Soccer once again

It's soccer season again, and this year we have two little players.

Elizabeth is playing on a 4-5 year-old team even though she'll be 6 in a couple weeks. Last year she was kind of behind the rest of the team ability-wise, so I decided to keep her in that group this year. So....she towers a head over all the other players now. She plays much better though, and she was very upset that her team kept kicking the ball the wrong way! She told her coach, "We need a plan!"

Caleb is playing in the 3-year-old division. They are supposed to have their parents on the field with them. I missed his game since Elizabeth's was at the same time. But Luke said he was the only one who actually let go of his dad's hand! He scored 7 goals! 2 for his team and 5 for the other team. hee-hee! When Luke told him to score on the other goal, he said, "But Dad, this one's closer!"

It's hilarious.

A hike

A whole entire week ago, on Labor Day, we headed up to Yosemite (or "Oh-semite" in Caleb-speak) to take advantage of a day off. We were having super-hot record-breaking temperatures for a couple weeks, and of course it was hot in Yosemite too. 95 when we were there, which is hot for the mountains. So we did a 2-mile, totally-uphill-the-one-way hike. With 3 youngsters. Needless to say, we stopped more times than I can count on the way up and downed several bottles of water. When we got to the top - for us, anyway, since the trail connects to the several-hundred-mile John Muir trail - we were at the bottom of a waterfall. Now in our mountains in the late summer, the waterfalls are pretty dry. So the kids got this look like, "we did all that for THIS??" Especially Caleb with his flushed little face. Happily, Luke let them "dip" their feet in the stream, which technically you're not allowed to do, but everyone does it and we did it in a pool-type area, not an area of rushing water. Then they were happy. In all, we "dipped", as the kids called it, in 3 streams that day. This one, at the bottom of the Vernal Fall, was definitely the coldest and your feet eventually turned kinda red. The last one, in the Merced River, was fun and Emma plopped right down in it!

No matter how many times I visit Yosemite - and I've been there countless times now - I am always in total awe at the beauty and uniqueness of it. All hand-crafted by God for His glory and maybe a bit for our enjoyment as well. =)