Soccer is Life - Life is Soccer

Phoebe had an 8am soccer game on Saturday. We needed to be at the field at 7:30.

This is what the sky looked like when we left the house. My camera just refused to capture the redness of the sun.

Here's the team warming up. The dew on the ground almost makes it seem like Fall.



These pics are from the game. Once again the other team had uniforms very like ours. In fact, I think the only difference was the color of the socks. This time, the OTHER team wore the scrimmage jerseys.

I'm pretty sure that's a legal move. Ahem.

I love this pic simply because P is actually going after the ball.

And she's staying focused.

Another win for the Rock Angelz. Woo hoo

Today's Sparkles

My miniature roses off the front porch.

I had fun trying to catch a drip with the camera.

It really seems like there should be a frog under there.

More roses.

These are the bracelets I'm wearing today.

Leave me a comment and let me know how you are making your day a sparkly one.

Be Sparkly!

Friday is Sparkly Hannah Day. Hannah would have turned 6 on Friday if not for a horrible tragedy that happened two months ago today.

Hannah was a very sparkly and fancy girl who loved "all things bright and beautiful" and often found beauty where most adults wouldn't think to look.

Hannah's mom has been keeping up with her blog and "talking things through" in a way I can't imagine doing myself. They have a wonderful day planned for Friday. She invites us all to go out of our way to wear or do something sparkly on Friday, or just slow down to notice beauty around you that you may have not noticed before. Notice the dew on the grass. Paint your toenails. Wear that jewelry that you never wear because it's "special".

Start thinking about Friday and how you can honor this precious spirit.

Always Fun at the Lineberrys'

Phoebe had her second soccer game this weekend. She again had a total blast. She stayed focused more this time (didn't come to the sideline for a drink during play). She ignored some trash talk (! from a 6 year old !). She generally ran around, kept up and had fun.

When we got home from the game, she was beat - and acknowledged that. That should have been my first clue. She took a bath, ate and basically chilled. Except she didn't REALLY chill. In reality, her head was quite warm. The girl had a fever. Her temp hovered around 101.5 Saturday night and all day Sunday. She didn't act like she felt bad, unless you count that she generally played in the floor and didn't run around like a crazy person all day. Last night her temp went up to 102.6. I gave her some Tylenol to help her sleep. She fell asleep, the fever broke, and all was well...

Until she woke up around 4:30 this morning, again burning up. I didn't take her temp, but did give her some more Tylenol. This time it didn't knock her out quite as quickly, but did handle the fever. This morning, I took her to the doctor where she, of course, had no fever. She apparently does have signs of a virus, though. Whee!

Just for grins, I asked the doctor to look in J's ears. Guess what! Again with no symptoms, J has an ear infection as well as a red throat meaning she could have P's virus. So. There's too much fun going on here at the Lineberry house. The doctor told me, "She's got a pretty good virus. You and Dad may end up with a cold."

My daughter. She's such a giver.

Negotiations

S: "I want my bone. You can't take my bone!"

J: "How about if I give you this lovely plastic chain?"

S: "THAT smells like I shouldn't play with it."

J: "How about a wicked game of peek-a-boo?"

S: "Uh, no thanks. I'm just going to go back to my bone."

J: "Hmmm. What if I get THIS bone?"
S: "That's mine, too. Where are you going with that?"
J: "Right about here. I dare you to try to take it from me."

The Latest

When we first came back from China and we were introducing J to all of the new people in her life, one person she instantly took to was Elastigirl's Manchild. He is 12 years old, and is just awesome with J. She just stares at him whenever he's nearby. Often J reaches out for him to hold her, which is a rare thing indeed.

One of the first things the Manchild did with J, and still does every time he sees her, was play peek-a-boo. He'll put his hands over his face and she just waits in anticipation for him to move them and say peek-a-boo, or sometimes "mao mao", which is what our guide told us is the Chinese version.

Well, yesterday at church after the service, I was holding J talking to friends when the Manchild walked up. J did not wait. SHE put her hands over her own face and then moved them and smiled at him! It was the cutest thing. She did it a few times and he did it back. Then she reached for him and, being a 12 year old boy, he wasn't overly enthusiastic to hold her, which was fine. So, she covered her eyes again.

Now today at home, if I say peek-a-boo, this happens:

What a sweetie.

Opening Day

Today was the first day of the rest of our lives. Phoebe's first soccer game.

OK, OK. I get it. Thanks Brandi for giving me that little push to sign her up (whether you knew you were doing it or not). Phoebe had a blast!

The games are made up of 10 minute quarters. Phoebe played the 2nd and 4th quarters. She finally seemed to get the hang of things about half way through the 4th quarter. Up to then, we had to remind her to pay attention to where the ball was, etc. Apparently she got into it on a corner kick when the coach told her to not let a girl on the other team get in front of her. That was all it took. We truly could not have asked for a better group of girls and parents. I'm so glad that the coach emphasizes that we're there to have fun.

Because pink is a popular color among girls this age, the opposing team had shirts similar in color to ours. Our team wore yellow scrimmage jersey thingies. You COULD tell them apart by their socks. Ours are black.

Here's Phoebe's first ever play in a soccer game. Doesn't she look like she knows what to do?

She did manage to keep up with the other girls most of the time. That's her on the right.

She didn't actually score here, but she was staying focused. Always a plus.

Here I'm really hoping she didn't push that girl down. I'm sure she didn't, but she's not trying to help her up either. She's going for the ball.

I liked this pic because she's actually in full on motion, trying to get to the ball and not part of the cluster. The blond in the middle of the pic? That's D. She's really good. I think she scored all 7 of our goals. (Not that they keep track of the score at this age, but we won.)

Soccer Practice - Take 2

Here we are on Thursday again. It's Phoebe's soccer practice day again. And the sky looked like this at 6:15pm.

Here's Phoebe all dressed up and ready to go. Boy, is she ready!

"This is how you take a soccer picture, mom."

I'm happy to report that the skies were only threatening and did not actually produce any thunder, lightning or rain.

Here's P practicing going after a corner kick. She also practiced corner kicks. She can't quite bend it like Beckham yet, but hey, neither can he a lot of the time.

Here's Josie watching big sister's practice. Notice the dark spot on her bottom lip? Well, maybe you can't see it, but she's been getting more and more brave letting go of things when standing. The down side is she tends to fall face first into whatever is closest.
Here's P after we got home. I'm not sure what's up with the pose. I just thought she looked so old, I had to post the pic.

And here it is...the jersey. Apparently my computer can't handle the color of the jersey. In the picture it looks kind of coral or salmon. NO. It's bright, Barbie pink. And I do mean pink. She's a bit excited.

There was a gorgeous sunset on the way home. I didn't manage to get a picture of it. Even with all the cool features the minivan has, it doesn't take pictures or drive for me while I take a picture.

Apparently They Are Aware of Each Other

The lizards were back over the weekend and decided to meet up on the center window.

So, Did We Or Didn't We?

Yes. Yes we did.

This is the color we went with.

We had thought we'd go with black exterior and interior, but then I got smacked on the head by dog hair and thought black interior may not be the way to go. Then, we thought about black with tan interior and had flashbacks to other tan interiors we've had. The interior of this "nimbus gray" one is called "olive" but it looks gray to me. Hopefully it will hide dog hair AND dirt.

Here we are at the Grand Canyon over the weekend. OK, not really. This isn't even our dash. Ours is gray, er, olive.
Here's that lazy susan in the floor. Note the med kit, walkie talkies, binoculars and LUNA bars. They came in really handy at the Grand Canyon.

So, just to recap - we spent our Friday night buying a dark gray mini-van. Yup. We're livin' large.

The Soccer Practice That Wasn't

Thursday was supposed to be Phoebe's first soccer practice. There was a lot of excitement around here most of the day on Thursday.

Practice was scheduled for 6:30. Around 4:30, there was a little bit of thunder outside. I wasn't overly concerned because we did have 2 hours to go. And the thunder did, in fact, stop for a while. We left the house about 6:15 and it was thundering again. I started preparing Phoebe for the possibility that practice could be cancelled. She kept pointing out, "It's not raining, mom!" So, I had to remind her that thunder meant lightning and lightning probably means no practice.

About 2 minutes from the house, I said, "Wow, Phoebe, look at that wind!" A big gust of wind was blowing dirt across the road and quick on its heels was the rain. Sheets and sheets of rain blowing across the street. We kept driving toward practice, my hopes fading. When we arrived at the park, it was raining harder than I've seen it rain in a while. There were rivers along the curbs of the streets. Phoebe still had hope. That's my girl.

I parked and called the house to see if the coach had called. He had, of course, and we drove home. Phoebe, as you might expect, was less than thrilled.

I managed to get a small smile out of her.

After playing around in the puddles, we came inside and the girls played a little bit.
This did help improve Phoebe's mood. Note the spiky black hair at the bottom right of the picture. J sure likes to be held.

This was the sky outside trying to decide what it wanted to be. A little stormy, mostly sunny, still thundery.

We also noticed these two little guys. They started showing up this week around 5:30 in the evenings. We have 3 windows in our living room. One gets on the left window and the other gets on the right window. I'm not sure if they are aware of each other, but they are always there at the same time. Judging from their bellies, I'm thinking it must be a good time of day to catch bugs around our windows. I couldn't tell you if the same one gets on the same window each time.
This one decided he wanted to hide. He wasn't stuck. because he's long gone now.

As Long As I'm Jumping on Bandwagons

I've been to a couple of blogs just today that have had makeovers. I think it's a change of seasons, kind of thing. I figured, "hey, why not?" So I'm trying this on for size.

What do you think?