Soccer Saturday

This past Saturday was a busy soccer Saturday.  It started again at 8am with Lyla’s game - this time in the rain.  They play on turf fields, so it has to be a pretty big downpour for them to cancel the game.  Lyla continues to get more comfortable with the Academy set-up and scored a great goal for her team.  More importantly, she continues to have fun and enjoy her time playing!

  

 

After Lyla’s game, we grabbed a donut then headed off to see Ryleigh’s game.  It was still raining at the time of her game, but thankfully it finally stopped by about half time.  Ryleigh and her team played great, and we were excited to get the chance to see her play!

 

 

 

After Ryleigh’s game, we made it home for lunch and a shower, then it was off to RFK for DC United’s home game.  They were celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the inaugural 1996 season, so they invited Mark down to be a part of the pre-game show and festivities.  For Mark, it was hard to believe that the first season was 20 years ago, but the time there brought back some great memories as well as allowed him to visit with some old colleagues from his time at DCU.  We are very proud of Mark as well as all the other guys that were a part of that 1996 team that won the league’s first championship!

 

 

 

  

 

 

More Soccer

I recently switched over to a new computer and a new blogging program, so I’ve been speding a bit of time trying to figure out how my new operating system would work with my current blog.  The program that I formerly used to post blogs wasn’t compatable with my new computer, but I think I’ve got it figured out now.  

 

We’ve continued to enjoy watching Lyla play soccer.  She has fun with it, looks forward to practice, and even though the games are early on a Saturday morning, she still looks forward to going.  The way this developmental academy is set up, the girls play with a different mix of girls and a different coach each week.  All the girls and the coaches are part of the academy, but in order to get them experience playing with different girls and for different coaches, every week is a different mix.   If she continues to play in the fall, they will be in a more traditional set-up of playing teams outside of Loudoun Soccer, but for right now, we’re happy that she’s enjoying herself and learning a lot

I think sports are so good for girls, and I think team sports bring an added bonus.  I love to see the teamwork, the camaraderie with other girls, the relationships develop, and the confidence they seem get.  Because this was Lyla’s first exposure to the academy, at first she was a little apprehensive that she wouldn’t know anyone and that the other girls had been together since the fall, but each week as they switch girls and rotate teams, she tells us of a new friend she’s made.  I love that for little girls, and I love so much about what team sports can do for them! 

  

Puppy Sleepover

This week we had our first puppy sleepover with Maggie.  As Cayenne’s BFF, it’s only fitting that she got to have a sleepover – the other girls get to have sleepovers, so the baby dog has to have hers too!  Before you think I’ve gone off the “dog obsessed” deep end, the truth is that my parents had a lot to do at the house in Southern MD, so Maggie came to hang with us for two days.

On day one that she was here, the two pups were 100 miles an hour for hours.  They raced around, wrestled, played, raced around some more, chased, wrestled more…I could go on and on, but of course you get the picture.

 

So, when this happened after four straight hours of mayhem, I felt like I was witnessing a puppy miracle!  I didn’t even want to use my “real” camera to take this picture because I was certain the click on the camera might wake them up.  Unfortunately, I had to wake them up after just 10 minutes of rest so I could take them out before leaving to teach my class.  It was painful to do!  I can now fully appreciate the suggestion to “let sleeping dogs lie”!!!

Maggie even learned from Cayenne a little about the benefits of letting the human take her picture.  Cayenne has quickly learned that if she holds still and lets me take her picture, I give her a little piece of Milkbone as a reward.  It’s actually gotten quite annoying as anytime Cayenne is in the viscinity of me taking a picture, she’ll sit and look at me, expecting me to take her picture then reward her with a treat.  Shockingly enough to her, there may be occasions when I’m not actually wanting her in the picture.

 

When the girls got home from school, they wanted to take the pups on a walk around the neighborhood which was fun.  With all the squirrels and birds in the park, the picture below on the right happened a lot!

 

By the end of day one, they had started to settle down a bit, so we let them come up at shower time and bedtime.  Cayenne always comes up and hangs out while the girls get showers and gets ready for bed, then she goes to each room to say goodnight, but the pups defintitely got a burst of serious energy when upstairs and were racing from room to room, and even interrupted an attempt at Nina recordering her Awana verses to her leader: https://youtu.be/U-LaAj5QZYU

As a result, they were both banned from the upstairs.  Clearly they weren’t happy about it. 

By the end of the night, thankfully, they were both so exhausted that they slept.  Cayenne put her head on my hand for me to give her a little pet, and within seconds she was asleep.

  

Day two was much of the same as day one, but they did hit a more reasonable rhythm of play and rest, play and rest, repeat, repeat, repeat.  Maggie is a great pup, and together, she and Cayenne have so much fun.   While the 2-legged girls in the family all have so much fun getting together, it’s nice that the 4-legged ones love spending time together so much too!!

Catching Up

Lyla had her first game of the spring soccer season this past Saturday, but with the cold temps and snow flurries it felt a lot more like winter soccer than spring soccer.  All her games this season are at 8 AM, so it is a bit of a challenge getting everyone out of the house by 7:30, but Lyla was very excited for her game and had fun regardless of the cold.

 

We caught a bit of a happy face celebration after scoring a goal, then at the end of the game she got some warm hugs from her sissy.  Lyla had tried out and made a developmental academy for girls her age in Loudoun County.  The program is a lot more structured than the recreational league, and while we miss her friends from the old team, she is so enthusiastic to go to practices, is meeting new friends, and often says how much she loves it, so we’re happy that she’s happy! 

 

Nina has continued to work on her tumbling skills.  Her biggest hurdle to cross initally was doing a roundoff back handspring.  It was something she had worked towards and was so proud to complete.  Since then, she got to doing the running roundoff back handspring without the “safety net” of a spotter nearby (a big step for Nina), and now she’s working towards her double backhandspring.  You can take a look here to see what she’s working towards: https://youtu.be/OX4hMLh0M4E.  As with Lyla, we’re happy that she is having fun, enjoys what she’s doing and is working hard.

The baby dog contiunes to provide us with plenty of entertainment.  It seems in my life I’m plauged by dogs who love hair things.  When I was a teenager and we had Cobi, she loved to steal my scrunchies.  I had a basket of them that I kept in my room, and she would love to sneak in, steal a scrunchie (of course she made sure I saw her), then would dart off to Bo’s room where she hid under the bed and against the wall where I couldn’t reach her.

It’s come back around with Cayenne.  Cayenne LOVES hair bands.  She steals them all the time, and just like Cobi, she’ll wait until I see her to take off running with one.  Just the other day, I saw her run off with something, but when I approached her, clearly she was hiding it (picture on the left).  So I asked her what she was hiding and what resulted was the picture on the right.  Such a little rascal!

In other dog news, if you’ve never lived with a talkative dog, here’s a little sneak peak at what life with a talkative Vizsla can be like.  When she has something to say, she makes sure to get her point across! 

I’d love to know what she really means with all that “talking”: https://youtu.be/eNbln8BYXaA