soccer cleats from my awesome friend Karrie, who's daughter outgrew them. Free soccer cleats...always a bonus!

We got to the practice field a few minutes late because we were but a mile from home, and there was an accident. You should have seen me poke my mommy van across 2 lanes and cut behind a shopping strip trying to get around traffic. So we finally get there, and all the kids were already practicing. Rebecca jumped right in, and I met the other soccer moms-- everyone was very nice, and in 10 minutes we'd decided on a regular night for practices and a drink & snack schedule for the rest of the season.

Watching the kids run around brought back many memories of soccer growing up. I played for 3 years. The first year, we had a undefeated season (not because I was a great player, everyone else was), the second year we lost every single game, and the third year, we won 50% of our games. I even remembered how my sister and I would walk by ourselves to soccer practice, and walk home again--which you can do on a military base, because it's perfectly safe. Gabriel was so busy trying to watch everything and eventually wound up on my hip, and refused to be put down until the end of practice. I guess just watching the kids wore him out, poor baby.

Here are a few pics of Rebecca at her first practice. BTW, the name of her team is The Dragonflies. Now if I can just get David's banking group to sponsor her team...

And here's some pics at Rebecca's first game. I wish we could have all gone, but 1:30 is smack in the middle of Gabriel's nap. So David stayed home with everyone else while I went to see our girl play.

GO REBECCA!

Our first time playing goalie...

Oops, one got past us...that's okay! (She blocked the rest!)

FFPS doesn't keep score, so the "unofficial" score was Dragonflies 3, Agents 2. There was some discrepency over one of our goals, so for all I know, it was a tie. I was really proud of Rebecca. She was right there, running her heart out, and kicking the ball as hard as she could. We were pretty beat at the end of the game...but for her first time out, she did awesome. (I say this because I was the wimpiest soccer player you ever did see...I was scared of the ball!).

Oh, and here's my van proudly sporting its new FFPS bumper sticker.

I love being a soccer mom!