Soccer and Dance

Well, the regular soccer season has come to an end.  We have been with this team since practice began in July.  It was a very long season with quite a bit of drama.  We were the 2nd place U10 (under 10) team and went to a tournament 2 hours away with other teams from our district.  We knew it would be a tough weekend but our boys did very well.  We won our first game 5-0 and then lost 5-1 and 6-3.  The second team played dirty and called our kids names the whole game and even said stuff about our parents and coach.  The kids got very beat up physically during that game and David almost got a red card because he was so mad about no calls being made when our kids were getting hurt.  7 of 9 kids came off the field at the end of the game crying because they were either hurt or called a name or both.  I am so proud of them for going back out there today and keeping it together to play a really tough team.  Here is the collage I made for Andrew. Each player will get his own collage this week at our team party.  I did this in the spring and everyone loved getting one.

It was a busy weekend as Grace also had her winter dance recital today.  Grace and I left early this morning to drive home and relax and take our time getting ready. She doesn't really like being at the soccer games which makes it not very much fun for me (and the other parents I'm sure) so we skipped today's game and came home.  David and Andrew drove home after the game and went straight to the school to sit and wait to save our seats for the recital. It was a long day for them away from home.  Here is Grace in her tap outfit.  I didn't get a picture of her in her tumbling outfit.  We had plenty of time I just didn't even think of it.  I'm going to see if I can figure out how to get the routines on here so you can watch them.  They all did such a great job and Grace has improved so much!

School is out for Christmas break on Thursday, Grannylou gets here in a couple days, and Andrew starts practice Wednesday for All Stars for soccer. David is going to be the assistant coach for all stars and I am proud of both of them for being chosen.  So we leave one team and join another.....no breaks!  We then go straight into basketball and back to soccer in the spring.

Dogs

Last Saturday we had to put our sweet Carbon down.  We found out on Friday that he had cancer and a huge tumor on his leg.  He limped for a few days and then stopped using his leg altogether.  Then last Thursday he was bawling in pain and I couldn't handle it.  I never, ever want to hear that sound from a dog again.  David took him to the vet on Friday morning and they did x-rays and sent us home with instruction to get a splint to protect the leg and to keep him confined to a small room and keep him comfortable.  The bone was so bad that if he put any weight on it, he would break it. We decided it was time to put him down because there was nothing we could do to make it better.  He was 11 or 12 (we rescued him and didn't have an exact age or birthday) and they said it was very painful and didn't want to put him through anything else that would cause pain.  It was an incredibly sad day but the doctor agreed 100% with our decision which helped a little.  David stayed with him and said it was really hard to watch.  I won't go into details because it is too sad.  He was a mess that day.  Here are a couple of pictures of the kids with him.  He looks so sad and old in these pictures.  It's like he knew what was happening when we took the pictures.  We have always loved our dogs but they are outside dogs and are too dirty to come inside.  The love digging in the dirt and just rolling in it which makes it terrible to have them inside.  I wish we could have had them in but with the kids it was just too much.  Andrew was scared when he was younger of all dogs so it just wasn't possible.  Now that Carbon is gone and it has been freezing this week, Chewee has been spending most of his time in the house.  He is in the laundry room most of the time but today he was roaming around the house a little.  I took him to get groomed today (much needed) and we took pictures of him and the kids today. He has been searching and searching for Carbon so we are just trying to love on him and spoil him.  This afternoon/evening he has been much better about not going out back searching and then straight to the garage to search and then wanting to back out and look again.  Anyway, onto the pictures.  Please ignore that I wasn't really prepared to have my picture taken.  I had a rough morning dealing with what was happening.

Pics of the kids with Chewee.  I wanted to use one of these pictures on my Christmas card but David thinks it's silly.  I'm having the kids pictures taken tomorrow for our card anyway so I guess this one will just go on the blog and in a frame.