Category Archives for Soccer

Unidad Deportiva

Back in the ‘Ham, all of our kids played soccer, and Ben coached Norah’s team. He also played in an “Over The Hill” league. We hoped to find teams in San Miguel, at least for the girls – Adlani wants to take a break, but it was difficult to get any information online. That has been typical here…so much information is only available by word-of-mouth, and you have to find the people “in the know.”

We heard from Katie O’Grady of Los O’Gradys in Mexico that her daughter played on a team at Unidad Deportiva, and our other new friends (the ones we met at Geek & Coffee) told us that most of the classes there are FREE. It’s outside of town so it will likely involve a taxi or bus ride each time we go, but we can combine it with a trip to the big supermarket nearby if we need anything.

We visited la Deportiva with Los O’Gradys and another family that just arrived in SMA, and Katie (a former Spanish teacher) helped me get some information about a team for Norah. Aliya decided she’d rather take boxing classes, and Adlani may do that as well. All of the current classes were posted outside the office, and you can jump in any time – there doesn’t seem to be a start or end to the season, although new classes will be posted in October.

Soccer for girls was posted as Monday-Wednesday-Friday from 4-7, so we went on Friday to check it out. Aliya and I basically told the coach Norah’s name, that it was her first time there, and gave her a push. She was a little shy for the first few minutes but the girls were nice and the drills and practice-games seemed familiar so she really enjoyed it. The group at practice was divided into smaller girls and bigger girls, and it turned out that the younger kids (7ish to 12ish) practice from 4-5:30, and the older girls (13ish-17ish) practice from 5:30-7. All of the times are “ish” too…someone told me yesterday that “time is not worth as much in Mexico”…I’ve never thought of it that way but it explains why nothing here seems to happen at the time it’s scheduled.

While Norah practiced, Aliya, Adlani, and I checked out the facility. It’s REALLY nice, and it’s true – most classes are free or have a very minimal cost. Aliya needs a card to take the boxing class, but it is 40 pesos ($2.36) for the year. I’m not sure why she needs a card and Norah doesn’t, but I am just going with the flow – I’ve realized that I don’t actually need to know the answer to every single question. I’m trying to model that behavior for Norah because she makes me insane wanting to know every detail of what’s going to happen waaaaaaaay before it happens. The other day she asked how she will know which 5th-grade teacher she has and which classroom to go to. She hasn’t even started 4th grade yet! Anyway…I still don’t know the situation with games or uniforms for her team, but I’m sure we’ll find out when the time comes.

Here are some photos of la Deportiva…

Norah’s practice:

Norah Practice

There are multiple turf fields plus the grass fields:

Turf Field

Basketball Courts:

Basketball

Covered court for basketball or soccer:

Covered Court

 

Tennis Courts (I think there are 5 or 6 + a volleyball court):

Tennis

Very exciting for Aliya…they are putting the finishing touches on a new track!

Track

Cool weight machines where you are lifting/pushing/pulling your own body weight:

Machines

Bench Press (sibling spotters seem like a bad idea):

Adlani Spotting

Aliya Spotting

And a playground that has the same equipment that I spent my childhood on (and survived just fine):

Dismount

They even have Zumba (with an added level of difficulty if you grapevine across the decorative corner medallions)!

Zumba

We’re psyched to have found this facility and so many options for activities!

Regaining Control – Step 42

I’ve been working hard this year to try to regain control of the chaos that has become my life.  Things are still way out of hand but today I decided to tackle my photos.  I gathered up all of the SD cards that I use for my cameras, moved all of the photos and movies onto my external hard drive, backed them up on my other external hard drive, and they are in the process of being copied to “the cloud.”

Big deal, right?  Yeah, kinda.  There were 4,539 files on the SD cards.  4,539 files!  No wonder I feel overwhelmed!  I do organize my photos at the end of each year and some of the photos I copied today have probably already been copied as part of the year-end process, but who knows?  Although I haven’t been able to keep up with my blog lately (I swear, I’m going to get back to it!), I have created our annual photo book each year since 2007.  While I’m continuing to get my act together, here is the 2011 photo book, which will fill in some of the blanks.

The photos I took today were of soccer, soccer, and more soccer.  Aliya’s team won 2-0, with an awesome penalty kick by Aliya, right over the wall of Franklin players in the goal.  Norah has really gotten into playing this season…much better than crying last season because nobody was giving her the ball.  Adlani wasn’t sure if he wanted to play this season, but he decided to go for it.  He told me yesterday that goalie might be his favorite position (“you don’t have to run around a lot”) but I think he may have changed his mind after today’s game.    

 

Temporary (Self-Imposed) Blindness

“It’s always something” has become the metaphor for my life, although in my mind it’s more like “It’s always f-ing something.”  I wonder if the cemetery would let me put that on my tombstone.  The problem is, I don’t have any wiggle-room in my schedule for the next “something,” so when something happens, I don’t have a lot of patience.  Ok – I have NO patience.

Last week was my first week back at work after the summer craziness.  I have been working all summer of course, but also trying to juggle everything else while working from home every day.  Last week I started training a new person on my team, and had to be in the office to work with him.  Monday I had all 3 kids at home waiting for 2 of them to start school on Tuesday, so I had taken the day off.  Tuesday actually went fairly smoothly, at least in my definition of “smoothly.”  Wednesday we had a problem finding child care for Norah (she starts school this Wednesday), so I ended up taking her to work with me for 3 hours (the productivity took a hit and by now the trainee has probably formed an impression of me that I don’t really want to think about).  Thursday I was at the office when I got a call from the school nurse to tell me that a bug flew into Adlani’s eye IN THE CLASSROOM, and he was hysterical.  I had to leave work early and go get him.

According to the ophthalmologist, Adlani has sensitive corneas which get scratched easily.  He also has PTSS from the time Norah poked him in the eye with a pencil at point-blank range.  When that happened he kept both eyes closed for 48 hours and I was amazed.  A bug in the eye is a little less serious than a direct hit from a pencil, so I didn’t think the self-imposed blindness would last as long.  Again and again, I am proven wrong.

Friday I worked from home while Adlani laid in bed ALL DAY.  He didn’t even ask to get up, just laid there with his eyes closed.  Friday’s “something” was that Henry (the cat) escaped again and had several hours of freedom while I roamed the backyard and under neighbors’ porches looking for him.

Saturday morning we had to drive to Londonderry NH for Aliya’s soccer tournament.  Adlani still wouldn’t open his eyes, and sat in a chair on the sidelines all day.  He missed out on swimming in the hotel pool and playing with the younger siblings of Aliya’s team-mates.  He didn’t watch TV or play with his new Nintendo 3DS.  We tried everything from bribery to threats of violence – no dice.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel.  Still blind.  By this time I was pissed at Ben for totally enabling him (see below).  Why would the kid ever open his friggin eyes if he was being led around and hand-fed all of his meals?  It’s pretty amazing though that closing his eyes could make him calm enough to sit still for entire days.  Kind of like the towel over the bird cage.  Maybe I could invent some sort of calming glasses for extremely active kids.  I certainly have enough test subjects at my disposal.

Day 2 of the tournament – still blind.  All day.  That night we had dinner with our neighbors, and my very wise friend and next-door neighbor Nancy gave me the idea of using a placebo to convince him that his eye was all better (the threats of developing gangrene hadn’t worked).  I came back from Walgreens with the “special medicine” called in by Dr. Whitman (not), which was guaranteed to work in 5 minutes.  Too bad it wasn’t a money-back guarantee because I could get my 10 bucks back.  So, blind through dinner, and off to bed.  The “something” from that event was when Norah gave our neighbors “the finger.”  Seri0usly, I don’t know where she’s getting this stuff, and why she thinks anything goes.  She did it again this morning, and she’s also in big trouble because after adjusting the temperature of the refrigerator and freezer many times (and getting in escalating levels of trouble each time), today she turned them completely off.  It’s always f-ing something.

Anyway, back to the blind boy.  Today is Day 5, and tomorrow it’s back to school and work.  I woke up with renewed determination and there was no way in hell that this was going to continue for another day.  After bribing him with a doughnut, and an egg and cheese bagel from Cafe Fresh Bagel, he finally opened them.  It took about a half hour but his sight has now been miraculously restored.

What’s next?

Here are a few shots from Aliya’s tournament.  The Flash won 2, lost 1, and tied 1.  They played really well, especially for a team that has only had a couple of practices together.  We’re looking forward to a great season.

Happy Halloween!

I happened again. I got stuck.  Sometimes when I get “behind” on the blog and I haven’t had time to create posts about important events in our lives, I feel like I can’t post random little stuff until I catch up on the missing stuff, because then it will be out of chronological order.  And since I’m ALWAYS overwhelmed, I never catch up and then I don’t post anything until I snap out of it.  Well screw it.  I can’t catch up so I’m just going to override the perfectionist part of my brain and continue.

This is what happened today:

I went to yoga at the Y.  I didn’t think it would be too hard, but man, I had to come home and lay down afterward.  I broke a sweat during class and by the end I felt a little sick.  I recovered with some breakfast, but my arms are sore.  I really didn’t have any trouble staying “in the moment” during class because I was trying really hard not to fall down or let any inappropriate sounds escape.

This afternoon Aliya had soccer practice and it was the annual Parents vs. Players scrimmage.  The siblings got to play too and it was general chaos with 20+ players on the field, but the kids loved it.  I don’t think I’ve posted anything about Aliya’s soccer team here yet, but I’ve taken tons of photos of almost every game and they’re on Photobucket (if you’re so inclined, you can click here and you will see the links for each game on the left.).  Here’s one of Aliya trying to score on Ben at the Parents vs. Players game:

After soccer we came home to get ready for trick-or-treating.  Adlani asked if he could go out to the car to get his costume, and the next thing I knew…our neighbor was running in the front door carrying Adlani and yelling for ice.  She had found him with his finger shut in the car door, screaming bloody hell.  She was afraid to open the door and find his finger laying there, but bless her heart, she went for it and his fingers were still attached.  I don’t do well with blood but I caught a glimpse of his finger and it had a giant dent in it.  Seriously, his pinky was squished right down to the bone.  Future-Doctor Nikki came over to check it out, we put ice on it and gave him Tylenol, and about 20 minutes later he was good as new.  Ben said it was a good thing I hadn’t been the one to find him because I would have run back for my camera.  Sorry, no photo.

We went trick-or-treating around the hood with the Pearce Crew – it was very chilly but the kids had a blast.  I have no idea how I’m going to manage with all of this candy in the house.  I’m thinking about eating as much as I possibly can in one sitting until I throw up, in hopes that I will lose the urge to eat the rest of it.  Aliya was supposed to be a vampire but the fangs weren’t comfortable with her braces, so she paid Norah $3 to borrow her witch hat.  I think Norah was still a (hatless) witch, and Adlani was some sort of action figure guy.  We got his costume as a hand-me-down during the summer, and when I asked what he wanted to be for Halloween, he excitedly reminded me about the costume waiting for him in the Halloween bin (YES!).  When we were out making the rounds Aliya sang a song she had made up for Elizabeth and I…something about a certain candy bar being made of “butts and guts and camels’ nuts”…I asked what camels’ nuts were and she didn’t know.  They caught on pretty quickly that something was up because I was hysterical about the camels’ nuts.  I’m sure they’ll be asking around on the bus tomorrow to find out.  By the time we went around the block they were begging to go home, so we made one stop to see Norah’s teacher and Aliya’s soccer coach and headed home.  It’s past my bedtime so that’s all she wrote.

GOOOOAAALLLLLLSSS!!!

Adlani has finally found his mojo on the soccer field, after 4 seasons of bribing him with donuts and having him ask to go home in the middle of several games.  When I submitted his soccer registration, the system wouldn’t let me move him up to the U-8 league because of when his birthday falls.  Usually his birthday means that he’s one of the youngest kids…for this season it means that he’s one of the oldest. 

I think he needed this season to gain some confidence and realize that he’s a good soccer player.  It can’t be easy sharing the spotlight with Aliya, and it will get even harder next season when Norah starts playing.  But Adlani has been scoring several goals per game, without donut rewards.  Next season will be a whole different ball game, but for now, he’s a superstar.