The Final Soccer party

We finally had Amanda's end of season soccer party. Unfortunately it conflicted with Sam's indoor soccer game so Shaun, Connor and Sam weren't at the party, just me and Mads. It was held at a great little restaurant called Pat and Oscars.We enjoyed good food and good friends!Instead of trophies this year the girls got t-shirts. Amanda looks excited to get hers. I think the thing she was excited about was her mother yelling from two tables over "Amanda, look over here and show me her shirt so I can take a picture!"

Amanda with her friend Corissa showing off their new t-shirts!

Wrestlemania

Connor just stared a new sport...wrestling. I never thought this is a sport that anyone in our family would participate in. Apparently Poway has a really great wrestling program.People move here from all over the state to be involved in it. Quite a few of the high school boys from church are in the program and many have been to our house to have Shaun check them out, before and after matches. I think this is where Connor's knowledge of the sport even came to be.I have to admit I really like the boys that have been to our house and their families which is why I even considered letting Connor wrestle.

This weekend was his first tournament. Two of his buddies from church are also in the program and they have a blast together!

Connor getting ready for his first match. THat's his weight class on his arm.

Being a good sport!

Here he is in all of his singlet glory with his medal from the tournament.

As a mother who has had many children play many sports this is definitely the toughest. It's much harder to send your son out to battle one on one with someone than sending him out with a whole team behind him. We'll see how much longer he does this, but so far he loves it!

Black Friday

On Black Friday we decided to avoid anything that had to do with retail so we headed out to Poway Lake. I love that we have this Lake basically just down the street from us and decided we need to take advantage of it more often. We started off by feeding the ducks all of our leftover Thanksgiving rolls.Those ducks sure love Lion House rolls!

This was our favorite duck. He was very stylish with his Mohawk and curled tail feathers.

After feeding the ducks we went for a hike around the lake.

Connor ran ahead of everyone the whole way!

After a hike we rented paddle boats and peddled around the lake for awhile. This is how one boat stared out.

Mads didn't sit still for long and soon their boat looked like this.

Then this.

And then this.

When Amanda could no longer hold on to her we had to pull along side of them and put Mads in our boat. She is really fun to take tooling around a large, deep, cold body of water. That girl has no fear!

Thanksgiving Turkeys

We did not take many pictures on Thanksgiving this year. It was pretty low key. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record but we were supposed to be moving this weekend so we hadn't really made any big plans. My younger brother Logan came into town and that was definitely the highlight. We sent him home with our family's favorite party favor, a cold! It seems like every time one of my brothers come to visit we get them sick, they need to build up their immunities a little!We did want to make the cute turkeys we made last year but I searched high and low and could not find candy corns anywhere to make the feathers, so we had to make do with a little red frosting.

Soccer parties

The Rec soccer league ended just before Thanksgiving for the three older kids. For Connor's team party we went to Roundtable Pizza and Connor got his cool trophy!For Sam's party we went to a restaurant called Kaminsky's and it was very yummy! It was at the end of a very muddy rainy cold day full of soccer games. You can see Sam still has wet hair because she only had time to jump in a shower and get out quick and head to the party!

Sam getting her trophy. Sam's team did great this year. They took first place, were undefeated and in fact they did not give up a single goal the whole season!

Signing the banner to give to the coach.