GGGGGOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!! (Or Scarlett starts soccer in soccer language)

Scarlett started soccer last night. To say that this was a highly anticipated event would be an understatement. We could NOT wait for this day to come. Seriously.  

Joe and I have always been competitive. I've played sports since I can remember and was always pretty athletic. (I would by no means call myself an athlete now, but I held 4 school records when I graduated high school - the mile, the 2 mile, the 4 x 800 relay for track and the 200 freestyle relay for swimming...ahem, ahem. They may all have been beaten since I graduated (they totally were)...but still. Those records were mine at one point.) And Joe continues to play in old man, ahem, competitive town football and softball leagues. And he's good. We were curious to see if our kids would be athletic and competitive.

So far, at least one of them TOTALLY is. She's one of the youngest on the team, and a good head shorter than most of the other kids. This league is for 4-5 year olds and, as most of you are aware, Scarlett won't be 4 for a couple more weeks. They're letting her play because she'll be 4 when the league is in session.

And who would have guessed that our princess-loving baby girl would totally kick butt and take names?! She LOVES soccer, and we hadn't even so much as kicked a ball with her before. Initially, she had some trouble comprehending the "no-hands-on-the-ball" rule, cause it would seriously be so much easier to just pick the damn thing up and put it right where you want it, but after about 20 minutes she had her technique down. And it is quite an adorable little technique, if I do say so myself.

This is instructional soccer, so there will only be scrimages, not real games. Here is Scarlett's first one-on-one scrimage with another little boy on her team.

Not too shabby for a first try, huh? She's focused, determined, and knows the objective. And she even got it into the right net! After the one-on-one's, the coach then went on to split the whole team into 2 and they played a real scrimage. Scarlett's team wasn't doing that well so she got frustrated. When the gave away a goal, Scarlett yelled "I don't like to lose!" When it happened a second time she yelled "not again!" She looked over at Joe and me and gave us a big ol' thumbs-down gesture. This got a good laugh from the other parents and one of the moms said "she has got so much...spirit!" (So that's what they call it these days.)

We both were incredibly proud of Scarlett, but Joe couldn't contain his excitement with the fact that we had obviously produced an athletic child. Have you ever seen him smile so big? This morning I totally caught him uploading some soccer pictures from the computer onto his phone so he could show his friends at work.

Holden was very intrigued by the mini soccer cones. They kept him busy for a good 20 minutes. "Hat! Hat...hat dada. Hat!!" But we're thinking baseball might be his sport. (P.S. - the bat he's holding is craaazzzy heavy.)