New and improved! Now with soccer pictures!

Ok, let me preface this post by saying that I did not take ANY of these pictures.

They were the product of Anna Marie's Own Personal Paparazzo, her Aunt Manda. I "borrowed" them from her Flickr.

I have become so accustomed to just lugging Amanda around everywhere we go, that I don't bother to lug a camera around very often.

(Of course, Amanda, I mean "lugging" in the nicest possible way!)

So, here's how Saturday's game went down. Good thing they don't keep score in the kindergarten division.



She's pretty good at kicking, so they let her do it a good bit. She got the opening kick (I don't know what you call that in soccer) and she also helped out her team by kicking the ball back in bounds.

And rest assured, it went out of bounds a lot. In fact, her team didn't quite get the whole kick-the-ball-vaguely-in-the-direction-of-your-goal thing. That's OK. Their uniforms are too big, so they're CUTE! And that's all that matters, right?



Ok. Now, Anna Marie is a bright kid, but she's what you might call "excitable." She's also what you might call "easily distractable," a trait she gets from me. Several times throughout the game, she was not quite paying attention to the game itself, but starting random conversations with the other kids. Even when she was running with the ball, she would shout to her teammates "I'm getting really good at this!" Note for next time: less talking, more running/kicking.



And, this picture? Is that even LEGAL? I don't know anything about soccer, but I don't think one of the other kids is allowed to HOLD MY BABY BACK while he gets to the ball. Am I wrong?

She had a lot of fun, which I guess is the point. And, she got the "Most Christlike Player" award. I don't really know what their critera are for that. She did show some concern when the other kids got hurt, so maybe that's it. One of Amanda's friends says they must determine it by watching old tapes of Jesus playing soccer as a kid, and pick the one who looks most like Him.

Not that I'm not proud of that award or anything, but if they'd had a "Player Who Felt The Need To Comment On Everything" award, she would've had that all sewn up. I think she talked more than any kid on the team. And yes, she comes by that honestly.

At least she didn't flop around on the ground constantly like one of her teammates. And, seeing the whole team in a real game made me feel better that my kid wasn't the only clueless one out there.

Unfortunately, practice was cancelled this week because of rain. The Geckos could have REALLY used some more coaching before this weekend.

GO GECKOS!