A Raptor-rific Weekend, Part 2

When I left off, we were leaving the restaurant since Carter was spent and the game wasn't going well.  We paid the bill, checked out a couple things outside the cool Hockey Hall of Fame-themed Tim Hortons in the same atrium area, and took the elevator down to our van.  By the time we came up to ground level from the underground ramp and got our satellite radio reception back, we heard the broadcaster say that the game was TIED!  It could have only been 15 minutes at the most.  We were stunned!  Of course then we just had to keep driving to keep the run going!  I briefly suggested we just drive around the city for a while, just in case, but since it was so late we just headed out of the city back toward the hotel.  It took the entire quarter to get there, and then Jacob wouldn't let us get out of the van until the game was over.  It was tight at the end, but the Raptors pulled away, and sure enough, they won!  The Raptors are going to the NBA Finals for the first time ever!

We headed right to our room to watch the postgame celebration, and figured we should take a picture of all of us in our Raptors' gear.  This was about as good as it got...

It was so nice to see Jacob so thrilled with the win and grateful to have been so close by for it.

It was a bummer that we didn't stay downtown to get in on the party in the streets, but clearly one of our party of four was ready for bed!

It was a late night, but a happy one!  We slept in pretty well the next morning and filled up on breakfast (oh, cinnamon rolls...) before heading out and back downtown.  Signs of the previous night were still around, including this giant balloon on the ceiling outside the Sportchek store across from the arena.

Most of Jurassic Park was still set up, too.

Craig grabbed this great shot of the boys outside.

We walked back and forth a couple times, and eventually set off in search of a bathroom.  I couldn't help but snap this shot of a cool LED light installation in a nearby building.  There were countless strings of LED lights, and they were changing color in patterns.  Hopefully someday I'll get around to posting the video, but still a cool shot, no?

We stopped into Sportchek (again) to look at what that location had compared to the Mississauga one, then headed into the arena to visit the team store.  It was hopping!  Most of the Eastern Conference Championship shirts were already sold out, and the place was full of excited fans!  We picked up a few things, from a small ball for Carter to a keychain for Jacob's new house key (he's going home after school for the next month, God help us).  Since we have a few smaller versions at home, we did not spend $100 on this cool stuffed Raptor who was half of Carter's height, but how cool is he?

They also had this lovely Swarovski crystal basketball...fancy!

Craig tried to take some shots of the boys on the cool wall near the arena doors...

This one reminded me of a weird album cover for some reason.  Maybe Carter's pose?

...and then it was back outside.  As we were strolling through, we were intercepted by a news crew from Global News.  They were interviewing fans about the previous night's game, and they seemed to enjoy our story about coming from Rochester and not making it into Jurassic Park.  I knew Carter would never make it through an interview, so we left Craig and Jacob to do it and just stood to the side taking pictures...

And believe it or not, Craig made the segment!  You can watch the show below.  The segment begins at 8:30, and Craig is right around 11:00.


Don't feel bad for Jacob for not getting any airtime.  He did say a couple funny things that we explained probably weren't ideal (the word "choke" was used, for example), and he spent most of the day worrying about destroying his NBA future if that aired.  But the guy shown before Craig had an absurdly cute family, and they didn't make it either, so we can't feel too bad.  But it was cool nonetheless!

We had promised Jacob we'd try to make it to Wahlburger's, which has a very good gluten-free burger, and since we didn't make it there the previous day (or our last trip), we took a long but pleasant walk from the arena, past the CN Tower and Rogers Centre (aka Skydome), and down the road to the restaurant.  The Blue Jays were home and fans were streaming in, so it was a fun walk.  I'm not sure I ever noticed this art installation with a woodpecker outside the convention center, but I had taken enough other weird, artsy shots on this trip, so why not this one?

Wahlburger's wasn't very busy and we were seated right away.  Even though we knew we were still pretty full from breakfast and we knew we'd be eating a relatively early dinner at my family's Memorial Day picnic, we knew how much Jacob wanted to go.  Craig and I just opted to split a sandwich.  Carter got a hot dog and fries, and Jacob got his burger.  Well, we sat there...and sat there...and sat there.  It seemed to be taking a while considering it wasn't that busy, so when the people behind us who came in after us got their food, we flagged the waiter down.  He sheepishly came back to our table after checking and admitted he forgot to punch in our order.  We were already running later than would be ideal, and now we had to wait longer!  Then when the food came out about 15 minutes later, we asked if Jacob's bun was gluten-free, and without a word he took it off the table and walked away.  So his took even longer, but I guess at least they didn't just try to replate it on a different bun!  He never even refilled our drinks either, so yeah, the waiter was awful.  He told us to not even tip him, it was that bad.  Basically, that killed any good mood I had.  We hurried back to our van as we were now running very late to get back to NT for the picnic, and I was in such a crappy mood I didn't even go look at the Chihuly-like glass sculpture at the entrance of the Soho Hotel we walked past.  I saw it on our way and thought that it looked like a fun photo op, if nothing else.  I figured I'd check it out on the way back, but my mood was so foul by then that I didn't.  And come to find out, it was a Chihuly!  Darn it.  Next time. 

We headed back to NT through some slow-but-not-stopped traffic and a terrible line choice at customs, but had a very nice evening at my family's picnic before heading back to Rochester.  I'll admit it felt great to get home, and I was thankful for another day off to recover from a busy weekend!  Of course, Monday ended up being another busy, physically exhausting day.  I finally picked up vegetables for my garden and got them (and a couple experiments) planted, trimmed a tree, repotted my little pine tree, did some weed-whacking, cleaned up my bike and went for a nearly-seven-mile ride.  Oh, and I think I did some laundry, too.  Craig mowed the lawn and worked on the pool, which will never be warm, judging by the extended forecast.  During one of my few breaks, Carter climbed up behind me at one point and gave me a massage, at which point I snapped this picture.  Silly boy!

Thank goodness for a four day week, because we needed it to go quickly.  Well, all except Jacob who is off to lacrosse training camp for a few days and has been very emphatic about how much he doesn't want to go.  Between being completely over lacrosse and a less-than-ideal gluten-free situation, it's going to be a challenge.  At least the Raptors won game one last night, so at least he has one less thing to be annoyed about!  The bright side for us is a weekend with Carter, which is such a rarity.  One of these days it will actually feel like summer outside, and we can get in full summer mode.  Hopefully lots of fun adventures are ahead!

A Raptor-rific Weekend, Part 1

Our much-anticipated Memorial Day weekend started with a bit of a bang--literally.  It was a rather breezy day on Thursday, with winds generally in the low-20 mph range.  Gusts were probably a bit higher, but it didn't seem too crazy...or at least no worse than most of the high winds we had earlier this year.  As I was almost done making dinner, a giant gust hit.  The house creaked, and the crab tree next door let loose a full wave of white petals.  All of a sudden Jacob came inside sounding pained, and wailed something about the hoop.  Somehow, despite facing into the wind, our beloved basketball hoop had blown over!

All we can figure is the gust was just that hard and came from the exact worst possible direction, and maybe one bag of sand didn't have its full weight on the base (?), which was just enough to blow it over.  We immediately saw one issue that seemed like an easy fix, and once we finished dinner and the winds had died down, we worked on fixing it.  We just had to unscrew the rim and pop it back into its bracket.  But when we stood it back up, we realized that the brunt of the force was taken by the support bracket for the height adjuster.  It dented the support pole and gauged a bolt hole, both of which changed the angle of the handle, which prevented us from getting the hoop adjusted much higher than 8.5 feet (though with some readjusting we have since gotten it up to nine feet).  We spent at least an hour trying to fix it, but nothing was really working quite right.  Of course Jacob was devastated and was immediately looking for new hoops, because now that this one is flawed it's instantly unacceptable.  UGH.  We did email the company and explained what happened to see if we have any recourse, and they did send something back with information about ordering replacement parts.  If we get a new support pole, it still means I need to disassemble part of it, which will be no fun at all.  But I'm not sure I can deal with Jacob otherwise, so let's hope that's it.  Not the best start to the weekend.

All of that chaos meant I couldn't run to Wegmans and get a head start on my to-do list, so Friday ended up being pretty busy.  Carter and I had to go to his new daycare at 10:30 for our tour, which went well.  He seems excited for it, anyway!  After that I dragged him to Walmart to get some stuff for our weekend trip (more on that in a minute) and for my garden.  I did pick up a hanging plant for our porch and a new pot and plant stand for a mini pine tree I've been meaning to re-pot for months, but unfortunately they didn't have the plants I wanted for the garden.  So we headed to Lowe's, which oddly also did not have the plants I wanted!  Well, they had one grape tomato, and I grabbed a couple bags of mulch and three bags of garden soil, but it was frustrating that I couldn't plant my garden that day like I'd planned.  I did dig some dirt up to make room for the new soil, packed up for our trip (again, more in a minute) and finally got to Wegmans.  I made dinner, and then it was time to pack up and head to my parents' house for the night.

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, the Toronto Raptors won their game that night, which guaranteed there would be a game six in Toronto this past weekend.  We had promised Jacob that if they were still in the running and it worked with our schedule, we'd try to head to Toronto to at least be in the city for the game.  Tickets were super expensive, so no in-arena experience for us this time, but at least it would be fun to feel the energy in town!  I had a heck of a time getting a cheap enough hotel room.  The deals looked decent the night of the big win, but it was too late to make a decision that night and of course prices jumped by the next day for all of the downtown hotels, even on the "mystery deal" sites.  As much as we wanted to stay in the city for this one, it came down to either not going or staying in the suburbs, and the suburbs won out.  At least it was a Holiday Inn Express, so cinnamon rolls for breakfast were a nice consolation prize!

We couldn't check in until 3pm, so we decided to stop at IKEA in Burlington, and then go shopping in Mississauga closer to the hotel.  We hit a pretty decent rain storm before we even got to the border, then drove through a lot of foggy areas (luckily not as much on the road, but all along the sides of the road).  It was supposed to be relatively cool in Toronto that day, but it was actually pretty warm and starting to get sunny by the time we stopped for Pizza Pizza and then went down the street to IKEA.  IKEA was fun but we didn't buy anything, but at our next stop--the mall in Mississauga where we couldn't find a parking spot on Black Friday on our last trip there--we made up for it.  Carter got a new Raptors shirt and Jacob got an early birthday present--a Kawhi Leonard jersey.

Despite it being pleasant and sunny when we got to the mall, when we left it was pouring.  Apparently it was the beginning of the storms that were supposed to be passing through for most of the rest of the day.  I did catch this picture of the cool Absolute World Towers across the street.  They look like they're twisting!

We stopped at the hotel quickly to unload and prepare ourselves for our trip to downtown.  We had to prepare for everything, because we were planning on trying to wait to get into Jurassic Park, the sea of fans in a plaza outside the arena.  I spent most of the week trying to keep everyone's expectations low, because it didn't seem like a great idea to me.  First of all, between waiting and the game, it would mean standing up for about seven hours straight.  Thunderstorms were pretty confidently in the forecast.  Food options and port-a-potty access would be limited.  While Jacob was pretty dedicated to the mission, clearly Carter would only be along for the ride and therefore his patience for all of the above might be limited.  And, most importantly, half of Toronto was probably going to want to be there, so just getting in with those space constraints would be a challenge.  All of those things considered, I figured the odds of us making it were limited.  When we got downtown and started looking for parking, not only did we get stuck in some gridlock, but we realized that the line was already wrapped more than halfway around a very big city block at about 4:30pm.  The game wasn't until 8:30!

Nonetheless, we parked the van down the street and walked to join the end of the line.  By this point the rain from the mall had come and gone, but the clouds were rolling in again.  Even still, I tried to make the most of being stuck on the streets of Toronto.

For the record, Jacob wouldn't join me for a selfie...but consider this the "before" picture.

As we waited, it became apparent that the bad weather was coming.  We came equipped with ponchos, but when the thunder rumbled a bit, we were faced with a dilemma--get out of line and give up the dream, or stick it out.  Fortunately, we were standing directly outside the entrance to Union Station, which made for easy shelter.  However, Craig refused to come in with us, as he was particularly driven to successfully make it in.  None of us wanted to get soaked and as a parent I couldn't keep them out in that weather, so the boys and I left.  Old train stations are really cool.

Jacob had a bit of a freakout that Craig was still out there, and I'll admit I didn't love it, either, as we heard the thunder and saw flashes of lightning through the windows.  Of course, in a city full of skyscrapers, the odds of getting hit on the street seemed slim, but still...not great.  In addition, now that Craig's phone plan has changed, he does not have cell coverage in Canada.  I don't either, which left us unable to communicate unless we could find WiFi.  So, we really had no good backup plan in the event we got permanently separated.  And once the rain really started coming down, a lot of people bailed and the line started moving rather quickly.  Since we were inside, we had no concept of just how quickly, though, so then we got a little nervous about finding him again.  We periodically walked back out of the front doors under the portico to watch the rain and try to spot him.

After about a half hour, the rain started to subside, so we headed out the doors at the other end of the station and spotted him rather quickly.  His poncho served him well, but his feet were soaked and it ranked as one of his all-time worst weather encounters.  We all put on our ponchos to wait together.

One of my favorite buildings....gold!

I tried to capture a picture of our crew, but apparently the line moved.  But it gives you an idea.

Carter balked at wearing the Batman poncho, but it was the only one we had in his size.  Genius mommy flipped it inside out so the logo wasn't visible, and voila, happily poncho-ed child!

We got briefly separated again as Craig and Carter went on a wild goose chase to find a bathroom, and by then Jacob wanted to be in a selfie...

The "after" shot

We waited for probably another hour or so, and ended up maybe 100 yards or less away from the side of the arena, and we figure there were probably still a thousand people ahead of us when the line started moving rapidly, which was odd.  When we got up to the arena, we heard someone say that sections of Jurassic Park had filled up and we were being rerouted to another queue.  At that point we walked through the Jurassic Park area...

...and into another set of lines.  At that point, with no apparent regard for how we'd been lined up previously and what appeared to be very limited space, we gave up.  It was a bummer, but it just seemed like we'd given it a fair shot.  We walked up the road a bit to try to find a restaurant for dinner, but the first few places we tried were only open to those with reservations.  Dejected, we walked further down the road, back toward where we were parked.  I suggested we go inside Brookfield Place, the building with the eye-catching atrium in the same building as the Hockey Hall of Fame and our old favorite restaurant, Marché Mövenpick.  It's a market-style restaurant where you choose your meal a la carte from numerous different stations.  It was one of our first real dates, and was a frequent date night stop on our trips to Toronto pre-kids (or without kids).  We hadn't been there in years.  

We sat around the fountain and tried to think up a plan.  We wanted to stay downtown, but it seemed like finding an acceptable restaurant would be a challenge.  But then I turned around and realized that there were empty chairs and no line at Marché.  There were also big TVs in the bar area with the basketball pregame playing.  Craig checked to see if they were taking new diners, and sure enough, they were!  It used to be that you'd have to wait in a long line just to get in, but apparently things have slowed down a bit.  We settled in, and after a lot of back and forth to get the kids and ourselves some food, it was time to eat and watch the game.
    

Carter was checking out every bit of his cookie while he waited for his burger!

The architecture in the atrium is always so striking.

This was our view, right by the TV

The game itself didn't go too well.  The Raptors got off to a great start, but it was quickly squashed and they spent the rest of the game trying to catch up.  They'd get within four, and then it would be 14.  Over and over again.  We finished our dinner and some of us grabbed a dessert or another beverage, and watched the game through the third quarter.  It wasn't looking good, and as they went down by double digits again, we decided it might be time to take off.  Carter was beyond overtired and hey, maybe we could change the luck.  Hahaha.

Apparently this is a very long story, so...TO BE CONTINUED 😁

Mama's Moments of Zen, The Sequel

Last week, the weather started perking up (finally) and spring was literally springing to life everywhere.  The flowering trees were breathtaking and leaves were finally visible on the majority of trees.  It was awesome to see after such an iffy spring.

A couple weeks ago I saw a really cool picture in a photo contest at the university that looked at a dandelion scientifically.  Dandelions are the official flower of UR, which forces you to see the beauty in the flower itself, instead of just seeing the annoying weed.  But this winning photo was looking at the dandelion in its seed phase, and it was striking.  A few days later I happened to spot a perfect dandelion out in our yard as I walked to the car, and I thought about photographing it...but Jacob was going to be late to school, so I didn't.  I looked for it when I came home but it seemed to be spent (but maybe I just looked at the wrong one?).  But later I saw this one, and I knew I had to take a picture.  Sort of pretty for a weed, isn't it?

I suggest clicking to enlarge it for the full effect!

On Wednesday it was a rather pretty day outside--the perfect temperature, a bit of sun, and just lovely.  Even though I was feeling lazy by lunch time and it would have been easier to just sit at my desk and eat, I decided it would do me some good to get out of the office and go see the lilacs I didn't get to see in bloom when I went to Highland Park a couple weeks earlier.  I knew I couldn't pull it off on a different day, so off I went!

The variety of blooms was amazing.  Pinks, purples, magentas, whites...pale or bright...tiny flowers, large flowers...solid leaves, spotted leaves.  I only wished I still had my sense of smell because I'm sure they smelled fantastic!  My goal was to find one particular one that I'd seen friends post pictures of, but my first walk through only yielded beauties like this...

I took a detour deeper into the park, up to the spot where I knew the rhododendrons and azaleas were.  They weren't open two weeks ago, but this time, there was a lot to see!

Huge!

Once again, every view was prettier than the last...

I wrapped back around to the lilacs and continued my quest.

Just as I was about to think about tracking down my car so I still had time to eat back at work, I found it!

How cool is this?

I spotted a few more beauties on the way back to my car...

Lilacs everywhere you look!

Can you see the bee?

...and then it was back to the office!  But it was such a lovely way to spend part of my lunch and made getting through the week just a little bit easier!  After all, we had a very busy few days coming up--Memorial Day weekend was upon us, and we had a lot to do!

News & Notes, All the Things Edition

It is that time of year--where the papers are coming home from school, the year-end events are constant, the work fiscal-year-end crush is on, and the desire to do all the outside things have all come together to make daily life completely overwhelming.  Sort of in a good way, mostly, but overwhelming nonetheless.  I find myself grateful that Jacob never took up any musical pursuits because if I had to add all of the year-end chorus and band concerts I keep seeing to our schedule, I think I'd lose my mind.  We already have soccer every Wednesday, which is fine, but starting in a couple weeks we'll have lacrosse Tuesday and Thursday, which will throw our entire existence into chaos, with a constant chorus of complaints from Jacob, who is more than ready to be done with lacrosse and already dreading next weekend when he goes away to training camp for a couple days.

The last couple days were full of me obsessing over all sorts of logistics.  I'm trying to coordinate two different summer camps for Carter, one month at his old daycare and one at a new one.  The short story is that his best buddy Elias had already committed to going back to our old daycare, but when I told his mom that another one that we've long wished we could afford was actually the same price with a much better program, she decided to split the summer, which is just fine with us--and we definitely want the boys together.  But if a June 21 deadline to finalize dates wasn't bad enough at the old daycare, the other has a June 1 deadline...and aside from big, long-planned trips, who the heck knows their summer schedule then?!  I like being able to plan a couple random family outings or long weekends, and it's so hard to do so far ahead when neither of us know quite what our work schedule might be then.  I much prefer Jacob's camp and its two week timeline.  So I've been freaking out about that (namely how much money we will waste if we do schedule something later vs. how much we'd regret not doing anything when summer's over) and needing to fill out paperwork and get in deposits (and figuring out how two full-time camp tuition payments will be tolerable all summer).  We tour the new one (again) on Friday, since the last time we went Carter was only two.

Then this week I knew that I had to made a decision about letting Jacob come home from school and not go to the afterschool program in June.  We had talked about it and wanted to do it, but he didn't love the thought of being home for more than two hours alone.  Yet in the end he wanted to do it so I had to put in the paperwork to get his bus changed in time and cancel my autopayment on his afterschool account.  In the process, I asked the transportation people about next year's bussing, and found out that we were supposed to have paperwork in on that in April, but OF COURSE no one told us.  So I had to download the form, fill it out, have someone from school sign it, and then have the principal from the new school sign it and fax it over.  That was a little craziness I didn't need.  Oh, and I still need to get an extra house key made for him (or decide if I want to replace our door locks first because my key keeps getting stuck).

In the midst of all of this I'm trying to finish up a cell phone contract (our internal family one) and a chore chart so we can get Jacob's cell phone situation up and running.  He got Craig's iPhone (spoiled, anyone?) when Craig got a new phone for his new job with the new Knighthawks, and he's been using it for WiFi internet stuff and music for a couple weeks now.  We're going to start him with a TracFone plan for now.  He may blow through his data if he's not careful, but when he has to hand over hard earned allowance to get more, he may learn his lesson.  His entitled, "why should I" attitude about almost everything is killing me lately.  Why should he have to wait for WiFi to watch videos?  Why should he have to do summer reading for school?  Why should he have to play lacrosse if basketball is his sport now?  Why shouldn't he buy this expensive thing even though he has no income?  Know your role, kid.

He pretty much thinks I'm a jerk about everything these days, but yet I'm sitting here in a Raptors shirt, poised to search for cheap hotels in Toronto this weekend if the Raptors win their game tonight and force a Game Six in their conference finals series.  No, we're not going to the game--we're not that crazy--but we promised that if they made it to Memorial Day weekend we'd consider going up there and maybe try to get into "Jurassic Park", the gathering of fans outside the arena.   More than likely we'll just end up at a bar full of fans to cheer them on together.  It has to be a cheap hotel to make it doable, and we'll try to make a weekend of it with some sort of other activity, but I don't mind having something to keep us busy for the weekend.  We have four full days, so I'm happy to dedicate a couple to making at least part of Jacob's dream come true.

In the meantime, Craig and I are both trying to up our fitness game, which is tough when there's already a lot going on.  He took a not-great picture for his work head shot, which was the straw that broke the camel's back for him.  He's (back) off diet pop (only water and sparkling water/seltzer), and trying to work out more.  I ended up not signing up for the Corporate Challenge, which is just as well since it takes the pressure off having to get my distance up.  The urgency would have been motivating, but the treadmill workout a couple weeks ago inspired me to work on speed, and in fact tonight I wasn't feeling like a run at all, but the sun was setting quickly and I knew it was my best chance to run outside this week, so I forced myself.  I picked a shorter route (less than 2.5 miles) and decided to just run as hard as I could the whole time.  I didn't have to obsessively check my distance, and just ran to get it over with.  Sure enough, 2.39 miles in 22:31, which was a 9:25 pace.  That's just under a 6.5 mph pace, which is great and felt fast...but it also makes me wonder how the heck I ever got up to a 7 mph pace for 3.5 miles.  I'm really thinking we both need to lift weights to budge our weights, but we'll see.

Carter continues to frustrate me with his struggles to read and write.  Still no concerned notes home from the teacher, so he's probably fine, but it's hard to see him struggle.  I need to find a good phonics workbook or something for the summer, and we're going to have to work hard to keep him practicing.  The good news is that his teacher asked if we had any preferences for next year, and I shared how much we loved Jacob's first grade teacher (and we told that teacher we'd love her for next year back at open house in the fall), so hopefully we're well on our way to getting a good teacher for next year.  If she could wrangle Jacob back then, she could definitely work with Carter.  I think.  He's a force to be reckoned with, for sure.  Oh, and lately he's had sort of rashy dry patches all around his mouth, and despite using the best lotion we have, it's not clearing up.  And there was just a case of strep in his classroom, and Jacob had a rash from strep before, so now I'm debating whether we take him in Thursday so as not to miss more school/work.  I tried hydrocortisone tonight, so we'll see if that helps.  If it isn't one thing, it's always another.

I can't really believe Memorial Day weekend is almost upon us.  Because the weather has been sub-par this spring, it barely feels like it could be May, let alone the end of it.  But here we are.  Jacob is less than a month away from turning 11, and there's a mere five weeks left of school.  We're in the home stretch at work.  The weather is finally perking up a bit.  But it's all happening all at once.  And mostly it's good stuff, but man, it's a lot to take in.

Oh, and the Raptors won, so if you need me, I'll be spending the next 24 hours searching for Toronto hotel deals...because why not add one more thing (or a dozen) to the to-do list?

Soccer!

We had been planning on signing Carter up for some sort of martial arts after his surgery this winter, but just before we were about to go looking at programs, I happened to see that it was the end of the registration period for our town's youth soccer program.  He had wanted to do soccer last year, but with Jacob's lacrosse and whatever else, it just never happened.  So when I saw that we could still make it in for this year, we asked him and he wanted to do it.  So we signed up.

And then we heard nothing.  By late April I finally tracked down the league's Facebook page and realized that there had already been one of two indoor practices, so I messaged them and they explained that our original coach wasn't able to continue and they were looking for a new one.  Pretty quickly after that we received an email from the replacement.  She passed along the info for the next practice, which we went to, but then it was a two-week wait until the start of the season.

This past Saturday, before we went to Buffalo, we had to go pick up Carter's uniform at his coach's house.  When we got there, he was hesitant to even get out of the car.  Sometimes he has these super-shy moments, and apparently this was one of them.  I could barely get him to follow me to the porch, then he hid behind me and would barely say hi to the coach when we got there.  We did find out, however, that the sweetest girl from his class was on the team, and that another boy went to his school, which made me think that maybe the teams were set up according to that information and there might be more.  Sure enough, over the course of the week Carter figured out that one of his best friends from his class was also on the team!  How did he figure it out?  Well...when we got back in the car with the uniform, he wanted me to open the bag so he could see it.  When I did, I was instantly a bit confused...and immediately internally cringed.  The jersey was PINK.  Pepto-Bismol pink, with light blue and gray stripes diagonally across the chest.  The second Carter saw it he insisted he wasn't going to wear it.  He didn't want to play, and that was that.  I spent most of the drive home trying to convince him that everyone would be wearing it ("But not the other team!"), and that cool guys can pull off pink.  When we got home, Craig even pulled out his purplish-pink Knighthawks cancer night jersey to prove that even big guys wear pink.  All to no avail, but I had already threatened to take away all electronics for a week if he did not go out and play for his first game, so I was hopeful we could convince him eventually.  But anyway, the pink jersey helped Carter figure out that his friend was playing on this team, as well.

Luckily, it didn't end up being an issue because we got an email earlier in the week saying that we were getting new jerseys and could switch them out the night of the first game, which was Wednesday night.  However, it remained to be seen if that would even happen.  Our weather has been terrible this spring--while temperatures are apparently around average, the problem is that any nice weather days have been offset equally with cold weather days.  It just can't seem to get warm and stay there for any period of time.  Apparently on average our first 80 degree day is April 30, and we haven't seen anything close yet, and other than one possibility on Sunday, it doesn't look like even any sustained 70s are coming anytime soon.  Plus, in the meantime, we've had a ton of rain.  I know the town little league has barely been able to play at all, and the soccer fields were actually shut down for nearly a week leading up to Wednesday because they were simply too wet.  And when it rained again on Wednesday afternoon and looked to continue in the evening, I figured we were either going to be very wet and muddy that night, or going home early and disappointed.  Fortunately, neither happened!

A fresh rainstorm came through about a half hour before we had to leave for the field, but miraculously it stopped as we were leaving the house, and by the time we got there, it was starting to clear up!  It took a minute to find our team, since we didn't know what color they were wearing, but once we did Carter was thrilled to see black jerseys and his buddy Ben.  His friend Lailah came a few minutes later, and apparently he knows another girl from the afterschool program and the one boy's mom works at the school in the lunch room.  I think that helped him feel very comfortable right from the get-go.

Full Disclaimer: I must note here that despite working for a soccer team for a few years, I'm not really great with soccer equipment or rules. 

• I'm pretty sure the cleats we have for him are either more for baseball or generic sports cleats, but for two months I'm not buying new ones if we have functional ones that fit.  
• No one ever clarified if we need to bring a ball to practice, so we hadn't...but everyone else does, so he has one now that's the proper size, even though he already had a bigger one at home.  
• In the first pics below his shin guards are outside his socks because I wasn't really sure if I could just stick them in the socks, or if the type he has needed to be outside the socks...but after experimenting throughout the night, we're best with shin guards in the sleeves under the socks.  
• I still don't know if he got giant socks or what, because everyone else's were up to their knees and his easily went up his whole leg.  
• His shorts are giant.  I ordered an XS but he got small, so I guess I need to do some creative stitching this weekend.  We made them work with the drawstring, but even with that they were huge and they were clearly bothering him.

So, it wasn't the most graceful entry into the soccer world, but we survived.  The first half of the hour every week is practice.  They'll work on skills and drills as a team.  The second half hour is a game against another team, with four kids per team on the field at a time.  I guess it's not exactly real soccer--it's actually very similar to the games they did at the end of his Micro Soccer experience last year--but at least now they have a real team and can sub in and out.  And they are seriously so darn cute.

Carter is in the middle with the white, red, and black ball.  His buddy Ben is ahead of him, and Lailah is behind him.

The game was, as expected, a lot of back and forth.  I think the kids' skills were actually better than I expected, though.  The other team had an ace, which left the final score a little lopsided (5-2, if I recall), but some of the kids were really good.  Lailah in particular was awesome.  Considering she seems like a sweet, quiet girl, she was out there speeding down the field, controlling the ball, and taking on the opposing players.  I was seriously impressed!  Carter certainly held his own considering this was his first real game.  He had one nice block and had a couple chances to bring the ball up the field.  He was always moving (which is the opposite of Jacob, who never looks particularly light on his feet), and he looked like he had a lot of fun!  The priceless moment of the night was when Ben got hit in the chest (this was after already hurting his foot), and he dropped to the pitch like he'd been shot.  He looked quite like a pro, actually, if you've seen real soccer games!  He came running off, and we all felt bad because it was quite a hit, but given that this was crying spell #2, his dad quipped that maybe he should have signed him up for acting lessons!  Oh, the drama!  But he was fine, and certainly not alone in the tears department!

When they subbed back out, the kids got to sit with their families.  When Carter subbed out before the last quarter, along came a tap on his shoulder from Lailah, who ever-so-sweetly said "Hi" and asked if he wanted to play with her.  Those two played for the entire last quarter, kicking the ball back and forth.  It was so cute that while I normally would have wanted him to pay attention and watch his team, I wasn't going to interrupt them!  She was one of Carter's first friends back in September.  She's on his bus and was one of the few classmates who didn't have a gross habit (apparently a lot of classmates still lick weird things or suck fingers or eat boogers), so they got along well almost immediately.  Every time I've seen her she seems very sweet, and I won't lie that it would be insanely cute to pull these pics out on their wedding day in about 20 years.  Heehee!

All in all, it was a successful night!  He had fun playing, we had fun watching, and it seems like it should be a fun season!

And in case I don't have anywhere else to put this, I just wanted to mention we had another first the next night.  Jacob had his first school dance!  It was low key, not a dress-up thing, and essentially just two hours doing crazy dances with his fellow fifth graders.  He initially wanted to go, then didn't...but we encouraged him to do it, and once his best friend showed up in the parking lot, he was all in.  We took Carter out for a nice, gluten-filled dinner (Texas Roadhouse for the first time in years...yum!) and then picked up that all-important practice soccer ball before grabbing Jacob and taking a family trip to Kohl's.  Jacob had a blast at the dance!  He was a sweaty mess and it was entertaining seeing him partake in the last dance with the whole group.  Hard to believe we have less than six weeks left before he's done with elementary school and moving on to bigger and better things!  HOW?!  Just craziness.  Taking a lot of deep breaths for the end-of-the-year schedule and trying to get summer plans set up.  So much to think about!