Tweens vs. Thirty-Somethings

Before you read on, be forewarned that this post has nothing to do with the holidays. If you are looking for cheer, check back in a couple days.

The BK and I play soccer in an adult beginner league. The team we have played on for 3 sessions now has altered significantly, mostly for the better if you are talking about our record, although I miss seeing some of the folk from the first couple sessions, but not the perpetual losses that resulted in a lot of *#&@()$ whooping. The teams are composed mostly of 25-40ish people who have nothing better to do on a Friday night but kick each other in the shins, get thrown into walls, and run around panting and out of breath. It is best to assume that this is the only physical activity most people in this league get all week. In a nutshell, it's pretty ugly.

So a couple of weeks ago, we pull up to see a "team" in matching uniforms piling out of a minivan. Certainly these kids are in the wrong place or there are here for some after hours team slumber party. As we nervously make jokes about their age we walk into the building and start warming up. Our own teamates arrive, and it is becoming more and more clear that the preteens who couldn't drive themselves to the game are, in fact, our opponents. Okay, now I am all in favor of a good matchup, but honestly, I am thinking this is definitely NOT what I signed up for or pay for. Remember, Adult Beginner League? Being on somewhat chatty terms with the manager of the place, I mope over and lodge a complaint. He assures me that they have to be at least 16 to play in the league. 16? What about 16 = Adult? Based on the width of the girls hips, weight of the boys, and acne, there isn't a chance that one of these adults (other than the coach) is a day over 15. Plus, if they were 16, they would have driven.

Fine, so it was going to be like this, eh? There are red alarms, blue alarms, and yellow alarms running through my head as I sulk back to my team and deliver the news that yes, we are about to have our hineys handed to us by highs chool freshmen. I knew it would be ugly. Setting aside their physical prowess that accompanies anyone under 25, they look like children compared to us, and I knew that any physical contact would result in the referee thinking that monsters were trying to eat the village young'ns. Sure enough, the BK (who weighs about 220 and is about 6'4) was thrown out of the game in the first 5 minutes for a 2 minute penalty. Granted, the BKs feathers were already up just by looking at them, and wasn't in the mood to have his manhood delivered to him by a tween, but in fairness he did put the kid in a headlock (the kid who weighed no more than 90 lbs and was probably 6 inches shorter). In the BKs defense, he claims that the kid grabbed his manparts.

The game progressed better than it should have. The referee was all over us, but even with that handicap, and with no subs (the tweens had double the number needed on the field standing ready to sub on the sideline), we managed to keep the carnage to a tie. Considering, I am chalking that up to a win. Afterward, I hear the coach telling them that if they could play at this level, they were in really good shape. Huh???????? Did I miss something. The whole ride home all I could think of were responses to this ridiculous statement and to the nonsense of the whole game:

"Are you serious? What level is that, the level where people twice your age, twice your weight (not in a good way), pregnant (yeah 2 of our 4 females are visibly pregnant) and 10 times more out of shape are able to hold you to a tie? Yeah, good luck playing children your own age."

"Come back after you hit puberty and get some hips."

"Go try to humiliate people in an old folks home, they might be so old they think you are just cute."

These are the only ones gentle enough for me to post without my mom telling me that I should be sweeter and that I shouldn't be playing anymore anyway. So there it is, my rant that I should have posted the day after so that I could move on with my life. Feel free to post your own comments, particularly if they are snide and cover something I missed.

Thanksgiving

We had an amazing Thanksgiving here in Portland with my brother and his adorable family. We went to the Oregon Coast, did the tour of Downtown, drove up to Mt. Hood, watched movies, and ate, ate, ate. It was my first time being in charge of the food, and thanks to a lot of help from my sister-in-law, it all turned out beautifully. I highly recommend "brining" your turkey ladies (and ambitious men). I finally figured out the problem with my pictures, and wanted to do justice to my sister-in-law's mad photography skills.


Here we all are downtown. We rode the train, did some Black Friday shopping, and my brother's youngest even joined in a Black Friday protest by doing some Tai Chi.



Although the coast was a bit wet, it wasn't too cold which was nice. The kids had a great time running around, some getting soaked by the tide, and playing in the sand. No swimming this time, maybe in August. Wait, this is Oregon, who am I kidding.

Happy Birthday Baby

Clearly I have been pretty disinterested in blogging lately, and in the meantime, I have missed some pretty key family events. I will be trying to update over the next couple of days but thought I should start with the LGs 2nd birthday which was the week before Thanksgiving. In tribute, the following are some of my favorite memories of him from this year:

Election Year Fun - the LG started recognizing McCain and Obama signs long before the election and loved to shout both their names at strange moments, often to the amusement of passersby. I'm pretty sure that unlike his parents, he was pretty loyal to Obama throughout. Recently, when we were out shopping, a black clerk was restocking the shelves. When Jackson saw him, his eyes got really big and he shouted, "Barak Obama". Probably better than "John McCain" considering the color of his skin and where we live - liberalville. Clearly there aren't many black people in Portland.

Swimming Like a Fish - He finally conquered his fear of the water and learned to swim like a fish which entails him laying on his belly, splashing around and letting his little cheeks poke out of the water. This now regular occurrence makes me wish he could stay 2 forever.

Nursery - Enough said.

Throwing Out His Own Diaper - He learned to this not long after he turned 1. If only I could figure out how to get rid of the diapers all together.

Rainy Portland - I still haven't grown to LOVE the rain, but it does bring out the best in toddler boys fasion. Rain slickers, big bulky rain boots that he can put on by himself, and adorable hats.

Language - It is amazing to me how quickly he seems to learn to speak. And truly, it is a blessing to be able to communicate with him and vice versa. The things he says crack me up, make me wish I had never uttered certain words, and my heart melt when he says things like I love you.

What an amazing little boy he is, and both the BK and I are so glad he is part of our family. Speaking of, we had some family photos taken recently - which some of you may find in your Christmas card or a later post. But in celebration of the LG, here are a few of my most prized possession. LG we love you. (sorry the pics aren't bigger but I am too clueless to figure out what is going on, and too lazy to try).

Happy Halloweeneeee

The LG endearingly ads an "eeee" sound to anything he likes lately: Halloweeneee, boookseee, trick or treateee, scarecrowee, scareeeee, animalseee. I was surprised at how much he enjoyed Halloween. We took our Cowboy and tagged along with our friends and their Dinosaur in their neighborhood which is much more posh than our own hood. The LG picked up the general idea immediately and I'm not sure I've ever seen him have so much fun as he did running door to door, knocking on doors, walking right on in to strangers homes, putting candy in his bag, saying thank you, and repeating. Here are a few pics.

Notice that above he is being escorted OUT of some one's home. I realize I am working backwards here, but Grandma sent a Spooky Cookie Castle for the LG to decorate. Only grandmothers think these things are a great idea, particularly if they aren't around to clean up or supervise sugar intake. That said, it turned out better than I thought and the LG actually put a few decorations on the castle (most ended up in his mouth).

Finally, our friend hosted a lovely Halloween party for the little ones. It was a lot of fun, and the LG was thrilled to be surrounded by such adorable little creatures including a skunk, mermaid, zebra, and fairies.

Tags

I promise I read your blog, and have not been ignoring you - you know who you are.

4 Things I Love about my Husband:
- He's a great dad.
- He likes to travel.
- He says he's sorry.
- He loves me.

4 Movies I could watch more than once:
- Pride & Prejudice (A&E)
- Love Actually
- Lord of the Rings
- National Treasure

4 T.V. Shows I watch:
Since I refuse to pay for cable (no, we don't have TIVO either) we don't have a lot of channels, so we mostly watch TV shows on DVD. The series we are up to date on include:
- Bones
- John Adams HBO Miniseries (FANTASTIC!)
- 30 Rock
- 24

4 Places I've been:
- China
- Mexico
- Guatemala
- Bermuda

4 Places I'd like to go:
- Africa (I know this covers a large area, but this way I don't have to exclude anything)
- Japan
- Italy
- France

4 Things I look forward to in the next year:
- Planting grass and cleaning up our yard.
- My parents getting home from their mission.
- Traveling - just not sure where yet.
- The unknown - at this stage in life it is much more exciting than most of the things I know about.

Prodigious

I think I used to have much more interesting posts, particularly when I first started out. Maybe it's just burnout, but now I rarely make time to write anything interesting and tend to only post things about the LG or that I feel obligated to write for the sake of my progeny in hopes that someday I get it together enough to somehow publish my blog in lieu of scrapbooking. Anyway, I guess I am just lucky that for now the LG seems to be at an amusing age - at least according to his mother. This clip is just a taste of his musical repertoire, which includes singing about anything from hippop0tami to strange phrases from books we read like, "shut the door and bolt it" (courtesy of the Grasshopper and the Ants).

Mayhem

Last Friday a bulldozer arrived, along with 4 strong Tongan men, 2 scrawny but very hardworking missionaries, and the rain. The missionaries took one look at the rv parking pad that was partially broken up and tossed into a "mound" (that we initially overlooked as a bush due the ivy growing all over it) and decided to take on our backyard as their service project for the week. Bless their hearts... forever, and ever and ever. I can't tell you how giddy I was that day. It was quite something to watch the bulldozer make small work of what would have taken the BK and me months to do (not to mention the state of our backs afterward). Giddy I tell you. You may think it still looks like a trailer park, but I think it looks like a beautiful blank canvas that will remain muddy and wet for the next 6 months or so until I figure out what to do with it all in the spring.

I dug up this picture which is a pretty good overview of the mess we were originally dealing with. The BK deserves a lot of credit for ridding much of the overgrowth which prevented the sky from being seen.

Here I am sweeping off the "driveway". The " " are to designate that it isn't really a driveway since it leads directly to a fence now and has no access to the road. We figured it might be a good idea before the bulldozer arrived to figure out exactly where the cement was. Notice the beautiful landscaping job behind me where someone so artfully built a beautiful cement retaining wall with parts of the driveway. Nice.
And after the bulldozer did its thing........ Ahhh, so clean. They even cleared out all the stumps of the trees the BK chopped down. Do I mind that the bulldozer also dug up the few flowers I had planted and the only salvagable rose bush in the yard? Not one bit! Seriously, not one bit. If I could just get Mary Poppins to snap her fingers and remove the lingering junk pile.

So below we are looking at the infamous "bush" against the far fence. You can see more cement handiwork peeking out beneath the ivy if you look close enough. There is also a lovely landscaped walkway - also made out of parts of the previous RV parking pad- that leads to the garage door.

And after..... Sorry that this doesn't give you a better idea, but consider that the BK is standing next to the fence, where the "bush" used to reside. Ahhh, so clean.

As I am typing this, it occurs to me that many of you may think we were insane to buy this house, and all the baggage that came with it. All I can say is you may be right.