Soccer games are Sunday at noon. Avalon has enough U-8 kids for two teams, Green and Yellow. Calvin was quite reticent to play when we first approached him about it. There was a lot of whining about not wanting to drive across the island, but it was something else that was bothering him. Since we had already signed him up, we told him he would go week 1 and see how it goes. So we get there and the first thing that happens is Calvin gets his uniform, including shin guards, and he's told he can keep them. Calvin is now sold on youth soccer. He is very excited to play. Now this being Southern California, a large majority of the kids there are hispanic, and a large number of them (for, I guess cultural trend reasons) have their hair slicked up into fauxhawks. Calvin stuck out like a sore thumb on the pitch because 1) he's the smallest one out there, and 2) he's blond. Well, after some practice kicks, the coaches arrayed the kids across the pitch, the ref blew the whistle, and amoeba soccer (props to my friend Mary for introducing the term to me) began. Hobbes has never been interested in competitive sports, so this is our first experience with it. It was an odd feeling, watching my boy out there on the field: pride, anxiety, excitement. For his part, Calvin was so excited to be out there in the action. Huge grin, running around after the ball, kicking it a few times, getting knocked down and, one time, getting hit "in the tenders" (his words) by the ball. Hilarious. Afterwards we had lunch and drove back to Two Harbors. Calvin slept hard the whole way.
We ended up driving back across the island Monday for Cub Scouts. Two days in a row is kinda hard, but it looks like we may be doing it many weeks this winter. We've got 4 in the Tiger Den right now. I've been realizing/remembering that being a Den Leader means you have to organize meetings. So I found my files from when I was Hobbes' Tiger Den Leader and I pulled out Hobbes' Tiger book and started planning out some meetings. The Webelos I leader (Hobbes' group) said she thinks that they're going to try to do most of their advancement work during weekend campouts once a month, rather than weekly meetings. We'll see how that works out. It would be good to get more camping in. The Pack in Avalon is probably 25 kids, and the Scout Troop is about 15. They meet together once a month. The program has only been going on for about 7 or 8 years, I think. The oldest Scouts are just now getting to the upper ranks (Star, Life and Eagle) [Speaking of which, can anyone explain to me why the Scouts switched to those drab beige rank patches? I liked the old ones much better.]
Tonight we also had Back To School Night. The new Ms Frizzle is great; she's got a lot of energy, and has a strong background both educationally and experience-wise. She explained the structure of the school day and then the kids showed us some of what they'd been working on. The mornings are all about math and reading/grammar. Then in the afternoons they have "enrichment", which can be PhysEd, Art, Music or Science. She has everyone, even the first graders, learning cursive. Both Things are enjoying school, although there are the usual complaints about the usual things.
Okay, I'm going to try to load some video now. We'll see if it works. Okay, apparently I need to fill up this disk before I can get any video off it. I'll have some killer stuff when I do. Well, at least I have some pictures, thanks to Sweetie.
These pictures are from week 2 of soccer, so Calvin is sporting his very own fauxhawk. Here he is getting kitted up:
During warm-ups, his shoe came off. Classic.
And now the action shot - Calvin goes in for the strike!
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1 comment:
Last time I saw Calvin, he retrieved a soccer ball under a chair on your deck with a pull back. That was fairly advanced for whatever age he was then and I thought "this kid has madd skillz." Well, not those words exactly.
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