Saturday was Garrett's last soccer game. His skills have improved tremendously and I am so proud of him.

Here he is kicking the ball to start off the game. It was WINDY and actually quite chilly for our neck of the woods!

Here he's watching to see if the ball is going to go through the goal. (His teammate W kicked it.)Obviously the ball went in!

Soccer Season

As you can tell from the title of this post, soccer has begun. What a difference a year makes! Garrett is much more willing to play and seems to really enjoy practice this year. He understands more about how the game of soccer works and his skills have improved lots over last year. We have a new coach this year who is doing a great job - Thanks Coach H! Jimmy is helping at the games and at some practices. I will start helping at practices soon because Jimmy is starting winter kickball with Meagan this week.

This is a picture of Garrett throwing the ball in after it was kicked out of bounds. Garrett is on the far right of this picture. He just kicked the ball.
Here is Garrett (in the middle) with two of his teammates.
There are four boys and two girls on the team. Three kids are on the field at one time. It is hilarious watching six kids all trying to kick the ball at the same time! One of the players on the green team kept flopping down on the field and just staying there. His coach had to go out on the field at one point and pick him up. I think we had a few moments like that last year! Like I said, what a difference a year makes.

Garrett almost scored a goal. I think he'll do it next week. We play soccer until the end of November so I can't wait to see how good he will be then.

Back to School Busy-ness sets in

First of all, I know I totally made up busy-ness. I was going to spell it with an i (business) but that's a totally different word.

Anyway, soccer practice started this week. Jimmy said it went really well. Jimmy is helping one of the other dads coach. He said the kids had a lot of fun and really worked hard. There are a total of six kids on the team. Three play on the field at one time. A little girl from Garrett's kinder class is on the team. We have practice twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and our first game is on Saturday, Sept. 27th. I'll post pictures!

I did not get to attend practice because I was at a technology training. A few years ago our district added an elementary technology person to our school district. She is a former teacher who is awesome! She figures out how to work all of the programs we have and then she meets with us once a six weeks or so to share information about how we can use technology in our classrooms. She also holds workshops after school and in the summer to teach us how to use these different programs in our classrooms. And the cool thing about these workshops? We actually get paid to attend them! She looks for websites/activities that we ask her too, etc. We have to turn in one technology project per six weeks and she has made this task SO much easier to complete! Thanks A - You rock!

Jimmy and I are still getting used to be the parents of a middle school child. At elementary school she had a responsibility folder. She wrote in it each day and her teacher initialed it. We signed it each night. Well now, she throws everything in a zippered binder and I have to dig through it and see what her homework it. This week I fell down on my job and this is why she came to me at 8:45 to show me her science study guide - FOR THE TEST THAT WAS THE NEXT DAY! Sigh. The bad thing . . . I think that this is only the beginning.

The good thing is that our district has a program where I can check all of her grades on line any time that I want to. I can see each assignment that has been counted for a grade and what grade she received.

Winter kickball will be starting soon for us so that is going to add two more nights of practice for us to attend. Jimmy and I both have to attend since he is the coach and I am the ball girl, I mean assistant coach. (I need to learn how to do that neat strike through thing.)

I need to pick my DI team and get started with meeting with them one day a week (after school). I know that tutoring will be starting soon.

Uggh . . . I don't like to have nothing to do, but it seems like my calendar is starting to fill up really fast!