A beautiful day

Gage had his first soccer game of the season this morning. It turned out to be a beautiful day for it too! We were very proud of the way he hustled. He still wasn't the most aggressive kicker out there, but I'm just overjoyed that he tried his hardest. I didn't realize how rough of a sport soccer can be!? At one point, early on in the game, Gage went to kick the ball and one of his opponents (who happens to be a kid we know from church) fell in front of him and he kicked him in the head. I don't think it was that hard, but it was hard enough to send the little guy to the sidelines with his parents. Then, not long after that, Gage took a ball right in the face. It kind of stunned him at first, but then he started crying while he was holding his face and nose. The coach picked him up and carried him off the field to me and I had him sit in my lap awhile while I rubbed his back. While I had him there I said, "Gage, did you accidentally kick Seth in the head?" He replies, "No, I didn't, but my cleat did." Ooops. I could tell when Seth started crying that Gage felt really bad and was very concerned about him.

Before the game started the coach had the kids doing warm-ups. Jumping jacks are always quite amusing. Gage has a hard time with the jumping jacks and timing them appropriately.

Warm-up kicks into the goal.

More warming up.

Coach Keith giving the kids a pep talk before the game starts.

The Stephens were listed as parent monitors. I made Scott go out and do it because I don't know the first thing about soccer. Neither does Scott, but I figured he could fake it a little better than I could?

Gage gives the ball a nice kick during the game.

Even though they don't keep score, it's alot easier to know what the score is in soccer than in baseball. We had about 4 goals to the opponents' 2.

Gage is hustling down the field on the right of the ball. He did a very good job of passing the ball to his teammates. The whole team actually did a pretty good job of passing the ball. Gage was trying really hard to score a goal and almost had one.

The team takes a little water break while coach Keith lays out the game plan.

It was such a nice day out that we had to do something outdoors. We loaded up the bicycles and drove down by the river to ride our bikes along the path. We rode from the DU office to the zoo. I'm not exactly sure how far that is, but it is probably 3-4 miles round trip? The kids did really well. We walked around the zoo for a little while and checked out the new big cat exhibit that was built this summer. The snow leopard part of it is still under construction, but we got to see the bengal tiger, white bengal tiger and I think it's a yellow tabby bengal tiger? These are rare tigers that are on loan to our zoo. The exhibit is really cool, as there is a tunnel you can go through to get to this viewing area. The area is topped with glass and has glass sides so that you can get "up close" to the tigers. All 3 of them actually hopped up onto the glass area that we were standing in so we were able to really see them up close! Their paws were just huge! I'm such a cat lover and I really enjoyed it. Even though they are wild, I always think it would be fun to pet them. I'm sure it wouldn't be so much fun being lunch, however. While we were in the enclosure it started to downpour. Thank goodness we timed that right. Our bikes were wet when we left, but thankfully we didn't get rained on.

On our ride back to the car I was quite a ways in the lead. I wasn't intending to be and I wasn't going very fast, but everyone else was just lagging behind. At one point I turned my head to see where everyone was and I couldn't see any of them! I waited awhile and Gage finally caught up to me. He was apparently trying to tell me that Emma wrecked her bike but I was off in la-la land and unintentionally had him tuned out. When we stopped at the grocery store on our way home Emma was showing me her knee. I'm like, "Emma, what happened to your knee?" She said, "I wrecked my bike!" Scott replies, "You didn't even know she wrecked her bike?" Well, no, I guess not! Gage says, "Mom, I told you that when I caught up to you." Hmmm.........I certainly didn't hear him say that, so I must have had some good thoughts going through my head to have all of that conversation tuned out? I guess I'm getting pretty good at that! LOL!

There was a really good taco dip that they had out for sampling in the store. Gage wanted me to go and try it, but it was nearly gone when I got to it. I had to scrape the side to get any, but what I got was really good. I saw a sign that said the taco dip was $6.99/lb. I didn't realize it said per pound. Or, if I did realize it, I assumed it was probably around one pound. Then, I couldn't find the dip. I had to go ask a guy at the deli counter and he said it was right by the dip. He walked over there with me and said, "It's right there!" as he pointed at it. Hmmm, it looked quite a bit different before it was completely devoured! LOL! After we checked out Scott says, "Stacy, did you see how much that dip was?" I told him I didn't, but that the sign said, $6.99. I guess I should have weighed the darn thing because it was $15!!!! It was in a pie plate-like plastic container, so it wasn't HUGE. I about died when Scott said it was $15! It was sure delicious when we got it home though! (It should have been for that price!) I'll know next time about their sneaky marketing style! We saw our friend Juanita there. She was there with her sister and nephew from Minneapolis. It was nice meeting them. (I hope we didn't tempt you, Juanita, to go back and get a container of that spendy dip, or, if we did, that you were actually smarter than I was and looked at the price on the bottom of the pan!)

Tomorrow starts the fall church season and we go back to 2 church services each Sunday. The early service is at 9am and the later one is at 11am. We typically go to the early one because it seems like half of our day is over when we get home at lunchtime after the later service. Our friends, Kara, Guy, Jadyn and Kya Guidinger are meeting us there. The Sunday School season kick-off is tomorrow with a breakfast in Ramstad Hall between services. This will be Emma's first year to not be in the preschool room for Sunday School, so I'm sure she'll be excited about the different rotations/stations they will have each week. She's finally part of the "big kid" group. It's kind of sad when I think about how big she's getting. She was only about 6 months old or so when we started going to church. They just grow up way too fast!