Neices are great!

We were so glad to have Sam home at Thanksgiving, it had been far tooooo long since we had seen her last. She had the nerve to go away to college, Gonzaga no less - which I am sure my kids will now idolize and expect me to cough up the change to get them there! This is right after she walked in the door!

Maria was awfully glad to have her back as well.

This is Sam's "before" photo. This is on December 23rd, when she was feeling pretty goood. She was a seasoned college person, and had triumphed over her first trimester and had loads of gifts in front of her to open!

This is Sam's "after" photo. It was taken the evening of December 24th, when she felt pretty yucky. I don't even have a picture of her on the 25th, because she felt sooo yucky she couldn't even open her gifts. This is what our Christmas was like. We all looked ok on the 23rd, and by the 25th several members of our clan had fallen ill.

By yesterday, the 28th, we had 10 of the 17 family members struck down with the flu. It was not exactly what we all planned on when we decided to get together for the first time in years- for Christmas. Next year, maybe we'll just meet in August.

Humanitarian of the Year

For Maria's birthday, the big thing, the one special event she wanted to do was to have a sleepover and make blankets to donate to a cat shelter. Done! She and her friends made 9 blankets to donate and then delivered them to the cats themselves!

These cats are making sure we use hand sanitizer after each cage we open!

She is one animal loving - dog sympathizing - begging for a kitten - wants a horse kid! Now both my girls are in double digits and I feel this represents a huge shift in our life. It is much different than all the time we spent 10 and under! I hope I am ready.

Post Script: I can't change the background yet, I got a virus last time I tried, so we will have to make do with the Halloween background for a while. Sorry I haven't posted much recently, it's a direct effect of my hours at work. Boooo!

The Pitch

We have been out on the pitch so much lately, that I haven't had any time to blog!! Last weekend we went to 4 games (both girls, Sounders and the UW womens game). I am proud to say that we are not the only soccer crazed people out there - another family on Maria's team went to the same games we did (their oldest played right after Isabelle down in Olympia so we really followed eachother around all weekend!).

We love being able to take the girls to womens sporting events - especially if its not raining. As I write this it is windy and rainy outside and both girls play this morning (brrr). Morrie and I went to another Sounders game 2 nights ago and it was fantastically awesome. Although we didn't win it was a tight match against the one other team that has the same stats as us- so it's no surprise that it was 0-0.

It's playoff season now, so if we don't answer the phone, we are watching FSN. If we don't show up to your party, we are going over game strategy - even though the Sounders head coach doesn't usually consult us, we want to be ready just in case. The other morning the girls and I went over who we thought should start that night (a dream line up if you will) and exactly who we wanted on the bench. We bleed blue and green.

12!

Isabelle got to go on her first boat cruise dance this weekend, and she was very very excited!! her youth group does way cooler things than what I did in junior high!! Her life is all about youth group and soccer right now.

Here she is the next night at the Sounders game!! We had the awesome luck to find ourselves with some friends in their suite and the girls had a blast. I can't even describe how much fun the kids had while we were there.

Here si she at her own game earlier that day. Click on the pic and look at those awesome leg muscles!!! She is one strong player.

My girl. At 12. Listens to her ipod a lot. Sings a lot. Looks ups MLS stuff on the internet and tells me thinsg about other teams. She is a smarty pants. She now wears my shoes as well as her own. She is growing up much faster than her mom would like, and it seems to have been at hyper speed lately. Sigh...

Fall!

Fall is really really here! It's just so beautiful. I know we had "the most awesome summer there ever was" (and that is how I will always refer to it). However, the colors of fall just can't be matched. The coziness of a warm fire, the cat and dog sharing (or hogging) the floor right in front of the fire, warm drinks, cool soccer days, no sunscreen!, and all those lovely scents. I can light my apple cider candle and not feel like a dork my house smells like fall, because now it really is!

Not that I would turn down a free trip to Hawaii, because I will be there tomorrow if you need me to, but the change of season is just perfect!

Fingerprints

This morning I woke up and wandered downstairs. As I turned the light on in the kitchen, I noticed the fingerprints all over the sliding glass door from where the kids eagerly open it up to go play outside with the dog. I noticed the doggie nose prints all over the lower part of the door as she looks outside scanning for cats, squirrels, and birds to go chase. I noticed the sticky maple syrup around the cabinet handle where I pull out the pancake ingredients every morning. I noticed the cat paw prints on the fridge from where she stands on her hind legs, leans on the freezer and peers into the open fridge and smells around (I keep telling her that is not where the catnip is hidden). I noticed the greasy fingerprints all over the kitchen sink sprayer because my girls can't just wash a dish, they have to SPRAY it off every time - and make water spray up onto the window in the process.
I noticed all these things and thought that maybe, just maybe, having a perfectly clean house wasn't all that it's cracked up to be. Maybe I like having all these reminders of the little paws and hands that live with me. Maybe it's okay to just enjoy the warm goodness of maple syrup, and be grateful that the kids are even getting the dishes and the water together.
Oh, who am I kidding? I totally cleaned the kitchen and wiped down every surface that those little gruby hands touch with antibacterial wipes while they were away at school. I erased every shred of evidence that I saw of smudges, prints, stickiness, stains and crumbs. And I enjoyed the cleanliness that was my kitchen for 4 hours.
Then they came home from school and the cat and dog ran all over the place in excitement, and the girls snacked and laid their homework in the crumbs and tossed their bags about and it was messy all over again. Tomorrow I will remember that it WAS clean, and it WAS nice, and Morrie will wonder why don't I ever clean up when I am at home by myself. Then I will pour maple syrup all over him.

Was that a weekend??

We were suuuuper busy this weekend! Our highlight was this top picture of Isabelle scoring her teams only goal on a penalty kick! It's not the ball on the ground near the goal, it's the one in the air just to the right of Kiana.It went in the top right corner of the goal, woohoo!

Here is Isabelle running to get after the ball, and in the next picture you can tell she won!

Isabelle had 2 games, Maria had one game, we went and saw my niece's game, Maria had a friend over, I had girls night out, the Huskies won!, we went to a brunch, the Seahawks dominated, I took a nap, and then we went to church. I may or may not have been totally awake at church on Sunday night. Can I have a day off now?

Cross Country!

Sunday Maria had her second cross country meet. They run against other CYO schools. The schools in all of the Seattle area are divided into 2 groups since each group brings hundreds and hundreds of people to the meet, they run in 2 shifts. Marai and her friends just got their HFK tattoos on their cheecks and are stretching (chatting) before their race.

Here Maria is lined up with 8 of her classmates and her and Megan are doing some sort of pregame dance.

And they are off! Maria is especially excited that I got a picture of her "flying".

She runs a full mile, and this is 3/4 of the way through. Only one girl is ahead of her (there are about 50 girls in this race).

Here they come down the finish line! Maria ran a time of 7:19 last week and this week finished with 7:10. Way to go girl! She got second place - she is AMAZING.

Maria and Angela after the race, laying on the ground. Does Angela's arm look like it is about to break, or is that just me?

Izzy rocks!

Boo Yah! Look who got to the ball first! After looking at this picture, I thought Isabelle had rolled her ankle, but since she never mentioned it, I guess she just has flexible joints.

Isabelle took a ton of goal kicks and free kicks during this game and she played the whole game (which she was not thrilled about). On the sidelines however, the parents were enjoying watching her foot and the big kicks that she is capable of.

It did seem like she was msotly just clearing the ball, but she gets right in there at times as well.

Thanks for the sun!!! We made a few sacrifices the night before to some Sun Maiden just to be on the safe side.

Maria today, Isabelle tomorrow

I had the camera out with me this weekend, so here are some soccer pictures! I didn't want to overwhelm anyone, so I will put up maria's today and Izzy's tomorrow. This top picture shows how Maria likes to roll, let the entire other team chase her! She scored once in her first game, which they won 5-0. It sure felt nice, because last weekend it wasn't pretty.

In Maria's second game (the other team was short players) her coach ahd her play an entire half as goalie! Crazy thinking since she has never done it, not even in practice! She had a shut out for her half, and they ended up winning 6-0.

In between games, we threw in soccer pictures, because why would we want to go home?? We got to her first game at 8:45am, ate lunch in the car on the way to pictures at 11:00, ran back for the second game at 12:30 and then went straight to Izzy's game which started at 2:00. We finally came home at 3:45 and lay comatose on the floor for a few minutes and then got up and went to my parents for Grandpa's birthday. Whew. I am tired just reliving it!

Hairnets?

So Izzy came home with a "free" goldfish from school. I would like to know who it is "free" for, becasuse $30 later we now have our very own fish habitat. It is supposed to be her prayer buddy, and how would it look if she went back and said her parents killed her prayer buddy (who is named after an actual person from youth group)? Hi, Angelika, my parents didn't want you and they let you die. Hmmm...doesn't sound quite right...

Maria is stoked to have anything that resembles another pet in the house. She feels however that she should have been the one to get the next pet. When the kids were little I put off their begging for a pet with "You can have your own pet when you are 12". Shooooot, they have long memories and have brought it up no less than 73 times a year ever since then. Isabelle got Annie at age 10 because of extreme circumstances (read: free purebred pet coming our way).

Maria has been working the beg/pester/wish train for the better part of 12 months now even though I have assured her, that her pet really has to come at age 12. We are all FULL UP at the moment. She was not happy about this. THEN, her sister comes home with her very own pet fish (which nobody asked her mom about) and Isabelle now has 2 pets before Maria can even get her first one. This is not looking good. Can we just name some of the birds and squirrels outside or something?

So we have this "free" fish. It is a little shell shocked and not swimming much. Morrie and I are trying to make sure that the cats don't go fishing for lunch. We were discussing ways to cover the opening of the fishbowl for extra protection. Morrie said "We could get some flexible wire mesh and rubberband it around the lip of the fishbowl". I replied "Oh, a hairnet could work too". He came back with "Why don't we think of something even MORE GHETTO and do that??". I still can't stop laughing. Can you think of something more ghetto?

Oh Dog!

I am convinced that nobody even reads this blog anymore, so I am doing this more as a diary entry for the kids to look back on and giggle.

Dear Diary,
Annie, our dog, is a rascal. She loves her squeaky tennis balls. She stands in the kitchen and whines while starring intently at the cupboard in which they sit. When we pull them out she hops all over and races out the door to play.

So, there I am the other day. Playing in the back yard with her. I stand at one end with a tennis racket and lob them over to the other end and she races like she is in the doggie Nascar. Top speed across the yard, back and forth, back and forth.

Sometimes she will decide that one of the three squeaky balls is somehow better than the others. She hoards it. She will race for the flying ball, find it and realize it is the love of her life and keep it in her mouth while finding a quiet spot in the yard to mouth it. She will not give it back to me. Unless of course, I start to play with one of the other balls and convince her that what I hold is indeed much more valuable than what she holds. This sometimes works. I giggle.

The other day she races across the yard for my tennis serve, gets the ball, comes across the deck (why she can't just run over the lawn I have no idea, she prefers to run up and over the deck to me) back to my side, but no ball. I walk to the other side of the deck and look and look. I finally find it under the stairs of the deck, get it out and resume flinging tennis balls.

This happens several more times, she return to me with no ball. Each time it is under the stairs. I test her. Turns out this is what she is doing: Every time she grabs a ball that isn't her beloved, she comes over the deck to me. BUT, before she runs up the stairs to the deck, the drops the ball so it will go under the stairs. She runs over to me thinking that I am now forced to throw her favorite ball and not that yucky ball that she has hidden from the evil mommy forces.

I think I can hear her giggling.

Opening Weekend!

Our first fall game, and the girls played right next to eachother at the same time! It was a little charotic for me to watch. Here is Captain Maria.

She runs really really super fast.

Can you hear the thump of the shoes on the ball??

Here is Isabelle protecting the ball, she rocks!

This girl came down the field to score a goal, and Isabelle as sweeper ran and cut her off. The ball went wide of the goal, well done Izzy!

Here she is clearing the ball, she did that a lot during this game. Both girls lost, but they played fantastic and the weather was suuuper warm. It was fun. We then headed to one of Izzy's teammates homes for a pool party and bbq. What a day! Then the Sounders won, really, having our cake and eating it too??

Today: Henna Artist

I empowered the girls for their first game of the fall season by "tatooing" their hands. I am thinking that not many moms encourage this type of thing. Hmmm...too late!

School?

Someone wants to go to school with the girls. She misses them all day long, and just imagine how much more fun it would be to hang out with the whole school instead of just Mom!!

Sleepy Time

This is how we have felt the last few days. I think the girls are tired because it's the first week of school and they are not used to being up so early. I think the dog is sad that everyone is gone most of the day now. I think I have had a headache for 2 days and also don't like getting up at 6. I think we may already miss summer around here.

First Day of School!

I can't believe Isabelle is a 7th grader, and Maria is a 4th grader! They both had an awesome day yesterday. Well, Maria's was awesome until she had to have a tooth pulled. However, it took the dentist somwhere around 6 minutes to do it after the novicane took effect, so it couldn't have been too bad.

We plan on having a nice, rainy Labor Day weekend, complete with a few BBQ's. Last weekend we went and saw the women Husky soccer team play - it was so fun - and this weekend Morrie will go to the football game. We're hoping for some great things for the Huskies this year! I hear they have even painted the endzones like they had them in the early 90's when we kicked pac 10 booty.

Our most exciting news about yesterday is of course that the Sounders won the US Open Cup Championship! Verrrry exciting game. The kids are happy because Mom is in a good mood after the Sounders win - kind of like Dad when the Huskies win!!

New Haircut!

This is her before shot - taken with Morrie's work camera. It makes my picture look like we had Yuen Lui in the backyard with us!

Izzy has been looking forward to cutting her hair for several months now. I made her appointment weeks ago, and then last week Maria got a friendly soccer match scheduled for the exact same time! Morrie was too tired from his climb to get up early for soccer, so I had soccer duty and he took Izzy to our uber fantastic hair stylist, Ali. Ali called me and we chatted and she said Izzy was already enjoying her appointment sans parents. Ali is one of the parents from Izzy's class, so luckily Morrie could leave her for the appointment and everyone was comfortable with that. Can you believe she is going into 7th grade???

The boys!

Here they are the evening before they headed out on the climb of Mt. Redoubt. Loren, Paul, Brian, John, Aaron and Morrie. Does Aaron have sticks for legs or what?? The next morning I came home to find a lot of empty beer bottles and pizza boxes. It must have been some serious male bonding.

Husky Picture Day!

This was my veru first Husky picture day! You get to walk into Husky Stadium- for free- and meet all the football players as well as some other very cool stuff! Here is Maria with her FREE Top Pot t-shirt over her shoulder and her FREE Top Pot donut. We choose free donuts over the free hotdogs!

Picture Day is not complete without a family portrait with Harry the Husky. Harry actually picked Morrie up and cradled him like a baby, but that pic is on someone else's camera.

Maria was super excited to sit and watch the cheerleaders from up close.

Guess who else we saw? The entire Womens soccer team! The girls went down the line, getting each autograph and talking a little to each one. They are awesome.

Too bad we didn't get to drive the helmet around the track...maybe next year.

We walked out down next to the crew house and it was so pretty, I had to make the girls pose for one more picture. It was a perfect day.