End of the Summer Update

Man, my posts have been few and far between here lately! It should get better once everyone is back in school and all is right with the world again...

Alex's soccer team did okay, for a team that plays at the P-4 level being put in a bracket of all P-1 teams. We actually beat the first team and held the other two to I think five goals between them. The two teams we lost to came in #1 and #2, so we had nothing to feel bad about! Her team from last year even lost to the eventual #2 team. But both Alex and Samantha had a blast.

I think this year, for Alex, may end up being even harder than last year. She had a really bad experience with her two "friends" turning against her the last few months of the last school year. She started hanging out with some new friends this summer and even told me that she was having more fun in the couple of weeks she hung out with them than she had in the year and a half with her other friends. But she's really emotional and always kind of on egg shells, thinking if she has one misstep, they may not like her, either. It's really hard to watch. When she's with her new friends, she's like a different person, and I know she has a lot of fun. But like tonight, she was supposed to spend the night with a few of the girls, kind of a slumber party, but she had soccer. The girls went to a movie, thinking they'd be home by 8:30. They ended up getting home around 9:45. She didn't feel great after soccer and truly just wanted to go to bed early, but felt like she needed to go so they'd still like her. I just hate seeing her feel that way. I finally made the executive decision that she should stay home. We were sitting in the car in the driveway talking about it and she started crying. It's like she can't even put her finger on why she thinks she feels miserable. I asked her if she wished we hadn't moved, and she said yes, which makes me feel bad all over again. Anyway, it's going to be some kind of journey, I'm afraid. All I can do is be there. At least she talks to me.

I worked two more concerts this past week, Radiohead and the Pain in the Grass, which was mainly Queensryche. I liked the fans from both concerts and got two more bags of bottle caps. Very different crowds, though. Radiohead fans were more hippie-ish, kind of stoner-ish, but equally as nice as the metal fans I've run into. But the marijuana smell from that concert I was afraid would still be there when I woke up the next day, even after showering with my smelliest Bath and Body Works shower gel.

We went to Olympia to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday yesterday. My mother-in-law bought him an iPod nano, which I'm sorry to say , is WAY too much iPod for him to handle. But I think I got him on the right track. I told him he should buy one song a day until his gift card is used up, so he would have to practice with it once a day. I also told him to call me any time he had questions. He actually called today after he bought a song, and I walked him through the next steps, so I think he's going to take my advice!

We are getting the grandkids together this Saturday for a portrait for my mother-in-law's birthday in November. What started out as a nice idea seemingly has evolved into this nightmare. First it was scheduled the Saturday of the Bigfoot tournament. My sister-in-law emailed me to see if we could just "swing by" for a half an hour for the photo shoot. Well, if by "swing by" you mean drive the two and a half hours down from Snohomish to take the pictures and then back two and a half hours for Alex's next game. So then it was rescheduled to this Saturday. All systems were go until my sister-in-law asked if Eric was coming. Um, no, this is a grandkids picture, why does he need to come? Plus, he had prior plans to go to a football game with a former coaching friend. Fine. Then tonight his brother calls and I don't know if he didn't know what he was supposed to guilt Eric into or what, but Eric told him he'd talk to me and call him back. Five minutes later, his brother had called back, so I grabbed the phone. I had just reread the email from my sister-in-law which said, "Dorothy would be beyond thrilled with a picture of her g-kids, so I really hope we can make this happen." Not a single word about us being in the picture anywhere. Turns out they decided it would be cool to get a picture of the three brothers as well, which it would, BUT he can't "swing by" for a 10:00 photo shoot when he is supposed to be leaving Enumclaw at 10:15 with his buddies. At one point my sister-in-law had suggested Thanksgiving weekend for the pictures, which I thought was a great idea. Then Eric's brother decided that weekend was too busy. It really seems like things can never just go smoothly. I finally just told her that we would have to concentrate this weekend on just getting the grandkids, as per the original plan, and if they wanted family photos to go along with it, our family would have to make it in another time.

So this weekend I was hoping Alex would get to hang out with her friend from Federal Way, but even if that happens, I'll have to steal her for a Saturday morning photo shoot!