At the end of the soccer year, the local teams got together for an all day Play-off Jamboree. They literally played from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. There was an odd number of teams so there was a rotation every half hour, so at least one team was getting a half an hour break.
The girls were having a blast, and believe it or not, so was I. It really was beautiful weather, even though the sun came out before I realized I should have sunscreen on, I got my first burn of the season. It wasn't too bad, but it was uncomfortable and of course my scalp peeled after a few days to make me look like I had a serious case of dandruff.
Spencer had a good time running around the field and playing on the four playgrounds they had spread out between the field and buildings. He LOVES the slides and wanted to try them all out.
They had a Potluck BBQ. We had so much food and everyone just kept eating for hours. There was cake and awards and saying goodbyes.
My friend, Lindsey, lives on this part of the base, so she came to hang out with me for a few hours which totally made the time fly. She totally made herself at home with all the parents and even got caught for sneaking in the BBQ (not really, but it was fun to make her nervous).
Brian had already taken Spencer home so I was left alone to my own devices. Can you guess what I did? You were right. I put my catering skills to use and helped reorganize the horribly organized food stations. There was so much food all over the place that everyone just dropped on the grass next to the BBQ and expected someone else to take care of it. People were tripping over it and things were melting in the sun. I was bored so I put myself to use before Lindsey showed up. Once she was there, I delegated to someone else my self-assigned job.
Trophy Handouts-they didn't do a formal awards ceremony (thank goodness), but we were pleasantly surprised that they were giving trophies. The "word" was that the program didn't give trophies because they bought each child's uniform and then let the kids keep it. So, I think the kids were just stoked to get their own award too.
(Xoe)
(Xanthe)
These are their teammates standing there listening to the coach say some words after the whole thing was over. He was also opening the Team Gift of a signed picture and some other cool stuff.
This is their Coach...Jim Mann. He was so amazing with the girls. He allowed them to join his team a few weeks after the season had already started, and was so patient with them to get them up to speed since they had never played soccer before. He also tried very hard memorizing which one was which so that he could get their names right on the field. One time he mixed them up but he still was consistent in yelling the wrong name to each of them. I finally had to break it to him, mostly cuz I didn't want him to think the girls were purposely ignoring him. haha. He also found some old cleats past players had given him and let the girls have them. We never even had to buy cleats for them, let alone much of anything else! We Love Coach Mann!
This is one of the girls' friends. She stays the night quite a bit and frequents our house for many days in a row. She's great. Very polite and very enjoyable. The girls were excited when they had to play against her. They were making competitive bets and consequences to the loser.
An Update to their Teams' Statistics...Their team was very impressive. Lost the first two games of the season before the girls got there...then the next five games they won every single one. Like I said, I like to "think" it's cuz the girls joined, hehe, but I'm thinkin it's probably cuz they do a really good job of starting off behind a few points and then catching up towards the end. That's how every game was...so it was no surprise that's how their statistics were too. They were awesome!
Making the decision to enroll them in soccer was definitely a good one. They took it very seriously and even went on their own quite a few times to the field behind our house to practice kicking and sparring. You can then imagine how excited and "into" the World Cup they were. We even stayed up til 12:30 a.m. last night to watch the final game (it started at 8:30 p.m. our time). The girls were voting for Spain "because we're Spanish too."
2 comments:
Who would have ever guessed they were spanish. Not me and I am their aunt and already knew that!
It looks like your girls are still living in the usa with these photos...how fun that they are still doing everything they would do here plus a whole lot more.
Cute pictures!
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