Busy, busy, busy!

On top of the fact that I'm pregnant & super tired all the time (especially in the afternoon), our family has gotten a lot busier this fall. M&M & Luke are both playing soccer right now, Blondie is taking a ballet class and M&M is taking a tumbling class as well as singing in her school choir. Also right now the kids are off track and I have the 3 older ones taking swim lessons 3 mornings a week. So my time & energy for blogging lately is practically zero!

Soccer started at the end of August and goes until the end of October. It consists of one practice each week for each of them and then games on Saturdays. Unfortunately they don't play at the same field and their times always seem to overlap just about every week. For the most part I have been going to M&M's games & DH has been going to Luke's games because the games are coach (or volunteer) reffed and I like to volunteer to ref M&M's games since no one else seems to know the rules... My parents have been able to come to a few of the games as well and I always check with my dad afterwards to make sure that I'm calling things right (he used to help coach my soccer team & some of my siblings' teams when we were growing up). I've also had to brush up on some of the rules because the last thing I want to do is call something and have all the parents muttering on the sidelines (yes that's what they do) and find out later that I was the one that was wrong. It's been somewhat of a frustrating experience because I started playing soccer at about M&M's age and the league that I played in had paid refs for all the games - which I think is a much better way to go. Luke's games aren't quite so bad with coaches reffing because they pretty much swarm the ball at his age and the rules are modified for them (plus they play on a much smaller field with much smaller goals). For Luke's age they play 4 vs 4 with no goalies or throw-ins and M&M's age they play 8 vs 8 with goalies and throw-ins. Most of my calls throughout the game are for the kids not throwing the ball in correctly...