Soccer! Breakfast! Upcoming Track!

Saturday's soccer game was underwater, as the rain just kept coming down harder. The ball was squirting away and squelching off of feet in random directions. No one could score and so it drowned down to a 0-0 tie.
This morning's game started out wet, but the Xtreme scored twice quickly, the sun came out, and they scored again to win 3-0. Mali played great at defense both games, and ended today's having fun at forward in the sunshine.

Andrew and I had a nice breakfast this morning before the game at Banning's Pie House. He's not really looking forward to a rainy week - 400m time trials are Monday, and the first track meet is Wednesday. Hopefully today's sunshine will keep going for awhile.

Another Xtreme Victory

Mali's team won their third game in a row last Saturday, this time only 1-0 from an early free kick from Amanda. Mali played great again - she is really figuring this soccer stuff out.
Here are a pair of pictures showing a very poised Mali delivering a great header.

Catch up

I finally got back in to my Flickr account! So I'm catching up on photos.

Andrew did well at the Metro District Swim Meet, moving from 6th to 5th in the backstroke. He was happy with his time, and also with his green ribbon (though it's hard to tell as he holds it like a dead fish.)


Mali has been playing great soccer, as has her entire team. They are now 3-0. The photo below is from their second game, which the won 2-0.

Soccer! Track!

Soccer tryouts for Mali's team - the Xtreme - were held on Saturday and Tuesday night. Coach Dean called Mali yesterday to tell her she made the team. Their team appears to be about the same, with a change of only two or three players.

Southridge lost a close meet against Jesuit for the conference championship. It was the last dual meet of the season. Andrew's last meet will be the JV District meet this Friday, where he's going to run the 1500m and try for a PR (Personal Record - best time).
Andrew's goal at the Jesuit meet was for a PR in the 800m, and he got one in the JV race, getting 6th place with a time of 2:10.97. His JV 4x400m relay team won against 5 other teams, though this great track web site Andrew just showed me only lists three of them. On the web site you can click any of the completed meets to see the results, and if you click on Andrew's name it will take you to a page summarizing all of his high school results.

From the coast

Saturday we drove out to Seaside and met up with Mali's soccer team. The team ran around trying out all the activities: football on the beach, arcade, bumper cars, bumper boats, and we all met at Fultano's pizza and arcade at 3:00.
Then we drove 2+ hours South past Lincoln City to the Catalina Cottage, where we are now.
We're two blocks from a narrow beach with pounding surf, but we think the huge waves may be a result of the 600+ small earthquakes that have happened off the coast here over the last week and a half.
I left Susy and Mali at the Lincoln City outlet mall today and brought Andrew and Rian back to the cottage. They went down to the beach:

 

And after I returned for Susy and Mali, Susy jumped at the chance to make her own glass float. Here she is inspecting it in-between blows:

 

Mali's last soccer game for awhile

Mali's last game of the Spring season was against FC Portland - Rachel's team (also neighborhood kids Alyssa and Haley.) Mali has been looking forward to this game all season, and she played ferociously, as did the rest of her team. They lost 1-0, much better than any of us expected against such a good team. Rachel is a forward, so she butted against Mali the defender frequently. Twice she knocked Mali over, and we saw them both cracking up the second time as she helped Mali back up. With a minute to go Rachel's team had a break away towards the goal, and Mali brilliantly fouled outside the penalty box to stop the threat, but it was a surprisingly brutal play. Mali has definitely learned to be aggressive out on the field.

There are optional practices for her team for awhile, but really there won't be much going on until after the next round of tryouts and the new season starts.

Soccer, and finally: Poker!

Mali's team scored their first goal! They lost 3-1, but they had a great game, especially considering they were without substitutes. Their goal was amazing, from a free kick, with a header and a general melee in front of the goal. Mali played ferociously -- It was the best I've ever seen her play. Hopefully she can do it again.

Tonight was our poker game at Eric's house. Sadly, Eric wasn't there, because the girls basketball team keeps winning, and he is in the jazz band that plays at the games. Rian and both her parents made it this time. Joan had a lot of great food, and Jason brought a great bottle of wine. I brought one of the remaining growlers of Dead Guy Ale. We had a lot of fun, and Andrew and I won the most money so won the prizes too: ColdStone gift certificates.

Tomorrow is a day off from everything. I may work a little, but there's no soccer or track or anything. Hopefully we'll all sleep in.

Saturday night poker

Joan had to cancel our poker night because Eric is really sick with some nasty flu bug.
Andrew and I couldn't handle it, so we invited Rian and her mom, Terri, over to play at our house. Mali was barely conscious, but ended up winning. Everyone won except Susy and Rian. It was a great time = we just ordered pizza, set some snacks out, and played Texas Hold'em for a couple of hours.

Mali had a soccer game today - in Salem. They lost 2-0, but played great. Mali is playing very well so far this spring. On the way home we stopped at the Woodburn outlet mall and spent lots of money at the Nike store.

Soccer! - - and - - The Complete History of America (abridged)

Mali's team played another great game, but lost 3-1. This time a lot of the loss can be credited to some sadly inadequate officiating. To properly illustrate this, let me tell you that my darling, sweet, lovable daughter - full of laughter and dancing, fine drama, kind words, and love for all - my wonderfully smart and cheerful girl Mali got a yellow card!!!!

To the referee's (only) credit, it MAY have been a slight foul -
To Mali's credit most of our fans were sure the foul was on the other girl who tripped/collided with her, and
To Andrew's credit we practically had to restrain him from going after the ref after this crazy call. He loves his little sister.

Later, we realized that the ref may have mistaken Mali for the even sweeter-looking and smaller Caroline, who earlier had received the referee's warning for flattening an opponent with the audacity and temerity (or perhaps blissful ignorance) to wander into Caroline's range with some small relationship to the ball. Caroline is quite vicious on the pitch.

Later also, the referee awarded a penalty kick to the other team when their player tripped completely on her own in the penalty box. She made the shot to tie the score at 1-1 just before halftime, and the wind sort of went out of the Xtreme's sails.

Except for Mali's. After the game she sailed over to us skipping and singing the new "I got a yellow card" song that she made up.

We had to rush away from the game so we could get to the local theater troupe
Bag & Baggage's performance of The Complete History of America (abridged). It was bawdy, funny, and clever, and thankfully the kids loved it, after expressing much pre-show resentment for our activity choice. We met Michael, Dominica, Eric, and Aaron there. Dominica had told us about the show - and Aaron's teacher's recommendation of it - and was horrified at the bawdy nature of the whole thing, mostly I think because she had recommended it to us and wasn't sure how we would take it. Also possibly because they arrived just after the nice man walked the crowd explaining to all the parents how the show would be a bit pg-13. But without that old Shakespearian trick of appealing to the least-common denominator, I'm sure the kids would have been as bored as they expected prior to the show.

Spring Soccer, Game 1

The X-treme had their first game of the spring season today. They've been moved up to the Gold bracket, which is much better, and today they played a very good team and lost 3-0. Mali played well, as did the rest of her team, but it wasn't enough. The weather is beautiful here, so it was a pleasant game except for the score.

Tonight we're going someplace called Players, to meet with Eric's family - dad side. We're bringing Rian.

From Medford

We've been busy! I'm in the hotel lobby at 5:00 AM in Medford, awake early, as always. Here's an update:

We got out of the house earlier than expected on Friday - it really helps when the hardwood floor guys show up an hour early! They were really nice and helped us move all the furniture, which we had cleaned out and were just starting to move ourselves.
So at 8:40 we were on the road to Crater Lake, after getting gas and stopping for food for Moose because we finished off the last of his that morning. We stopped at a rest stop where I discovered, as I tried to take a picture of Mali at her second phone booth in two days, that my camera battery is still sitting in its charger in the kitchen. I wanted to be sure I could take lots of photos this weekend. Irony.

Crater Lake was/is beautiful, of course. We were very lucky as it was 60 degrees or so and there was a couple of inches of snow covering everything but the road, making everything exceptionally beautiful. We threw lots of snowballs, and took lots of pictures with my sad little cell phone camera. We stopped by the lodge to check it out - and of course they had openings because of cancellations because of the snow, but we were stuck with our reservations at the Union Creek Resort.
We made it there in time for a fun dinner at Beckie's Cafe. The cabins are very nice - it is an old, well-maintained CCC logging camp. No TV, which was fine. We played hearts, and we all laughed like crazy - I had tears in my eyes. EVERYBODY went back to zero except Andrew, who'd been ahead the hole game but ended up losing. It was the longest game of hearts I've ever played.

For Breakfast, Mali and I made S'Mores in the oven, a trick we learned camping with everyone at the coast. We experimented and made some banana ones too, which turned out surprisingly yummy, but of course very messy. We got a late start heading towards the Oregon Caves, but we had time to stop at Wal-Mart and buy me a new camera - the pocket-sized one I wanted for my birthday. Stopping was good, because we also got an important correction to our directions to the caves.
The Oregon Caves are incredible. The outside mountain was wonderfully green and mossy, and the inside was quite an experience. Even the cynical teenager in our group was impressed with the cave itself. Our tour guide - Suzan - was fun. There is a big CCC lodge there that is even better than the lodge at Crater lake. They had available rooms too, but we left to meet the soccer team at the Marriot Courtyard in Medford.
Mali was in the pool with her teammates before we had half the stuff in the room, since we ran Moose around outside for awhile. We left him in the car for a couple hours while we had dinner, and then snuck him in with us for the evening.
Dinner was take-out from Kalaidescope Pizza, which Susy, Dan and I picked up for the whole team, and we ate and drank beer and wine in the lobby until 10:00.

Another Victory

Mali's team won 1-0 today on a very exciting last minute corner kick. Mali played great, though most of the team did a lot of standing around. It was a happy surprise that they won.