Busy Weekend

It's another busy weekend in the Barnes house.

It started with an extra (optional) football practice Friday evening. All of the team made it and really practiced hard. Then they played hard after the practice. One of the big goals of the team is that all of the boys have fun at practice and want to be there. The fact that we have goals for every boy might imply we take this too serious, but everyone's major goal is fun. Anyway, it seems like the team is meeting the "fun" goal.

Saturday started with a football game at 9:00. Nate's team played the Wild Dawgz. They played the Wild Dawgz twice last season and lost both of them by pretty large margins. The Wild Dawgz were second place in the league and Nate's team, the Eagles, were third.

The Eagles did a great job today. Usually poor weather works against them and this morning was far from nice. I'm not sure if it was misty or if we were just in thick fog so the water was settling on us. It didn't seem to bother them as much as usual. They played their hearts out.

Usually the refs call the games pretty loosely. I'm not sure why, but today was certainly the exception. It seems like there was an infraction on almost every play. Both sets of coaches were equally frustrated and talked to the league commissioner (together) after the game.

Nate had an excellent run, unfortunately I didn't get it on video. I started videoing the game. I was constantly having to clean the lens and began to worry about the amount of water settling on the camera so I stopped. Of course the very next play was Nate's run.

He's been playing center and is getting pretty good at it. I think he likes it partly because he gets to touch the ball on every offensive play. He was also asking to play some defense today. I'm really glad he enjoys it.

The Wild Dawgz won 8 to 0. While we were sad the boys lost we were definitely impressed by their hard work and hustle today. Maybe they'll get the Wild Dawgz next time (we expect to play them in the playoffs).

Wow, I'm aware that it sounds really serious considering it's 5 and 6 year-olds. We're doing our best to keep it balanced between teaching them working hard to win and having fun. I promise.

We came home and Gray and I took naps. Kenny and Nate ate junk food and played video games. Kenny did a little house work too.

Then we ran some errands. The boys got really tired, so we came home for them to lay down for a nap/rest.

This evening we did a little yard work. We ordered a tree from the city for Arbor Day and finally got around to planting it, or starting to anyway. It is hard to dig a hole with a 36" diameter and 1' deep with a shovel, especially when your soil is full of rock. Kenny and I both got some good exercise.

We were grilling at the same time and our dinner was ready about the same time the hole was. We were also losing light. We'll get the tree in the hole tomorrow.

Nate was doing his best to help with the yard work. He filled in a small hole that Franklin dug. We also moved the grass from the tree hole to a corner of the yard where we've lost grass. Nate really enjoys yard work. Our next project will be planting flowers in the front beds.

Tomorrow we've got church, a birthday party, finishing the tree and a mountain of laundry on the to do list. At least our busy weekend will leave us with a sense of accomplishment.

We'll visit Nate's ophthalmologist this week to discuss his surgery. We want to get the particulars of his vision correction between surgeries worked out. It's one thing to have a baby with uncorrected vision, but a 5 year old seems entirely different to me. After we meet with Dr. Packwood we'll call Dr. Holz's office to get the surgery scheduled.

I think I'm off to bed to get some rest for tomorrow!