Soccer Clinic

I signed up Grady for a soccer clinic. It was a "first email-first serve" type thing, and I was one of 12 parents to get their children in the clinic. I was thrilled! The regular season starts first of April, and this clinic is once a week for the four weeks of March.

I picked him up after the hour long practice last night and noticed half his face was red. One of the moms said a ball had ricocheted off one little boy and onto Grady's face! She said he managed it well and didn't cry at all.

He had a fabulous time and I am thrilled he is getting the extra practice. This is what we are supposed to be "working on" this week: headers upwards (good grief!), juggling (where you bounce the ball) on the thigh and top of laces, and dribbling the ball. Yikes! This coach means business.

Grady said he is the best at getting out of the pack. (I guess the coach said this.) He also scored a goal in the scrimmages they had. He had a wonderful time!

Pryor Tidbit

When it is time for Pryor to take a nap, I normally get him in the game by asking where his uh-oh (read: pacifier) and lovies (read: his blankets) are. Sometimes I'll say, Pryor, they miss you and are calling for you.

Well, he's gotten into the game and when I ask if he hears something, he'll say that they're asking for him.

Last week as we were walking up the stairs, I said, "What do you hear?"

He said, "They're calling: Pryor, where are me?"

Soon to update

Well, I'm sorry for the lack of posting in recent days. I came down with a really bad cold and still haven't quite recovered. You know I'm suffering if I've lost my voice! My mother-in-law, Patti, came in for this past weekend and I hope to post some pictures of that tomorrow. We had a really good time, but I would have had an even better weekend if I hadn't been sick the entire time she was here. Stephen and I were saying that this is the sickest I've been since we've known each other. 2009 has not been a healthy year for me thus far!
On a brighter note, Alice finally got a call that her Daisy troop (read: Girl Scouts for kindergartners) has finally started! She'll only have three meetings but it's better than nothing.
Grady is going to do a soccer clinic in March to get ready for the soccer league that starts in April. Alice is on a team too.
P-man got the croup on Monday, poor guy! He missed school on Monday and Wednesday, poor me! He is really in a foul mood from the steroids. I'll be glad when he's back to 100%.
We saw 50 degrees today and we stayed to play on the playground at school after art class this afternoon. The children loved being able to run around!

Snow Fort

This is an old picture I hadn't posted yet from a couple of weeks ago. We had so much snow and we wanted to make the children a snow cave. Stephen took our 6 foot long folding table and put it on top of the railing at the corner of the deck and surrounded it will the porch furniture. You can see the black round table in the front.

Quite honestly, Stephen and I spent all the time making it and the children barely had a chance to play in it. Oh well, we all had a good time playing in the snow.

Two Horse Open Sleigh

At Hidden Valley, the tubing area is also the starting point for sleigh rides. We had a noon reservation and left as soon as we turned in our tubes. The beautiful sleigh held us plus another couple and probably would have carried a couple more. The two drivers chatted with us about the area. They even had bells on the harnesses so the effect was complete.

It was pretty balmy at this point in the day and you can even see the pond behind us showing signs of melting. The children had a great time and now we can say we've been on a sleigh ride.

The poor horses at one point in the trail had to pull over mud! Good thing they are huge animals! They didn't seem to mind. We were all exhausted and glad to be heading home after a full morning! It's amazing to think just how close we are to the resort. We all look forward to going again next year.

Snow Tubing

We went to Hidden Valley Resort this past Saturday which is only about 45 minutes from our house! I think it ended up being in the mid-50's by noon, so we were really sweating in all our gear!

The hill for the tubing seemed to be small, till I went down on my own tube. Whew! It was super fun! Grady decided he wanted to go with an adult because he didn't want to end up sliding downhill backwards.

You get a lift ticket for a two hour time span. The first run of the day is a 10 AM -12 PM shift and we were there right on time and were able to go for the full two hours. They eventually opened up the other lift and used up all the tubes they had. I guess that's how they do crowd management. It was pretty neat.

You have to be at least 4 to go because they don't allow doubles down the hill. Each person has to be in their own tube. Pryor for the most part played very nicely at the end of the run with the shovel and bucket I had brought for that purpose. Then he stayed closer in and watched with one of us while the other one went down the hill with the older children.

Here's a video of Alice tubing down the hill. She got tired of all the pictures so you can see her turning away from the camera. Nice. Can't wait till she's a teenager!

Here's a video of Grady and me tubing down together. We're each holding on to the other's handles. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a video of Stephen - but I think you get the idea!

Pinewood Derby - Regionals

Grady attended the Regional Pinewood Derby last weekend. It was a little overwhelming - just the shear size of it all. There were 50 Tiger Cubs racing - so that's just first graders. You can see from the picture above, there were lots of people! They used the track and computer system from our pack, so you can see what the race looked like. Of course since it was run by the Boy Scouts, it was very efficient and went smoothly.


I stood with Alice and Pryor on the Second floor of a local mall and had a good view of the track. I zoomed in as much as I could to get the above picture of Grady talking with his friends.


One interesting thing to note: somehow during the registration process, even though Stephen spelled it in all caps, his name was written down as Grody. Grady's car was green (of course he painted it his favorite color!) and in this race was in the red lane. He ended up coming in second place for this race and you can hear the announcer say "Grody"!! For whatever reason, Grady decided to crawl on his knees to bring his car back to the leaders - so you can see him doing so at the end of the video above.
He got two 2nd place finishes and two 3rd place finishes - not too shabby! He had a marvelous time goofing around with the boys - and there were plenty of those!