First Soccer Season in the Books!

Abigail and The Royals completed their first soccer season earlier this month.  I would call the season a success because all the kids seemed to have fun (just not always at the same time), no one got hurt, and they each seemed to improve greatly throughout the season.  And if you saw the first game, you know it could only go up from there!  

Team huddle before the first game

Sizing up the competition

Just realizing someone else is allowed to take the ball from her

By the second half of the season, things seemed to click for most of the kids (all of Coach Chad's stellar coaching I am sure) and they got the hang of going after the ball.  Hopefully sharing the ball with their teammates will come more naturally in season two, ha!  Abigail needs to be first in line for that lesson.

Not sure what is going on here!

As the season wound down, Abigail kicked it (pun intended) into high gear and became a scoring machine (7 goals in the last game).  Her speed and super long legs gave her a leg up (pun intended again) on the other kids as she was able to reach the ball quicker giving her more scoring opportunities.

We are already looking forward to the spring season and are excited about being with our buddies from The Royals again!

Labor Day Fun 2012

Labor Day was especially fun this year because these five guys below traveled to Lake Guntersville to spend the long weekend together ... 

... and they took their families too! 

This crew got together for a LONG overdue visit and spent the weekend catching up, getting to know each other, laughing at each other, eating yummy food, and wrangling eight kids four and under.  It was SO much fun and we are very grateful for the Lancasters who opened their home to the whole crazy group. 

Also, thanks to Nick & Marcie for taking and sharing most of these pictures with us all.

Fun Making New Friends

Fun on the Boat

 Fun Learning to Fish

Fun in the Water

 Fun Little Faces

 Fun Trying to Get All 8 to Smile!

Summer Catch Up

In an attempt to catch up on the past few months, here are some snapshots from our fun summer. 

Having fun in the pool with Joshua

Pretending they are pirates on a ship. Argh!!!

 A fun trip to the zoo with Joshua and Nana.

Slash Park Fun!!!

August - Full of Firsts

Abigail has had a pretty big month!  This post is full of the "firsts"she's had.  She started preschool at Park Place Christian Academy a few weeks ago and could not love it more!  We are blessed with an amazing teacher and I can already tell she is learning SO much.  She comes home each day so excited about everything they did at school and usually gives me a FULL report on her behavior as well as the behavior of every other student in the class.  Her class theme is monkeys so the goal each day is to keep all of your bananas on the board.  I hope she will be as good at remembering her lessons as she is at remembering who lost bananas and how many they lost throughout the day!  

Ready for her first day! Mommy was out of town but made sure everything was laid out. Daddy did an impressive job with her crazy hair!

I had to do the customary"grade sign" picture on day two.

Her teacher is awesome and send the parents picture texts of fun things their kids are doing! This is Abigail working on her first worksheet at school.

Here is most of her sweet class at their first Chapel Wednesday.

First time being the class helper for the day! She was so proud to hold the flag for the pledge and is working really hard on all of the words. Class helper also gets to be the line leader all day - a coveted designation to 3 year olds for sure!

In another first, Abigail kicked off (pun intended) her first soccer season this month.  I don't think she had a clue what playing on a soccer team meant, but she was thrilled about her new soccer outfit and that Daddy was her coach.  Nothing else seemed to matter!  I am sure there will be more soccer posts to come once games start in September. Stay tuned!

Sporty Spice before her first practice.

Sporty Spice after her (super hot) first practice.

And lastly, in our month of firsts, Abigail came home from school today beaming because she received her first award at school!  Her teacher gave her the Chapel Award for her great behavior in chapel today.  Abigail has talked about Chapel Awards a lot since school started and has even forced me to pretend we were at chapel as she instructed me in how to behave so that I might earn a Chapel Award myself (sit still, look straight ahead at the platform, don't talk during chapel, etc).  So, it is no surprise to me that she was beside herself with excitement as she hopped in the car holding her award and the sucker attached to it. Chad and I are so proud of her enthusiasm for school and pray it continues for many years to come! 

Here's to a great start to the school year!


P.S. I promise Little Man Luke was not neglected this month as it appears in this post.  He is still the sweetest, cutest, happiest little guy around and will be sure to be included in the next post.

P.P.S. I don't have any pictures of this, but Abigail also got to attend her first Crusader Pep Rally at school.  That's right, my three year old went to the school-wide pep rally and had a ball!  She did mention she plugged her ears because of the cheering but could not stop talking about the "football boys and cheer girls."