Season Over

Today was the last day of the boys' 2005 AYSO Season! It went by so quickly this year but nonetheless, I am really, really glad it's over. Our evenings get so busy between karate, sports, church and just things that come up, it seems like a rare jewel when we have a quiet evening at home together. Now that sports are over for a while I think I'll get our game night going. It's so easy to live life toward some goal without truly relishing the life we're actually living *now*. It's a bummer to think of all the good ideas we hear or learn about and think they're great, but don't ever go to the time or effort to put them into practice. Game night seems like a simple, fun one. I just looked over at the dining room and sighed when I saw a mess there. Guess that'll need to be cleaned up in order for game night to happen. :-P

So at soccer today, there were so many "pincher bugs" (Earwigs), I can't really explain it here fully. It reminded me of when you look down and realize you've chosen an anthill for your picnic spot, so you move . . . only these are like 20x bigger than ants, and they're everywhere, so moving doesn't make any difference. Oh, and they fly. And climb on everything. They're perfectly disgusting. So guess who in my family absolutely adores these repulsive things? CARIS! She's dainty, she's sweet, she's TWO - and she adores Earwigs. She's lucky: they've taken our city by storm this year. She brings them to me by the handful and cries when any of them die. And yes, they do actually pinch sometimes, and she cries when that happens too. Because she loves them so much, and because she picks them up right after they bite and she throws them, I really think she is crying not out of pain but because it so hurts her feelings that her "friends" would hurt her. So today they kept her very busy at soccer, from crying when Graham took one of hers to showing any parent who would listen (disgusted looks on the parents' faces doesn't dampen her enthusiasm in the slightest), to begging me to pet and kiss them (no thank you) - she played with those Earwigs the entire time we were at soccer today. As gross as it is, I took pictures so she can look back at herself from teenhood and think I was a horrible mother for allowing her to play with something so vile.

Alif fell asleep on the living room floor at 6:00 pm. I guess now that soccer season has ended he can officially hibernate. So I got bold and bathed all of the kids, and that went so well that I thought we could read stories too. It was so nice! The kids were sweet, the boys read to ME quite a lot, which was fun, and Caris just loves books so she was happy. Well, until we didn't like her wooden elephant toy tromping across our pages - then she went off to my bed to pout and promptly fell fast asleep. At 8:30 Graham was in his bed and Malachi was all tired out, so I put them to sleep and then carried Caris infant-style to her bed, where she surprisingly curled into her pillow instead of waking to nurse. Sigh . . . really, a lovely evening!