Rockstar Tournament

Last month, you may remember, The Girl changed soccer teams to come to a better team that's affiliated with our local HS. The coach invited another player from her old team to try out, and she (Camillia) joined the team as well.

I felt a bit guilty about that, but who am I to decide not to pass on an invitation?

A few weeks ago, the new coach called and said we'd been offered an opportunity to join a relatively new club (still nearby) that was willing to give us scholarships, uniforms, trainers - a much better deal than the local club.

We asked The Girl what she thought, and she thought cheaper is better as long as the team is still together and good. Partly because the basketball program was (IMHO) messing with my daughter, I said "to heck with loyalty to the local club." K joked that we'd been on the same team for 6 years, and now we'd been on 3 teams in a month!

Last weekend the team went to their first tournament with the new players. At this age, there are some girls on the team playing in HS, and therefore can't play with us until their season is over. So we got 3 guest players to join us in the tournament.

I was a bit stressed on Thursday night and Friday, when I realized that the first game was at 7:45am (why do they always do this to the team farthest away?) and it was at least an hour's drive. K had a game himself on Friday night, and would be getting back late. So I decided to drive down on Friday night, which meant making reservations Friday morning and packing, planning, etc. We were also taking Camillia.

We got on the road without much problem, but when I looked for my directions I found that they hadn't printed out. I'd only printed out the map, which was too big! So when we got to the right area, I gave The Girl my phone and asked her to find my navigation program and put in the address of our hotel.

Bless her heart, she figured it out. When the voice came on, it said, "Take the first legal U turn." Guess that meant I was going the wrong way! lol

The next day we got up early, and the girls played two good games, shutting out the other teams 2-0, and 3-0. Yay! Camillia scored 2 goals and the new Goalie kept the other teams from scoring.

On the way home, the Girl found out she could still make it to her basketball game! We had told them she wouldn't be there, assuming that we'd be gone.

The Boy was coming home to visit, so I told him to meet us at the game. The Girl had a great game and didn't even foul out! She scored 11 of her team's 19 points. And her brother got to see her! She won 3 games in one day.

The next day she was tired and kept falling over the ball during the first game. One of the substitutes didn't come to that game, as she had a prior church-related obligation. One of our players hit heads with the other team, and had to come out. So they played nearly half the game one player short. That team was tough, but rather thuggish, so I was glad when we beat them 1-0 (we'd only needed a tie.)

The second game was around 4pm, so we drove home and ate lunch and I put a roast in the crock pot and tried to take a nap. We convinced the Boy and his GFF to come to the game, and we all drove back to the tournament.

When we got there, we discovered that the tournament was behind schedule, and they were saying that we might not get to play the championship game! (toss a coin?) Finally they decided that the game would be more than an hour late, and they would find some lights.

The Boy was most unhappy to hear he'd be sitting around for another hour, but they managed to eat hot dogs and bear with it. There was a tent giving away Rockstar Energy drinks (with parental permission). I drank one and it made my stomach hurt!

The sun went down and finally the girls got to play. One player who was out with the flu came to try to play, and we got our substitute player back from church. The first 5-10 minutes were intense, as the other team was extremely fast and good. But after awhile the team relaxed and although the other team got some shots off, our team seemed to have more control of the ball. But neither side scored.

The other team had 6 substitutes, and we had a girl with the flu on our bench. She had to go in for another player once, but only lasted a few minutes. We had a few opportunities to score near the end of the game, but the shots were off. One girl was so disappointed in her kick that she almost started crying.

So we headed into two sudden-death overtimes, to be followed by a penalty kick shoot out (which is hard on a parent). The first OT came and went quickly. At almost the end of the second OT, the ref called pushing on the other team.

So they had a free kick about 30 ft and to the right of the goal, and the teams lined up in front. At the last minute, the coach told The Girl to take the kick. I thought she was going to kick it into the crowd so that someone could kick it in. When she kicked it, I thought, "Oh no! It's too high!" and it looked like it would go over the goal. At the last second it dropped and hit the back of the net.

There was a second of silence, and then all the girls (and parents) started screaming.The Girl fell to the ground and the team ran and jumped on top of her, and when she got up she said she had dirt in her mouth.

The boy jumped up off the ground and said, "That was The Girl, right?"

It was so great. We didn't have to go into penalty kicks! We won the tournament! Her brother got to see it! The goal made it worth the wait! All the new girls had a great tournament, and proved they were worthy to be on the team. One of the substitutes is now thinking about joining us!

It was dramatic. It was wonderful. I'm sure we'll be talking about it for years.

Bottoms Up

The other day the Girl said her friend asked her what "Bottoms up" means, like the song on the radio.

The Girl demonstrated, "You have a bottle of beer, and then 'bottoms up.'" and tilted it upwards.

Her friend said, "Oh, (pause) I thought it meant something else."

lol I don't even want to know what she was thinking!



Oh, and I finally bought another camera! I know you are happy for me.

Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a nice New Year's Eve. I ate way too much, and now have to start exercising more.

My sister, R, went to Aspen to visit friends for New Year's Eve. My Dad was worried about her driving in the mountains, but it turns out he should have been worried about a nut delivering bombs to banks. What are the odds, right? They ended up evacuating parts of town, so altho she didn't get evacuated, she couldn't go out for New Year's Eve! Everything was shut down!

But I guess she could hear the police cars and the police detonating the bombs. I heard the guy left long rambling notes around town, threatening mass destruction. I think he just wanted to be heard, and thought no one would read his long rambling notes unless he punctuated them with bombs!

My sister- she's always where the action is.

Drama for your Mama

The day before the soccer tournament this weekend, K asked The Girl to get her soccer uniform together. She looked in her room and announced it wasn't there.

What???

When K gets frustrated, becomes sort of like a whirling dirvish, and the whole house heard about it while he searched in various places. It seemed to me that it should have been clean by now, as she'd last played a game around 4 weeks ago, but she claimed to have put it into the laundry, and never seen it again.

I'm in charge of washing the laundry, so I was feeling a little blame and pressure. K, who folds the laundry, claimed to not have seen it come through the laundry either. So we searched the entire laundry room several times, but couldn't find it!

Meanwhile K kept walking around, saying, "Where is it? Where is it?" He was really getting frustrated. I kept saying that the house just isn't that big - there aren't that many places it could be!

The girl looked at me with big brown eyes and asked in all innocence, "Mom, why does he keep asking ME? Why does he automatically blame ME?"

I finally replied, "Because it's YOUR uniform! You are in charge of it! Because it was probably you that had it last."

No, no, she swore she didn't have it. I was trying to diffuse the situation and calm everyone down, and not feed into K's upset, or my perception of blame. K went into her room, and found the shorts to her uniform.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I thought you only meant the shirt!"

ALL of it! We need ALL of the uniform! Together!

We sent the Girl to the van, which had a bag of clothes for Goodwill that the Girl keeps bringing out of her room. She came back with her old jerseys, which we now would need. K was a little mad that she had been getting rid of those.

We searched everywhere. I even looked in The Boy's room, in case it had accidently gotten in with his clothes. Nope. Finally I sent K to the van again, thinking maybe she took it off in the van on her way back from her last game, and stuffed it somewhere in the van. I couldn't understand how it hadn't made it into the laundry toom!

K came back with the red jersey, which he found in the Goodwill bag! Of all places! Usually I go through her things before I get rid of them, but K had grabbed this bag and had nearly taken it to Goodwill the day before!

K was SO mad. The Girl came to me for protection, and I took the opportunity to remind everyone that the uniform was CLEAN!! It had indeed gone through the laundry and come out the other side, so everyone was a little wrong.

I couldn't understand why she hadn't found it in the bag the first time she looked, though, so I asked her, "Are you color blind?" and she answered, after a pause, "I love you!"

I told her, "Honey, if you want to quit soccer you can just TELL us! You don't have to give away your uniforms and sprain your ankle!" But she claims I'm taking her actions too literally.

I know exactly how it happened, too. She was so excited about getting new clothes for school, that she probably took an entire drawer and just dumped it into the bag. She can't have looked at the clothes at all, or she would have noticed the uniforms.

After she went to bed I told K, "Why does he think I know where it is? Why would anyone think that I would know where it is?" And finally we could laugh about it. We laughed until we cried. That was a classic.

But we still haven't found the white uniform.

-----------------------------
Then we went to a soccer tournament in Irvine.

Saturday we played a team from Las Vegas, who were the champions last year. They were really tough, and finally beat us 2-1. I think we only scored because we got a penalty kick right in front of the goal.

The second team we played was from Carona. We beat them pretty easily 2-0, but their coach was really mad and complained to the ref for awhile after the game. They were saying bad things to our girls, so I didn't like them too much. They ended up not winning any games.

Sunday played a team from Santa Clarita, and lost 3-1. One of their goals was just a mistake by our Goalie we'd had to borrow from another team because our substitute goalie had gotten sick. So basically she was doing us a favor. We felt a little badly about that, and tried to make the girl feel OK about it. And again, we only scored because of a penalty kick right in front of their goal, but I thought the game was closer than the score would suggest.

So we were out and didn't get to play the Las Vegas team again, like I had hoped. I stayed to watch a little of the next game, and a team called Madrid started setting up in front of us. The coach looked at me, and I saw him get a look in his eye like he recognized me or remembered something, and then he looked at The Girl. He knew her name, and called her over.

She went over and talked with him for a few minutes, and I could feel a few of the parents from that team looking at me. When she came back, she said that he'd told her that she looked like a good player, and was impressed that she was a leftie. He asked where she would go to high school (in 4 years!), and told her if she still played in high school, that she'd probably play his team in Sherman Oaks.

Hmmm. Then that team ended up winning the tournament! I was really surprised.

Christmas 2007

We had a nice, if fractured, Christmas. I got back from CO on the 20th, and it was downhill to Christmas after that. We bought last minute presents and finished getting ready. On Saturday we went to see some friends from college who are moving to Santa Monica, and the whole family was in town for a few days. We went to breakfast and then walked around for awhile. That's were we saw this tree made of shopping carts!

The Boy's birthday came on the 23rd. He was so happy that day, saying, "I'm a MAN now! Mom, what do you think about your boy who's a MAN now?" We took him to brunch with his friends, since he had to work that night. Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles was his choice. He tried to think of all the things he could do now that he's 18 - drive (hasn't taken the test yet), vote, serve on a jury and help decide someone's fate, and buy things with a valid contract.

He got an iPod from his girlfriend, and he was SO happy. She spent way too much on him, but he loved it. The Girl was jealous.

The next day was Christmas eve, but we tried to celebrate a lot that day, as K (my husband) had to go to work early on Christmas day. So I made a nice dinner, which wasn't too hard. The Girl kept saying we should start, but there was nothing that had to cook all day (like a turkey). We had ham. I also boiled some potatoes (for the Girl to mash), made spaghetti squash (which the Girl LOVES. It's very good), warmed up some tamales, made mole from a jar, and that was about it! K proclaimed it delicious.

Then we went to church, where the Girl had been asked to read something in their Holiday performance. She got SO nervous! Then some little kids lined up to sing, and they were SO, so cute!! One boy on the end barely knew the words, but kindof kept up with the motions. Then another girl who started out in the back row pushed her way to front, like "this is my chance!" She did that every song they sang. They were funny because they were so cute.

K was supposed to open all his gifts that night, but he got sleepy and decided to wait until he returns from work. As is tradition, we all opened one present, with several of us feeling like we opened our best present that night! That's not supposed to happen! The Girl opened the present she was most curious about, and it was an iPod too! From her Grandparents! Then it was the Boy who was jealous, until he determined that hers was 2 Gigs and his was 4Gigs. Also hers was engraved with her name, but he doesn't care about things like that.

Also, K started a NEW tradition of balancing the presents on our head before we open them. Whatever, don't ask me.

The next morning K was gone, so the kids and I got up and started opening presents. Our dog wins the prize for most liking his present, because once we opened it, he couldn't stop playing with it!

Once, when the Girl removed the wrapping paper from one of her presents, she found a Swann's quesadilla box. I said, "Oh, great! Quesadillas!" and the girl said yeah, and put it aside. As if that was really her present! Just kidding, kid! Inside was the station to a Mexican Train domino set.

We all got nice gifts, and people seemed to like what I got them, too. We ate eggnog french toast with syrup and leftover ham, which is just SO yummy! I'll post the recipes soon.

Merry, merry, and Happy, happy too!!!

I'm looking for '08 to be great. Or at least really, really good.

A Pet Tale

I can definitely sympathize with Ellen the Generous. Some of these adoption places go overboard, in my opinion. I know they're just trying to do a good job, but sometimes they can make things very difficult. We had quite a few surprises when we tried to adopt a dog.

We started off at the nicest shelter near us, Pasadena, because someone told us they had cute animals there. My kids had been lobbying for a dog for a long time, and altho my husband had finally given in, he really wanted nothing to do with the dog. We'd had a bad experience with a big dog once before, so we compromised by looking for a little dog this time.

So we started in Pasadena, and my son found a cute Datchund he liked. So we went into our interview, and were immediately told that small dogs don't do well with children, so we should get a Labrador. Um, did she even HEAR the part about us looking for a SMALL dog? It wasn't clear that she was going to LET us even try to adopt the dog we'd picked out, but we continued with the interview process. Was our yard fenced? Well, not yet, but will be very soon.
-Is it, or not? Oh, yes, yes, it's fenced.
-Are your cats neutered? Well one is for sure, the second I'm not sure.
-Is it, or not? Oh, yes, yes! They're both neutered!

She told us that first the dog had to clear the waiting period, then the first person on the waiting list gets their crack at adopting the pet. First they have to interact with it, and if that doesn't go well, you can't have it. If it DOES go well, then the dog undergoes further testing to make sure it's adoptable. Excuse me, shouldn't that be done FIRST? Why get people's hopes up if the dog's not adoptable?

Anyway, this dog already had a waiting list, and the first person on it had a positive interaction with it, so we moved on.

Next we visited the Glendale animal shelter, where we'd successfully adopted our youngest cat a few years earlier. I hadn't realized this, but in that time the shelter went from being government-funded to privately-funded and no-kill. Maybe that explains why so many dogs there seemed mean - like they were really picked-over and only the snarling ones remained. Lots of pit bulls. We still found one that was fairly cute, so we went to the office where we were told we'd have to take a class in pet care first. Also, since it's privately funded and no-kill, it cost about $200 to adopt a pet there!

Wow! For that kind of money we could have gone to the pet store! Or maybe a breeder. Luckily they had a sheet there with the names and locations of all the other shelters in the area.

My children pressed me onward, so next we went to the Burbank animal shelter. There we saw a dog my son liked (it could lick it's own eye!), but we had to wait for it to clear its waiting period. On the day it cleared, you had to show up right when the shelter opened to hopefully be the first one there to adopt it. If more than one person showed up, then it went to a lottery system. Also we'd need to bring in the whole family (including pets) to make sure we all got along before we went home.

K was having none of that. No way was he going to the shelter, as he didn't even WANT a dog! And take our cats? We'd have to catch them first. And frankly, we're afraid of the oldest one. I can't imagine he'd take kindly to such a visit.

So, having to wait for that dog anyway, the kids lobbied to go to one more shelter. So finally we went to the dregs-of-LA, under-the-freeway animal shelter (actually the same North LA shelter that Heather ended up at). The no-questions-asked shelter (except for, "Do you want it?" and, "Can you afford the $75 adoption fee?"). The kind of shelter that unfortunately DOES have to kill the unadopted pets.

There, I'm happy to say, we found the cutest dog of all. I stuck my fingers in the cage to see how nice it was, and it gave me a friendly nibble. The kind of dog that knows how to not bite hard! We were told that it would clear its waiting period the next day, and we should try to be the first ones there. If more than one person showed up to adopt the same pet, it went into an auction-type situation where the person willing to pay the most got the pet.

Well, the dog we liked came available the very next day. The Boy was so excited I think he even set his own alarm to wake up early, so we could get there when the shelter opened. I think it was 8am. Somehow we got down there very early, and were the ONLY ones (so far) that wanted "our" dog, and so we got him!

They brought him out to move him, and the kids played with him briefly. After that, an official (dogcatcher?) walked up to me and said that he noticed the Girl moving quickly around the dog, and advised me to watch her and tell her to not make sudden movements around the dog, so that he wouldn't get scared. So even there, they were watching and trying to make sure the dog would work out in our home. But not in an overly bossy way.

Truly, if you really want to save a dog, I say to get it from there. Not only because they make it easier, but you REALLY feel like you're saving an animal there.

I saw a woman outside carrying a pit-bull puppy, and asked her if she got it there. She said no, she was going to drop it off there, but then she found out that the unclaimed dogs get euthanized. I told her to take it to the Glendale Humane Society, as I know they are a no-kill facility.

And I have to say, the dog we got couldn't be any better! (OK, maybe a little less barking...) He's so cute and nice - he was already mostly potty trained. He's a lot like the dog in Garfield though (Ode), pretty clueless when it comes to cats. They gave him a few welcoming swipes, though, so he pretty much steers clear of them now.