Soccer Practice

My kid likes to play soccer. My husband also likes to play soccer as well as watch soccer on TV. I think soccer is great exercise for both of them but watching it in person or on TV? Honestly? It bores me.

However, combine soccer with a chance to use my new camera and I'm interested. This is true despite the facts that I had a killer day at work and it was quite chilly for practice this evening--the temperature display in my car said that it was 53 degrees. Unfortunately, it was also windy which made for one chilly mama.

But I was happy to have braved the elements as I was able to capture some pictures that make me feel all warm and fuzzy and motherly inside.

Look at this face:



I don't know what the coach asked the kids to do but when I uploaded this picture tonight, I had an urge to caption it with Jonathan saying "Man, did you see how tall this chick is?"



Speaking of size, can you believe that Jonathan and Gael (the son of a friend of ours) are just a few months apart? Seeing the two of them together is like a real life visualization of two ends of the growth chart from the pediatrician's office.



The coach had the kids work on learning how to stop the ball. Does it make me a bad mother that I laughed not only at my own child but also other children when they lost their balance and fell off their respective balls? Please say no.



Back to being motherly--I'll leave you with a picture of my sweet boy using his listening ears and following the coach's directions. If he would just transfer some of the behavior to listening to Bryan and me, that would be super great :)

New Camera!

I've wanted a Canon Rebel for some time as my pitiful Kodak point and shoot left much to be desired. Thankfully, Bryan is now employed again (and not a moment too soon!) and it became economically feasible to make the plunge into SLR world. We just brought home the new addition yesterday so I've not had a lot of time to play with it yet but I am already SO happy with the results:



Ignore the dirty face in this one--is there a way to Photoshop filth from a child's face? (I'm intending to learn Photoshop too)--but I am quite pleased to be able to finally achieve (pardon the usage of a super technical term here) the blurry background behind the subject of the picture:



And while I am on the topic of new things, now is as good a time as any to introduce Albert. We adopted Albert two weeks ago--he is around 10 weeks old and the sweetest kitten EVER. And this is coming from a self-professed non-cat person. Long story short on Albert--Bryan and I had decided, despite the fact that I was not a cat person AT ALL, to get Jonathan a kitten for his fifth birthday this July. Then Arthur decided to take a nip out of my lip. He'd done the same thing about two years ago and Bryan and I discussed at that time that was it, he'd gotten his "one bite free" and the next time, he was out. I love the grouchy dear but having a dog who bites with no forewarning is absolutely unacceptable, especially when combined with a child. Luckily, my sister did not mind to add Arthur to her pack of creatures, so Arthur now lives in Georgia and we are now a cat family. So far, so good.



I was hoping for good weather today so that I could take Jonathan to a park or play ground to try out the new camera as well as the zoom lens but looks like I will have to wait until Jonathan's first soccer practice of the season tomorrow for that. Unfortunately, the rainy day today has left all three us us (Albert seems unaffected) looking much like this: