Trick or Treat!

We were happy to have Jade trick or treat with us again this year. She loved it this year and got this "wild eye" look while saying, "I want some more candy!!" I can't remember such a beautiful halloween night. So many years it's cold, wet and rainy. It was in the high 60's this night. We walked around for 2 hours... anyone want any candy?!

PS... Happy Birthday Pakka!

Stars

Tonight during our devotions Quinn and I read the creation story. I asked him, "Do you think God hung the stars like Christmas ornaments are hung on a tree?" He replied, "This is what I think... I think that space is God's room. The stars are like stickers that he scattered around on His ceiling . When we see falling stars... that's just God moving a star from one place to the next."

Fall Band Concert

PS...

Madison's U12 team lost in overtime yesterday to Chesterton... they went on to win the championship game today. ...I feel just a little bit better...

Pumpkin Carvings

Tonight Madison, Quinn and Jade carved their pumpkins together (with quite a bit of help from the parents). Quinn HATES the smell and so has to wear a clothes pin on his nose to get through the initial part. Jade was so cute... she didn't quite know what to expect when she pulled off the top... she said, "Look, there are beans in there!" Quinn's pumpkin is an alien and Madison's is the bat and house. She is taking her pumpkin to band tomorrow morning. They are having a contest. She has a band concert tomorrow night. I'm excited to see their improvement from their first concert which was just before school started.

Red Ribbon Week

The weeks are busy around here! This past week was Red Ribbon Week. The schools focus on "saying no to drugs" and the students recognize the week by having a theme for each day. Crazy hat day, wear red day, this was crazy dress day. Quinn wore one of Madison's skirts. Madison wore tall rain boots, her sweatshirt backwards and crazy hair. Each evening they looked forward to planning for the next day.

Pictures from the NISL tournament

The End... of the NISL soccer season

After spending 5 hours out in this cold, windy, rainy, blustery day (low 40's), the formal Fall soccer season is now officially over.

Quinn's 1st division team lost 4-3 this morning at 9.
His premeire team won at 10am, 2-1, but they lost at 3pm, 4-0.

Madison's game at 4:30 went into overtime (of course!). We have something about tournament games and overtime...and losing. 1-0. What a heart breaking loss for them! Madison's heel did pretty well until someone stepped on it in the second half... then it hurt worse. By the end of the game she was limping a little. May be it wouldn't have been good for her to play tomorrow. They played Chesterton and beat them in the regular season and now have lost to them 3 times in the end of season tournaments...all in overtime!! Ugh! So frustrating!

I'll post a few pictures of Quinn's game tomorrow. I was too nervous to even take any during Madison's game!

NISL Tournament

Tomorrow is the NISL Soccer Tournament. Madison went to practice on Thursday night to do some "parallel practicing." Basically she tried out her heel again... after no activity for 2 weeks. She just did some easy jogging and juggling the ball, while her team practiced. She said her heel was sore, but better than it was before. Hopefully she can make it through the weekend. The U12 girls finished 2nd out of 9 and have a good chance of being in the championship game. They were in it the last 2 seasons and lost in overtime both times. The girls don't play until 4:30 tomorrow afternoon. If they win, they play at 9am on Sunday (yes, I know... don't even tell me about it) and the championship game is at 1:30.

Quinn's team fininshed 8th out of 9. They play at 9am tomorrow. It rained the entire day today and it's supposed to rain in the morning. If they win, they play the #1 team at noon. He also is going to play for the other U11 team at 10:30.

It's going to be a full day of soccer tomorrow. This is the final weekend for the season. I have mixed feelings about it. Overall I'll be glad for the break from all of the driving to practice. I just hope Madison can make it through with her heel. Updates tomorrow...

Love, Leah

Birthday Party Pictures

Madison had a lot of fun at her birthday party. She had 7 girls come over for pizza and cupcakes. In keeping with the "dog theme" we went to see Beverly Hills Chihauhau at 8:15. It's a cute movie about a spoiled dog that gets dog-napped. Very cute. The girls took home movie theatre sized boxes of Skittles and also filled out entrances to the Humane Society drawing. They are selling tickets for their annual "Cash for Critters" fund raiser. The girls have a chance to win some cash now. : )




Here are some of the gifts she received. Girls brought pet supplies for the Humane Society. Cocoa thinks they all look pretty good... even the cat food! Ha! She got a cute, cute, cute soccer t-shirt from Doug, Jen, Amanda & Jay, roller skates from G&G and she was thrilled when she got a purple cell phone from us! Yes, I know... it was very weak moment on our part. Madison is one kid that never really "wants" anything... she usually can't come up with ideas for gifts...for Christmas or birthdays. The only thing she has wanted the last couple of years is a cell phone. Since Tony & I just updated our phones, a 3rd phone was an inexpensive add-on. None of her close friends have a cell phone, so I don't know who she will be talking to! Ha!

Madison and I have colds this weekend and I have a portion of laryngitis. I took a 3 hour nap this afternoon and feel better now. Hopefully my voice will get better and not worse. It's no fun to try and talk all day long at work and sound like a frog!
Enjoy the pictures!
Love, Leah

Happy 12th Birthday Madison!

Happy birthday to our beautiful daughter! Today was a milestone that Madison has been looking forward to for a long time. She can now sit in the front seat of vehicles and she is hoping to volunteer at the Humane Society this year. Instead of birthday gifts this year, she asked her guests to consider bringing a donation for the Humane Society. Many more birthday details to come... tomorrow!

Game (birth)Day

This is how Madison spent her Flames game on her birthday... on the side lines. A different view for sure. We made the family decision to sit her and rest her heel today... hoping it will be healed by the NISL tournament next weekend. Grandma & Grandpa came for the weekend and were hoping to see her play this season. Madison was kind of down about it this morning, but never complained or begged to play. For that I was thankful. She was just unusually quiet. I guess that's an indicator on how much it hurts. Her team played well and we beat Warsaw 3-2. She gave out the M&M's to her teammates. They are in her team colors. The top picture of her is actually her showing a red card (it looks yellow!) that Coach Todd gave to her, for being injured today. That's what he thought about that! Ha! Moriah's mom brought cupcakes for her team to enjoy after they sang happy birthday to her after the game. I thought that was really thoughtful! We were out at the soccer fields from 11:30-4:30 today. Quinn played 2 games right after Madison's. They lost both of their games. Madison's birthday party started at 5:30 so it was a rush to get home and get the ball rolling.

More birthday party highlights to come... but you'll have to wait until tomorrow. This tired soccer mom needs to get to bed!

Apophysitis

New vocab/spelling word for the day... apophysitis. This is what Madison has. She said this word over and over and over... hoping to remember it by the time she got to school. She said by the time she got there, she could only tell her teacher that she had "some kind of itis"...Ha!
This is a good link that explains it...

http://www.foot-pain-explained.com/apophysitis.html

Soccer, soccer and more soccer

I woke up about 3am and couldn't go back to sleep so I decided to get up and at least be productive! Waking in the middle of the night and not returning to sleep is an indicator of stress levels for me. I hate it! But here I am...

Last weekend was the "Socctoberfest" in Zionsville, which is just Northwest of Indy. The girls had been looking forward to it for a long time. Overall they played well, except for a disappointing first half of the Sunday morning game, which caused them to lose 3-1. Out of 10 teams, they lost in the semi-final game to the team that eventually went on to play one more game and win the championship. The team went out for pizza on Saturday night. Each mom contributed one item for a goodie-bag. In the lower left picture, they are showing off their halloween teeth that they each found. Don't you love their socks? Madison said she got at least 5 compliments from players/fans/coaches on her socks! They usually wear solid blues but they wore their fun practice socks for the tourney.



We were on the road by early afternoon and drove to Chesterton for Quinn's Flames game which started at 4pm. They got their first win of the season, 2-0. Yeah! Quinn played goalie and then some on defense in the 2nd half. We got home shortly after 8 that night. It was a fun but tiring weekend. It sure didn't feel like Fall soccer... it was 86 in Indy on Saturday. That's summer weather around here for sure! Aren't the trees gorgeous in these pictures below?



Madison is having some real problems with her right heel. It's been sore for about 6 weeks now and got significantly worse when basketball practices started after school 2 weeks ago. We took her out of all practices before the soccer tourney but really by Sunday she was suffering through her game. You could tell it was really bothering her. I've treated her for achilles tendonitis and it has not improved at all. Yesterday morning when I woke her up, the very first thing she said was that her foot hurt and then... "And shoot!... We are supposed to get to play flag football in PE today!" I take her in on Thursday morning for x-rays and to see what the orthopod thinks. Over the phone, the NP told me she is concerned that she has torn a part of her achilles because of the lack of improvement. I feel sick in my stomach for her if she has to miss her basketball season and her NISL soccer tournament. What will I do with this active girl if that's the case? She loves her sports! We will most likely have tears over this. BUT... I shouldn't jump to conclusions. May be he'll say something totally different. We went shoe shopping last night and I bought her a good pair of running shoes for the extra heel support... just to wear to school. I've made her wear her tennis shoes every day ... no more crocks!... but her cute little DC plaid shoes aren't helping I don't think.

So... concern for Madison is one of the many things that kept me awake. I do my best to turn my list of worries over to my Father but I really have a hard time not yanking them right back into my own hands. I'm a problem solver and when things can't be solved with my planning, it stresses me out. : )

Well, I've got about 1 hour to try and sleep. I think I'll at least lay down and rest.
Love, Leah

Socctoberfest Tournament

530 miles on the road
4 Soccer games
Memories made as a family.... priceless

Details to come later...

Week in review...

This last week brought Tine & Terry and Michelle & Jade from Kansas. It's fun to see them all again. Michelle & Jade are staying for a month while Archie is in Arizona for some more training. Jade is 3 now and is at such a cute stage. She gives nice warm hugs and kisses and is so happy to see us. As usual, the weekend was filled was soccer. Quinn's CYS team won their tournament game 2-0 and he scored both goals. They advance to the semi-finals on Tuesday. Madison's Flames team played in Lowell, IN which is 2 hours from here. We lost 2-0. The refs were awful and so was the sportsmanship of the other team. That made for a long day of driving for a short game of soccer. AND... the U13 team played back at that field this afternoon at 4:30. Madison and I rode up with another family this time, the others stayed behind. We left at 1:30 and got home at 8:30. They tied 1-1. Thankfully they weren't the same refs this time. It's been fun to watch that team improve...a lot...since last Spring when they were getting beat 10-0.

Hope you all have a good week!

Love, Leah

Flames 2, Middlebury Magic 0

Middlebury is one of our big rivals... I'm not sure why. Probably because Middlebury is always good at EVERY sport. We don't know how they do it over there but it seems they are always the best at everything. I'm happy to say that the U12 girls totally dominated their game today against Middlebury. Hee-hee-hee. I think they had 1 shot on our goal. It was great. Marcus (our coach) has been "keyed up" for this game. They even had an extra practice yesterday for 2 1/2 hours to try and get ready for today's big game. I guess it worked. It was awesome. We are ranked 2nd out of the 9 teams in our NISL League. After the game we went to B&P's house. Terry & Tine are here from Kansas. They came to the game (I don't know why I didn't think to get a picture of them there!) and we had snacks together afterwards. It was a beautiful day... in more ways than one. : ) Enjoy the pictures of more than just Madison tonight. I'm posting some of her teammates too... so you don't get bored. : )

Professional Bike Riding (PBR)

This morning we were waiting on Tony to come home from work so we could go to Quinn's soccer game so Quinn decided to do some bike tricks for me so I could take his picture. One day last week he "developed" all of these stunts while we were on our walk with Cocoa. I think a picture is worth 1000 words so I'll just let you enjoy these without further explanation.

It was an ugly sports day today so I won't even go there.... (lucky you).

Elkhart Flames vs Concord Minutemen

The Concord Junior High invited the U12 Flames to come and scrimmage them tonight. We are used to playing 8 vs 8 on a smaller field so it felt different to play 11 vs 11 on a large varsity sized field with only one borrowed sub. We lost 6-2 but overall I think we played very well. Madison even scored a goal while on defense!!!....for the other team. : ( Those goals happen some times. She stuck her leg out and the ball bounced perfectly off of it and into our goal. Thankfully this was just a scrimmage! I would say we did really well for 5th and 6th graders playing against 7th and 8th graders. The Flames had practice first so by the time the scrimmage was over they had been playing soccer for 3 hours.

Afterwards we made a trip to Mishawaka to drop the van off for some routine maintenance.

That's how we spent our evening... how did you spend yours?

Highlights from the week

Monday was our 18th wedding anniversary. Tony sent me 18 roses to work. Wasn't that sweet and thoughtful? We enjoyed them at work all week and they are still looking nice over the weekend. We went out for supper while Quinn was at soccer practice and we left Madison at home. Quinn was a little upset. He just could not understand ... "You do this EVERY year... you always go out to eat and celebrate your anniversary and don't take us with you!" He suggested just staying home and ordering Domino's Pizza. After all we only order pizza to be delivered like that about once every 2 years (seriously) so he thought that would be special enough.

Tuesday brought some "bumper cars" in our own driveway. Long story short... Tony backed into the corner of the van. Don't tell me that medical costs are the only thing out of sight. This little fender bender is estimated at $2000!! I guess I need to take a picture for you but it's too depressing so I probably won't. Good thing he had already sent those pricey roses the day before.


Three soccer games brought us 2 wins and 1 loss this weekend. I love this picture of Madison. She just headed the ball. Look at how high she can jump. The U12 Flames beat Argos 5-1 at Argos. It was a fun game. You can tell our girls have played together for a long time now. Her U12 teammates have become her good friends. She played with the U13 girls this afternoon and they got their very first win of 2008! They beat Warsaw 3-2. They were so excited. They did not score any goals during their Spring season (their first as a team). They've scored several goals this season already and today was a highlight with their first win. Madison is double rostered and plays with them whenever she can. You know.... it's never too much soccer for her.


Here is a picture I LOVE. You have to double click on this to see the boys' faces. Quinn is in the goalie jersey... I wish I could see his face too. He has a super neat coach who prays with them before and after every practice and game. The players pray some times and the boy on the right is praying before their game got started in Fort Wayne on Saturday afternoon. They lost 5-1 I think. This is definitely a growing year and we probably won't win a game this season but the boys are having fun and are improving. At half-time the score was only 0-2. Quinn told me that Coach Gio said at half-time, "Let's all give Quinn a hand because of the great job he has done the first half." That made him feel good. I should have counted his saves. Our young defensive players actually back-pedal down the field when the offense is dribbling down (instead of running forward and attacking the ball for you non-soccer people) allowing shot after shot after shot. Yaw, we need to get back to practice.

Quinn saved another one in this picture! Thankfully he doesn't take all of those goals scored on him personally. I think it helps knowing that Tony was a goalie for forever and they can talk "goalie-talk" with each other. He really is enjoying the new goalie role. I kind of miss seeing him out on the field but it's OK. It's always good to try new things. I heard Kevin Leman say something awhile ago that keeps coming back to me. It was something like this...

Don't be afraid to let your kids try new things, things that involve a risk of some sort...things that you don't think they will excel at. Allow them to find the things they are best at by allowing them to learn how to experience disappointment and failure... now... as a kid. All great and successful adults will be able to give you examples of when they tried something and failed at it. They learned from it and moved on.

Quinn is doing a great job at being the goalie. He is learning more each game... and it will take lots of actual game experience to be really comfortable with it... and for me not to be on pins and needles with him in the box!

Well, tomorrow is a new week. Ahhhhh Mondays. I'm going to bed and praying about my attitude the whole way.

Love ya, Leah