High School Soccer and Junior High Football

The Fall is always our very busiest time of year. It's also our favorite time of the year too! Madison has been enjoying the highschool soccer team. She is a solid defender on the JV team and has gotten some time for the varsity team as well. We love to watch all of her hard work pay off on the highschool field.



Quinn's football team looked pretty good at their first scrimmage but ultimately had a rough start with a 37-0 loss against Discovery which is a huge school in the Penn School District. He played the quarterback and has some fancy (and many!) looking bruises from all of the times he was sacked. LOL. We will be watching for improvement, especially in their offensive line. :)

Back to School

Some how summer has snuck past us already! Madison is a freshman and Quinn a 7th grader. Here they are on the first day of school (8/22) with their friend/neighbor, Heather, also a freshman. They get on the bus at 7am. So far they are off to a good start. They both go to different schools this year (the high school and the junior high) but are finding their way around and we are all trying to find a new school year routine again. Amazing how difficult this can be!

Here is Jade on her first day of 1st grade. She doesn't leave until 8:25 so the big kids were long gone by then. She loves school, loves her teacher (Miss DePriest) and loves her friends. She pretty much just loves it all! :) Such a refreshing "school attitude" when you are 6 years old! She also enjoys their classroom pet, Frieda the Frog.

Jade told me that they had their emergency preparedness drills: tornado drill (stay inside), fire drill (run outside) and a school lock down. She asked her teacher what they should do if they were really having a tornado AND a fire at the same time??? "Well, that is a good question, Jade... I'm not really sure what we would do!" Haha! Jade is going to keep Miss DePriest on her toes! :) ...Just when the schools thought that they've thought of everything!

1st grade soccer kicks off

Jade came back this past week! It's great to have her back after 6weeks. She's falling right back into place and it feels like she was never gone. She had her first soccer game on Saturday. She had not been to any practices yet and she met her team at the team picture taking but she jumped right into the game and had fun. Her team lost miserably, 11-4, but on the way home she said, "that was a great game wasn't it guys?" and "I was pretty good wasn't I?" and "You were right Madison, soccer is awesome!" This morning (Sunday) when she woke up she wanted to know if she had a soccer game today and was disappointed she didn't. I sure didn't think we would be back at the CYS fields but boy it sure was a lot of fun to be there and watch a stress-free 1st grade game.

Happy 6th Birthday Jade!

Quinn, Jade and I flew to Minneapolis last Thursday to visit AJ, Bonnie and their brand new baby girl, Michelle Emily. She was born May 26. We got to stay for 2 nights and did all kinds of things including the amusement park at Mall of America, we toured both of their places of employment, Columbia Gear and Mille Lacs Vet Clinic. We also had breakfast on a dairy farm that opened their farm to the public and had a hot dog roast. AJ and Quinn also went golfing while the ladies stayed back and petted their horse, Soccer. It was a great time!

Our next stop on the agenda was flying to San Antonio, TX. We flew Jade down to spend the rest of the summer with her daddy. We spent 3 nights there and celebrated her 6th birthday. It was yesterday, June 30th. We walked along the River Walk and went boating/swimming on Canyon Lake. It is a beautiful lake! Quinn and I ventured out and attempted to visit 2 different air museums. That was a bust (lesson learned... call ahead, no matter what the web site says) but really enjoyed our time together, just the 2 of us. I'm so glad he went with us. In the month of June Madison was away at basketball camp for 3 nights, church camp for 5 nights, came home for a few days and then left for a 5 night trip to Washington DC yesterday to move her travels into July. She went on an optional class trip with 45 classmates. They left yesterday and it sounds like they are having a great time already! She's busy!

Quinn and I flew home Sunday night, arriving around midnight. We had an extra seat on each of our flights which made us sad to look at. We miss our little Jadey! Our house is too quiet now! The doorbell isn't constantly ringing because her friends don't stop by now. I'm comforting myself with the fact that she gets to come back in the Fall while Archie is deployed to Afghanistan. I'm sure they will have a blast together for the rest of the summer.

Tony stayed home and missed the fun. Some one has to work in this family! ...and let the dog in/out a hundred times. (Love you Tone!) Boy, I missed him and Madison while we were gone!

That's a quick update from here. I took about 400 pictures over the 6 day trip. I'll just leave the picture of our birthday girl here for you to enjoy.

U14 Championship Game

It was a good season. The U14 girls ended up the NISL league champions (for their record) this Spring season. They lost today in the tournament championship to Three Lions ifrom NW Indiana with a score of 2-1. I can't tell you how many championship games we've lost over the years... but certainly more than we've won! (The Invader's Fields are evil for us!). This was an extra special season because it's the last season for this team to play together. There is a group within this team that have played travel soccer since they were U9 ages. As they go into highschool in the Fall, the IHSA rules don't allow players to play on travel teams during their sport's season. Soooo, some of them may be able to play together a year from now, but they can't have more than 5 (?) from the same highschool on their team etc... Anyway, it's the end of a blue/orange Flames chapter for sure. Madison has had a GREAT experience playing for this organization and developed a great group of friends here too!





It was a busy weekend for all of us. Quinn (and Coach Tony) also had a baseball tournament at Newton Park in Lakeville. Jade went swimming 3 different times and ran through the sprinklers too many times for me to remember. There was icecream and mosquito bites too. :) Welcome to summer!

Graduates

Are you shocked to hear from me? So sorry I've neglected my blog... just haven't made the time. Where do I even start?
We've just graduated through another school year. Madison is now considered a freshmen, Quinn a 7th grader and Jade a 1st grader. How did this all happen so quickly?! Jade started kindergarten in Fort Riley, KS and in February came to finish up her year at Concord's Ox Bow Elementary with us. Archie transistioned them to San Antonio for their new home for awhile (3yrs or more?). Jade has livened up our house I will tell you! We had almost forgotten how cute and funny 5 year olds are! We've all made adjustments but are doing really well overall and finally falling into a routine, that could still use a few tweeks but it will come. Jade has made friends very quickly and did excellent in school! Not only did she win the Lifeskill of Courage award, but she won the "prestigious" Art Award and Academic Effort Award. WOW! We've got some talent in our house. We are now transitioning to summer. We've got 14 kids (give or take a few older and few younger ones) on our little street so there is rarely a dull moment around here! The other day I got home from work and within 30min there had been 9 kids in/out of our home! We are really blessed to have such great neighbors!

OK... I promise I will try to do better about updating my blog.
Madison and Quinn both have tournaments this weekend (soccer and baseball) so let's all hope for no more rain! Thanks for staying tuned...