Demolition and the demise of childhood

Happy B-day to Kid #2, who turns 4 today. Lots of big smiles, especially when the little one jumped out of bed with a big smile and said "Look how tall I am now!" Got a little misty eyed at a couple points. However, none of those points came during the chaos that ensued at the local Chuck E. Cheese this weekend. Ah, vermin, greasy pizza and 400 kids running around, can't beat it. Thank goodness they serve beer!

This weekend was the first soccer game for both kids. First was the preschool group. I was coaching with a woman who, like your trusty blogger Ace, has never coached before. The good news is that they don't actually play soccer, they just practice and run little drills and stuff that we instruct them on. The other good news is that there are 3 coaches for 10 kids. The bad news is that one coach didn't show. The other bad news is that these are freaking preschoolers and they do not listen well. Crikey, what a trip. I think next time we'll let them spend a lot more time just running around and kicking the ball. Organized drills might be a bit ambitious. I especially enjoyed the kid who wouldn't come anywhere near the rest of the team and every time I asked him to do something quickly yelled "No!". If I get a repeat performance next Saturday, that kid is giving me 20 push-ups.

Next came the kindergarten group. Kids at this age actually have some soccer skills. Unfortunately, the guy I'm coaching with informed me at practice last week that he wouldn't be there for the game. Sweet! There are also 10 kids on this team. By gametime, we had only 5 kids there. They play 3 on 3 so there were going to be some exhausted munchkins by the end of this one. Fortunately, 2 more showed up right after the game started.

Due to rainouts, we only had 1 practice. And due to my utter lack of knowledge, we just worked on some basic drills. Well, the team we played against actually had plays and organized instruction, including leaving one kid back on defense who served as a de facto goalie. Uh-oh. We got utterly annihilated. Although score isn't kept, it was pretty easy to keep track of our team's amount - 1 goal (by my kid, woohoo!). Let's just say the other team scored a multiple of 1. The kids were exhausted but I think they had fun. I will definitely be making some adjustments in practice this week so we are more organized for our next game. I don't think the kids minded too much but it wasn't much fun having them get smoked. At least a couple of them knew what was up. Fortunately, we were able to quickly forget it when friends J&J and their kids showed up towards the end of the game. We were able to cash in on part of an old bet for a tasty dinner with both families, a good time was had by all, especially the ever-giggling gaggle of girls (that's alliteration folks!).

I'm greatly looking forward to tomorrow, my annual trip to see the Mets take on the Cubbies. Should be fun as the weather promises to be spectacular if we can keep the rain away. Regardless it should be warm. If you remember the post from last year, hopefully I can avoid shirtless old dudes out in the bleachers and ejection from the park. We'll see. We've decided to add another component to the trip, taking in the White Sox v Yankees tomorrow night. Yup, doing a doubleheader, how sweet! I hope I'm up to it, I went to a doubleheader once a long time ago and thought it really sucked sitting around for so long. We'll see how it goes.

Well, off to class shortly. Only 2 more weeks after tonight. It's going to be quite a race to get to the finish!

Song lyric of the day "Sunny day, everything's A-ok" - Sesame Street theme song

Until next time.

Ace