Soccer Season Is Upon Us!

I've decided to start from here and move forward, or I'll be lost in the past! I do have a lot to catch up on, but maybe later on if I have time.

Ambri and Bryce are playing soccer again this year. Ambri plays on the Marigolds team and Bryce plays on the Chefs and the Renegades. It has been a very busy and interesting season so far. I'll start with Ambri because her goings on are much easier to write about so far. She is on a team with her friend Ceanne. They are doing really great. Ambri has a really good coach that just pushes the girls in a fun way and they are learning so much. Ambri has had 3 games so far this season and she has scored 5 goals. She is very proud about that, because she didn't score any goals last year. Ambri is a little shorter than Ceanne so she can't run as fast, but she sure knows how to make sure all the other girls stay out of her space! She isn't afraid to touch the other players, like she was when she first started playing soccer.

Bryce started the season off kind of continuing from last season. His coach las year asked him to try out for a new competitive team. After talking about it for a bit, we decided to have him go ahead and try out. They told us that the games would be on Saturdays and would most likely conflict with the regular AYSO games. So they made sure that they divided up all the boys to be on different AYSO teams so it wouldn't make one team suffer more than another, if there were a Saturday that they needed to be away at the Renegade game. (The competitive team is through AYSO and so they are playing on a regular team, and the "progressive" team.) As it turned out, so far all of the games have been on Sundays. They have had 3 weeks of tournaments with at least 2 games each day. Bryce told his coaches that he wouldn't be playing with the team when they play on Sundays (man, I love that kid!). So he has missed all those games so far, but he still goes to practice each week with that team. He has soccer 4 times a week between practice with 2 teams and games on Saturdays. I think that they may have a tournament this coming Saturday for the Renegade team, so Bryce may get a chance to play with them. It should be pretty exciting, the boys are very good. They basically took the best players out of the league and made a team with them. It is kind of sad watching when they have to go back to the regular AYSO team (just for fun team... everyone is a winner, blah, blah, blah...) because it is just like taking 5 steps backward each week. What do you do, though?

Ambri is now in 2nd grade and Bryce is in 4th. They are both loving every minute of it. Ambri finished her first chapter book today, and yesterday Bryce finished the 6th book of Harry Potter. He very quickly went and found the last book and dove right in. I asked him what was next after Harry Potter, and he told me without a skip, “The Book of Mormon”. I can’t wait for him to start that one! After that, he said he was going to start “The Work and the Glory” books.

Ambri finally lost her 2 front teeth on the top. She is very excited. All the other kids have already lost their teeth, so she is on the slower end a bit.

Chase and Oakli are home with me each day. Oakli is right there with Chase trying to learn and do everything that Chase does. Oakli loves to dance, and Chases loves to shake his “booty”.

I’ve been really busy with canning, drying, and walking. (Strange combination.) I did a few tomatoes this year, we still had a lot from last year. Doug helped with everything else that we did. We got 180 quarts of green beans done, 200 cobs of corn cut and stowed for the winter, and A LOT of applesauce. We did 140 pints and 130 quarts. Hope everyone likes applesauce! (We go through lots of it, but probably not that much – we went a bit overboard.)

I decided to dry apple slices this year. We have lots of apples and I definitely don’t want to make more applesauce. It has been really fun to do, and super yummy as well. I’ve been dipping them in cinnamon and sugar before I dry them, so they are even more delicious.

Walking… well, I do a lot of it. I have been doing about 30 miles a week. It has really been great for me. I enjoy my time out on the road just moving along. In August I did my first half-marathon. I have 2 more coming up that I am continuing to train for. The first one was a bit harder than I thought, even though I finished in pretty good time. I was the first walker to finish, but it was very hard. A few things to change for the next one and hopefully I’ll be good to go.

Doug will be doing the next half-marathon with me. He won’t be walking though. He did his first marathon in May, and he finished. He decided that the time he got wasn’t good enough, so he wants to do more. He was going to do the Pocatello Marathon with me in August, but about 2 weeks before the marathon, he pulled his hamstring. He is still trying to recover from that. If all goes well, he’ll do a full marathon in January.

We have more soccer, and OSU football games to keep up with. After Halloween we have a trip coming up, so I’ll try to post often and post some pictures as well!