Catching up after the weekend

I'm sorry I haven't posted much this weekend, but Ron had both days off and we spent most of it doing family things and just spending time together. Having him around for 2 days in a weekend hasn't happened in close to a year, so we wanted to take advantage of it.

Not to mention that it just took me an hour to catch up on all of my blog reading that I missed over the weekend too. :)

The girls and I got home on Friday to find Ron already there - he'd managed to end up with that day off too, so it's been a much-needed 3-day weekend for him. Having him around for dinner was a blessing, but also created a problem as our grocery-starved house just didn't have anything to offer all 5 of us for dinner. Now we used to go out to eat a lot but over the past year we really don't very much, partly because Ron's never here and partly because we can't afford a nice sit-down meal. We do fast food more often than we should, of course, but it seems like birthdays or my mom's visits are the only times we actually have a meal served to us lately. So we took the opportunity of Ron being home for dinner for once and went out. Besides, I was hoping that Applebees would honor the 3 free kids meal coupons I had been hanging onto for a while.

The dinner was nice, the kids (generally) behaved themselves and the restaurant did honor 2 of the 3 coupons. Our server was incredible and we felt very pampered. All in all, it was a good experience.

Later that night, my friend Kristi picked me up for what is becoming a tradition of going out after all of our kids are in bed for some shopping, dessert and kid-free mommy time. We talk, we shop without having to hear, "Can I have that?" even once, and we have dessert at a restaurant without needing kids menus or crayons. I'm starting to really look forward to Friday nights! It will also come in handy in the next couple of months to be able to buy birthday and Christmas presents on these kid-free trips too.

Saturday morning involved a lot of soccer, like usual. This week we had Abby's game first though, since she played at 9:00 am. I noticed that her team seemed a bit more sluggish than usual and they lost 3-0. I don't think the early morning time is the best for them. I didn't get many pictures this week since Ron was with us finally (he's the reason I generally take so many photos to begin with since he hadn't made it to any games until now), and Abby played forward on the opposite side of the field from us, then sat out a quarter, then was goalie, and then on defense. Not much opportunity for good photo-taking. Nobody on their team is real aggressive as forwards - one reason why they didn't score at all yesterday. Abby saved a couple of goals but let one through. She did get two great stops while on defense though - the first time she's really ever even tried to kick the ball while playing defense.

(Abby as goalie in the red jersey, running the ball back out to throw it after saving a goal)

(This is mostly what Abby does while playing defense, but she really got in there yesterday when she needed to!)

After Abby's game ended, we had to rush right over to Hannah's. Our soccer games are played at a couple of elementary schools and Abby plays at one while Hannah plays at another. Neither of the schools offer any restroom facilities for soccer practices/games. This hasn't been an issue for us, luckily, until yesterday. As soon as we got to Hannah's field, Abby had to go potty. I am so thankful that Ron was with us! I was able to leave Becca with him and just take Abby and run over to WalMart - the closest restroom available to us. We got back and I dropped Abby off at the school playground and headed back to Hannah's game.

Hannah's been really tired lately. Her moods, fit-throwing and potty accidents have been telling us that. And I can tell on the soccer field too. Instead of being aggressive about going after the ball, she'll kick it and then stop instead of running after it. And she kept complaining yesterday about being tired. She did play pretty well considering all of that though.



Here you can kind of see what I mean - the other two girls are running after the ball pretty hard and Hannah's just kind of jogging...

They both said they had a good time though - and that's really the only important thing!

It was nice to have soccer over and done with by lunchtime - we were able to head home, eat and then do nap/quiet time. Afterwards we took the kids to the park with Steve (my friend Kristi's hubby - she was working) and his 2 boys, then we all came back here for pizza. More about the park later - this is getting pretty long already...

Two more weeks of soccer left for the fall season - as tiring and stressful as it is making sure we make it to everything on time, I will miss watching the girls play. There will be 6 more weeks again in the spring though.