SOCCER!!

The boys both had their first-ever soccer games over the weekend. They were SO EXCITED!

Connor is in a little preschool league where they have practice and games in the same 90 minute block of time each weekend, and teams only have 5-6 kids each. Typically the coaches are parents of the preschoolers, but they couldn't get enough parents to sign up, so they hit up the high school for volunteers. Connor has to two high school soccer players for coaches, which he thought was pretty neat!

They started the kids off with some stretching:


Then they moved into some soccer warm-ups, such as toe taps on the ball:


After some running warm-ups, the game began!

Connor was totally FEARLESS in going after the ball, taking it away from other people, and didn't hesitate charging into the group to help his team:








The problem is that while he totally has the personality for the sport, he had zero idea what the whole point of the game was, so after he'd gain possession of the ball, you were likely to see him doing things like this: (putting his foot on the ball so no one else could kick it away, and giving them all the stink eye! LOL!)


And sometimes if he couldn't make it go quite where he wanted it to, he'd reach out and pick it up and set it down where he wanted it. LOL! I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him and all the other little kids running around on the field with no rhyme or reason. Talk about FUNNY, and totally ADORABLE!

Jared's team has been practicing once a week since August, but this was their first game. For the first game day of the season, there was actually a Jamboree, where each team got to play three short games instead of one regular one.

Jared has a much more timid and hesitant personality compared to Connor and he spent a large chunk of his time doing things like this:


and this:


and this:


and this:


AND this:


And even this: (and we BEGGED him not to have his shirt tucked in, but he went totally OCD over it and it bugged him so much we finally gave him and let him wear it however he wanted... LOL!)


Towards the end of the 2nd game of the Jamboree, he started feeling a bit more confident and did some running with the group of kids (he hung towards the back, but at least he was moving!)


Then he got a tad more into the thick of things, but you can see on his face that he's still unsure of it all:


Same with this one, though I'm not sure how well you can see in the reduced size. Jared's looking off to our right, and ever other kid is looking off to our left. He's running along, but only because the other kids are; he's not making any real effort to get into the game.


His team-mate scored a goal!


GO JARED! He's getting the hang of it:


For the 3rd game, the other team didn't have enough players, so they asked for kids from J's team to volunteer to be on the red team instead. One of his good buddies was on the red team, so J volunteered. The red shirt turned him into a whole new kid; look at him go!


It was a LONG day, but it was great seeing the boys out on the field, having a good time. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the season brings for them both.

I'm also investing in a golf umbrella, because I can't expect the gorgeous sunny day we had over the weekend to last throughout much more of the season!!!