FALL SOCCER SEASON OPENER

 Yes, Jay is once again coaching both James and Cora's U8 teams. It's great having them in the same age group again because they practice on the same day (Tuesday evenings), their games are slightly closer together (9:00am and 11:00am, instead of 9:00am and 12:00pm like last year, so just 4 hours on the fields between warmups and cleanups rather than 5...), and they're playing on the same size fields with the same size goals (those tiny U6 fields were getting really frustrating with the constant out-of-bounds).

Pre-game warmup starts at 8:15am and consists of drills, reminders, and a pep talk. James' team is all new to us this season, and with the change-up to cut-off dates for each age category, he has Kindergartners, First Graders, and Second Graders on his team. You'd think that spread would be hard to handle, but the kids don't seem to notice at all and Jay says even the little bitty guy is doing great on the bigger fields with bigger boys.

View of all four U8 fields from the closest shade tree (Cora needed a walk)

James had to play for the White team today because they only had 3 players and none of the other kids on our team were willing to be traded. James played SO WELL today. He got in there and did his best, and it was so fun to watch him!

James takes a throw-in

On the ball!

Popsicle break between games. Followed shortly by a hot dog lunch.

Pre-game pep talk for the girls (only 6/9 of them though - not everyone showed up early as coach requested)! Emily (on the far right) has been on our team for the past 4 seasons (since Fall of 2014) and it's been so neat to see her and Cora grow up together on the fields (they're in the same grade at school, though Emily is 10 months older than her, and go to different schools, so we rarely see Emily outside of soccer season).

Taking it to the goal...

SUCCESS! It was a team effort - I believe McKinley there closest to the goal actually tapped it in. The girls generally did a really good job working together and passing/assisting - Jay had to hold them back halfway through the game because they were dominating the other team, which is a nice change for him ;-)

I love the determination she shows on the field - all but one of our girls are pretty aggressive this season

Going in for a steal

Emily and Cora racing across the field back to their goal - I think Emily scored 3 this game and she was HAPPY!

Team lineup (missing one girl who was absent today) after their victory: Emily, Cara Beth (a good friend from Girl Scouts and dance), Mari, Ally, Kennedy, Cora, McKinley and the itty bitty one that just turned 6-years-old yesterday (Kindergartner) whose name I can't recall. Lots of new names to learn for me this season (on both teams)...

Hands in for a victory shout!

WINDOW READER

You never know where you'll find James reading...

This particular afternoon was an attempted escape from Cora and her costume craziness, but he told me he liked the light in the window too.

EARNED AND RETURNED

Cora had her costumes (ALL of them) taken away a few weeks ago due to her poor behavior at school. (Now, when I say poor behavior, it is generally just talking that gets her clip moved down the color chart from green to yellow to orange to red. But she talks OVER her teacher, interrupts lessons, and disrupts the class - especially her good friend, who sits next to her. And once she stuck her tongue out at her teacher after she had to get up and move her clip down - that was a red day. Anyway, while the sass is obviously not ok and not tolerated at home either, and the talking/disrupting is rude, it's not like she's being bad. Regardless, we had to come up with a punishment that she'd actually care about - so first went the Barbies, then the costumes. Stuffed animals were next on the list...)

When she brought home two purples in a row last week (Thursday and Friday) and followed that up with FOUR purples in a row this week (today was a yellow) day, we celebrated with ice cream and the return of her Barbies or costumes. She chose the costumes. And she went through 4 or 5 outfit changes before Jay was even home from work!

So, what brought on the change? Well, after an entire August of yellow, orange, and red marks (I think she had one green day...), and at least 5 or 6 different days of "parent contact", Jay and I were kind of tired of hearing about it. I know, I know. She's OUR kid and the teacher needs our help figuring out what makes her tick, but come on, she's 6-years-old and in your care during the day - how much can we really do from work (when we're supposed to be working)?! So in a bout of frustration, I told her teacher to just move her seat to the back of the room and make her sit by herself and see how she likes it (thinking she'd hate it and start following the rules so that she could move back up with her friends). Well guess what? She likes it at the back of the room. She sits right next to the TA's desk and she told me she wants to stay there all year. Since they get so very little social/group interaction during seatwork hours anyway, I'm fine with her staying back there. If she's happy, learning well, and coming home with "good" colors (ensuring that mama and daddy are no longer getting text messages multiple times/week), then she might as well stay put. Besides, she's making friends with her TA (Cora has made her a necklace and bracelet so far, which she was VERY proud to present to her), so at least she's sitting next to an ally ;-)

SOCCER SEASON KICKOFF

 Fall soccer 2016 kicked off this week with practices, and the kids' first games are this weekend. They were pumped (despite the oppressive heat) and had a great time on the field with coach daddy and their all-girl (first time for Cora, now that she's U8) and all-boy teams and practice sessions.

BOOOO-OPOLY

James found the fun Halloween-themed Monopoly game that Robyn gave me a couple years ago for my birthday, and since he's "almost 8!", he talked us into playing. It probably took 3 hours total (2 the first night, 1 the next day) for James to be the first to run out of money and end the game. It was a fun (longer) family activity and the kids really loved it. They totally schemed and traded cards so they could put "haunted houses" and "full moons" on their properties, and were quite proud of themselves!

Jude helped warm up the game for us before we started playing...

The kids requested lights off and candles on, to set the mood, of course.

Fancy dinner by candlelight while daddy doles out the moola (cereal and cupcakes!)

Getting late, but nobody wanted to quit...

Happy little monkeys! (Mama vetoed candles on the second night because her eyesight is going bad and she didn't want to spend another hour squinting in the dark...)

LABORING AWAY

As planned, we stayed home this weekend and worked! We pressure washed the front porch and walkway, the driveway, and the carport (and the bird feeders). We removed cobwebs from, well, everywhere. We trimmed trees and bushes, and made giant burn piles. We washed out all the many buckets that Cora constantly fills with dirt and rocks and toads. We swept and vacuumed and dusted and cleaned bathrooms. We painted the rocking chair (and the bird feeders). We bought new plants and pots, and tried to dress us the front porch just a little. We finally scrubbed the last of the guinea fowl grime from the sunroom and (re)set up a "Bootcamp/Circuit" zone. We're exhausted (and we still have so much to do...), but we made serious progress and it felt good to cross some of these big things off our list!

 There's more we'd like to do (out front, and out back), but that will have to wait for another weekend when funds are replenished and someone comes to visit who has an eye for these things...

SWIMMING BY THE FIRE

(We started this fire Saturday evening with the Kennedys and it was still going two days later on Monday night... SO MANY branches, and we just kept adding and adding and adding...)

AN ANNA AND ELSA (EGG) SANDWICH

Jay let the chickens out to roam this morning, and shortly thereafter noticed that Anna wasn't with the group. When he went looking for her, he found her under the shed deck, panting. He scooped her up to pet her and find out what was wrong, and found an egg! Her first egg! (And it ended up being a double yolk!!) Obviously, her eggs won't normally be this large, but as our Easter Egger, she's likely to have mostly brownish eggs, like this first one.

And, of course, that's Elsa's egg on the far right and Lady's olive egg in the center, for comparison. It's surprisingly fun (and satisfying now!) having our very own chickens! Now, if I could just get Chester to stop chasing me up the hill...

BONFIRE BUDDIES

We're like a walking Keens ad...

Cora's lack of costumes (taken away weeks ago for bad behavior) doesn't stop her from dressing up (here she's wearing a sequined cat shirt and a very old Halloween skirt, like 3T old...)

Big bonfires are better observed from the safety (distance) of the deck

 Just a few scenes from the evening. The kids were busy (girls in the kids' rooms playing "house" and the boys either in the living room playing sword/lightsaber fight or upstairs playing Legos) and us parents were snacky and chatty. Good times! And always best to end with a bonfire and treats!

DR. WHO?!

That didn't take him long... happy little dude!

COBWEB CLEANER

This kept her busy for a few minutes while mama and daddy started pressure washing. Then she got upset that mama wouldn't let her use the pressure washer and retreated to the house.

CAMPAIGN JAMES

James' first GATES project/homework assignment was to create an 8.5x11 "fake" campaign poster. The instructions said to come up with an "office" to run for, include a slogan and a picture of the "candidate", and then list some things that describe the candidate. So, basically, a fancier/more creative "About Me" project. After reading the instructions together last night (somebody forgot to bring the project home earlier this week, but that's ok - he's working on these things!), James quickly told me that his favorite things are Lego Dimensions and the Ghostbusters movies (the originals - we haven't seen the new one yet). He came up with the concept (including the portal, and Slimer and himself on the little blue Lego Dimensions disks that the characters are built upon) and the slogan by himself, as well as some of the description bullets (I helped with some of them because he was tired and it was late by the time he got home from his Den meeting). He did all the drawing, coloring, and cutting for Slimer (holding a sausage, of course) and the portal himself, and Jay and I helped cut out his photo (back to school picture!) and some Ghostbuster accessories (they were just too small and detailed for him - plus, it was a family project according to the instructions, so we figured we were supposed to do some of it anyway). For a last-minute creation, I think it turned out really cute. James was pretty excited to take it into GATES today to show it off:

P.S. If you haven't heard his puns yet, you should. I know, I know. PUNS. But he's pretty dang good at them (and completely cracks himself up with them - if you don't laugh along, he'll simply repeat it and then explain it to you, because he figures you just don't get it, otherwise you'd be laughing too).

KNOTS AND MUSHROOMS

 Practicing tying the two types of knots he learned at Cub Scouts last night

Showing mama the mushrooms on our morning walk

(They did a "mushroom hunt" with daddy last weekend where they had to find 20 different types of mushrooms and take pictures of them with their Kindles, mostly just to get them out of the house a bit since we've been holed up due to rain and/or heat so much lately.)

CELEBRATING A VERY GOOD MONTH

 Just look at that. ALL good colors for an ENTIRE month! If you think he was proud and pleased with himself after the first week, you should have seen him tonight. As if we weren't thrilled already, seeing him so happy about his success just takes it to the next level.

He loved getting that little Minecraft figurine "prize" after his first awesome week so much that we knew we needed to do something "big" for him to celebrate this month. We aren't the type of parents to buy the kids toys randomly throughout the year (books yes, and sometimes craft projects, but not toys) and generally only celebrate birthdays and big holidays with gifts, but we are not above bribery (ice cream is often used to encourage good behavior) and certainly not against rewarding exceptional behavior. This particular prize was very well deserved. He was even "above purple" a few days this month (in which case, his clip gets moved off the chart and onto his collar, and at the end of the day he gets to pick something from the teacher's prize box). I've never seen him smile bigger than at the end of the school days when he got to tell me he was ABOVE PURPLE and show me the little trinkets he picked. I'm tearing up just writing this, honestly. You have read it here, but you have no idea how hard it was for him last year to have to come home with all those "bad colors" (deserved or not... since we certainly stopped worrying about them near the end of the year after his diagnosis, but he never stopped worrying about them) and how frustrated we felt (and how sad/hurt we felt for him that he was often trying his best and still not "getting it"). We are so grateful for the changes that second grade has brought to him already. 

 

Since we haven't mentioned it here yet, we have some other exciting news about James - he tested into the GATES (Gifted and Talented Educational Services) program this month. He had qualified for the second round of testing at the end of last year and was tested during the second week of school this year. As exciting as it is to hear his IQ scores, we are far more excited about the opportunities that the GATES program will provide him. The goal of the program (which he'll be in from 2nd through 6th Grade) is to develop life-long, self motivated learning in each student, according to their own personal strengths. He attends GATES all day on Fridays, where he'll study new topics, spend more time socializing and working in groups, get to work with his hands more (he's a visual learner - his highest IQ score was in Nonverbal Intelligence), go on additional field trips, and receive greater individual instruction (the group is very small compared to his normal class size, and combines the 2nd and 3rd Grade GATES students, so he gets to spend time with a few of his closer friends - bonus!) Obviously, we are very proud of him for working hard and getting into this program, and can't wait to see what it does for him both academically and socially!

James had been eyeing his behavior chart for days, just knowing he was going to make it through the end of the month with greens and blues and purples, so he started hinting at a "prize" (as he calls it) a few days ago. Jay and I quickly made a decision (based on his current top interests: Legos and the Lego Dimesions Dr. Who characters) and thanks to Amazon Prime, we were able to have something wrapped and waiting for him this evening to celebrate his accomplishment. That smile was totally worth it! Congratulations Bubs, you did it!

TAILGATE KICKOFF

We don't watch football, but we do love a good tailgate, so we joined EPR for their football season kickoff tailgate at lunch today. We ate lots of delicious foods, played washers, cornhole, and ladder ball, and even got to see Alex for an hour (he was in town briefly to give an IPR). If only it hadn't been so hot (felt like 107), it would have been perfect!

INSPIRED BY FINN. AGAIN.

Remember when we had the kids wear Baltic Amber necklaces as babies to combat teething pain? Well, whether or not those actually worked (we were inclined to think they helped, since neither James or Cora were overly dramatic about teething and often times we didn't know they were cutting teeth until their heads felt warm or we felt/saw the tooth), we're going to give them a try again. Not for teething (though yes, they are both growing new teeth to replace those they've lost, and Cora is getting her last set of molars - already cutting through on the bottom!), but for behavior issues. While we don't expect miracles, with Cora's behavior track record so far this year at school (and at home... so we know the teacher isn't just being picky or especially hard on her) and James' ADD diagnosis (though he has been doing SO WELL lately, both at home and school, with focusing and following directions), we figured it couldn't hurt to try. Rather than the Baltic Amber necklaces that Inspired by Finn is so popular for, we're trying out their gemstone necklaces (Jean wears one of their gemstone bracelets and likes it).

Cora's necklace is made from beaked hazel wood, amethyst, and rose quartz. The beaked hazel wood has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antiradical properties. Among other potential benefits, it could help with teething pain and headaches. Amethyst is touted to "help resolve the root causes of thought and emotional patterns that do not serve us well". I realize that sounds very vague and unconvincing, but what if it works? Maybe just maybe it could help Cora control her temper a bit... Finally, the rose quartz is said to "resonate pure love" and help calm emotions. That is most definitely something she could use a little assistance with... But if nothing else, Cora thinks that the necklace is pretty (it has some of her favorite colors in it) and when I explained what the gemstones represent, she seemed pleased to be "wearing love". Plus, she now gets to wear jewelry to school, so that makes her very happy.

James' necklace is also made from beaked hazel wood, but it is designed to curb hyperactivity (not a problem that James battles, but it's part of the package) and attention deficit, and improve focus. It contains black tourmaline, which buffers negativity and compulsive behaviors, and supports the immune system. While James does not display compulsive behaviors, he is definitely a child that benefits greatly from positive reinforcement and reacts strongly to criticism and negative feedback. Lepidolite is said to promote relaxation and stress relief, and we know he deals with some anxiety now and then, so if this gemstone helps to calm that, then we're willing to try it out. James is happy to wear the necklace because he thinks it will help, so even if it doesn't, the placebo effect could come into play.

We promise our kids (out loud, so they know) that we will always do whatever we can to help them do their best (in all things), and this is just one way that we can contribute to that (not to mention a tangible, visible reminder to them that mama and daddy are always thinking about them and always trying to help them succeed). Between the necklaces, the vitamins (James takes Focus Factor and they both take Kids Smart fish oil for memory/learning/behavior), the essential oils, and our pep talks, we're just doing the best we can for them. James' maturation over the past few weeks is evident and we are just very proud of him and the efforts he's been making at home and at school. Maybe Cora will benefit from that same maturation... soon... but until then, if anyone has any other ideas for curbing sass/back-talk and calming a fiery temper, we're all ears! (Maybe this is what we get for naming her "seething pool"?...)

BACKWARDS SLEEPER

One night she's up on the pillows against the headboards and the next she throws us for a real loop (in the dark) by rearranging all her things to the opposite end of the bed. She has always been the kid that keeps us guessing...

JAMES THE ASTRONAUT

James was very excited to show me the astronaut that he made in class yesterday (they've been studying space for the past couple of week, which has included outdoors orbit games and some fun craft projects) and wanted his photo taken with it (it's the one directly above his head).

"I would Love to be an astronaut. I would de brave in space. it would be fun. Let's go to space! being an astronaut is fun." by, James Lindsay

(We've been practicing with him at home - reminding him to refer to his book/text when it's available to him, to ensure he spells things correctly, rather than just write his paragraphs phonetically all the time - so I was really excited to see this!)

SHARKY SAVIORS

If ever a stuffy earned it's keep, it's these sharks... No matter how much I fussed about Jay buying them as souvenirs. (I kinda wish we had Labor Day weekend plans this year, but alas, we'll call it a staycation and hope to conquer some of the bigger "to do's" off our ever-looming To Do List.) The sharks act as "protectors" from nightmares and bad guys, and make pretty good pillows too. They are the one stuffy never left on the floor overnight (in addition to James' dinosaur and whale, which he hasn't spent a night without in years).

In other news, it just cracked us up that she crawled out from under her sheets, sprawled out across her pillows against her headboard, and tucked herself under the little quilt that one of Grambot's coworkers made for her before she was born. You never know what you're going to find when you go in to check on Cora before bed...

TREASURE HUNTER

Jay borrowed a friend's metal detector to search for pins at the soccer fields (have I mentioned that he's a VSO board member this year?), so naturally, he took the kids out into our yard to see what they could find. James gave up after 5 minutes of heat and mosquitoes (he's so sweet that the bugs can never resist him, even with bug spray on, poor little dude), but Cora and Jay lasted at least an hour. And what did they find for their troubles? Not the soccer goal pins they were hoping to find in our yard (two have been missing for about a year), and no fame or fortune, but Cora did score a buried penny and an old, rusty hunk of chain. PRIZES, I tell ya! (She was sure proud!)