4th of July, 2006
Hope and Tim started playing soccer in April so we now have lots of free entertainment for 2/3 of the day on Saturdays. Hope has come a long way since her first game. She's playing in the under 6 league and still is smaller and slower than most of the kids on her team. The first game left her in tears on the field because she was tired after about 5 minutes and didn't know she could tell the coach that she wanted a break. Since then, she knows that she can come off the field whenever she wants so she's all smiles. She's really starting to "get" 
the game more. Last week she was actually trying to position herself where she could see the ball when the other goalie was throwing and managed to get it out of a pile of kids and kick it out so one of her teammates could get it. The pictures of Hope are from her first game with her new pink ball and a more recent game where she's making a valient effort to keep up with the other kids.
Tim is playing in the 4 year old league and I'm coaching. How did that happen, you ask? Because when the roster came out they had no coach so I volunteered. The goals of 4 year old soccer are not really soccer related - at least on my team. My goals for the season - have all the kids play without crying and get the kids to run after the ball instead of standing in the middle of the field. I think Tim's only goal is to score lots of goals every game. We're making strides on all fronts. The pictures of Tim are one of him on a breakaway and a couple mixing it up with the other team.
spent Easter in CT with Debbie's parents. It was great. We didn't arrive at their house until late Friday, around 11 PM. Tim and Hope were so excited to be going to Nana and Pop's that neither slept much on the way there so it was not 
a very quiet ride up since all of our kids are talkers. We all went to to bed after midnight and still at 5:45 AM Tim crawled into bed with my parents - I'm sure to play rather than sleep. Even Hope was up at a reasonable hour after having gone to bed so late. The kids hung out and played with Nana and Pop all day, even having a picnic on their bed after Mike and I fell asleep in the family room where all 
the toys were. They all had a good time dying Easter eggs. Even Matt did a great job with help from Pop to keep the bowl of dye on the table. Apparently he didn't care for the taste of the dye though.
eing Pop isn't reason enough, was that he was going to see his friend Justin on this trip, too. They've been wanting to get together, but it doesn't happen too much when you live over 200 miles away and you spend part of your year on the other side of the world. After their initial "I'm being shy and not going to talk to you phase" they had a good time together and were reasonably well-behaved in the pizza place.
Easter morning was filled with egg and basket hunting and church
. Hope and Matt discovered that if you go to Nana's there's always lots of good food so they munched away and then sat down for a nice family dinner. They got to meet Uncle Skip, Uncle Bob and Eu. They learned that if Uncle Bob is at dinner all the grown-ups laugh and even if you don't understand 
why you laugh too. Not to leave out the kiddies, he also taught them important tricks from my youth, like how to put your finger through the flame of a candle. No, we didn't let them try it, but they were fascinated nevertheless.
