Just lucky, I guess

Granny's here! She arrived Thursday night, rolling in pretty late (1:30 AM) with Janneke, having been awake for over 24 hours on her long haul fro Geneva, and has since claimed, in the three nights she's been here, that she's never slept so well. She's in Tess' room, up on the Big Girl Bed, so I guess it's to be expected. The kids have been loving having her here - in fact, Quinn half wanted to skip his last day of soccer camp so he could stay home and hang with Granny. But we said he should go, because we were going to show up toward the end of the day and watch a couple of games. This convinced him.

But you can't blame him for wanting to stay home and do stuff like this:




And we did show up and watch two games, during which time Quinn was aggressive, assertive, and very skilled. He scored a goal and assisted on another, and was easily his team's defensive MVP, shooting from one end of the field to the other, as has become his style. And at the end, they had their awards ceremony - and Quinn won the award for best attitude on his team for the second consecutive week. A film of the event exists, but Youtube isn't uploading it very happily today, so it may pop up later on.

He's crazy about soccer now, and I'm fijnding all sorts of videos on Youtube for him to watch. One on Johan Cruyf, the great Dutch player, after whom a move in soccer has been named. I'd not heard of him until a year or so ago, and his story is fascinating - and his style of play is really fun to watch. Going to try to keep Quinn's interest level up. He's playing on a third and fourth grade travel team this fall, and his new-found courage on the pitch should serve him well. The last piece of the puzzle is the ball-handling skill, where he still lags behind some of the other kids. Hope he sticks with it, honestly - football is just not a sport you play your whole life the way soccer is. Oh, and also: I'm going to be an assistant coach on the aforementioned soccer team! Probably won't involved too much thinking. Just the amount that needs to be done to let players know that screaming for your teammate to pass you the ball when there are three players between you and him isn't the best of ideas. That sort of coaching, I got covered.

Tess is fascinated with the movie "Howl's Moving Castle", another from the director of "Kiki's Delivery Service". It's really a fantastic movie, with no violence (or almost none), a plucky young female protagonist, and a lot to say about life, all told through the most vivid fantasy world you can imagine. The guy is an incredible font of ideas. I'm sure we'll end up owning the film soon.

Ran twelve miles yesterday! Magnus and I spent six minutes shy of two hours on the road, chatting pretty much the whole way. It's been neat, getting to know him better. He's in Iceland for a few weeks now, so I'll have to keep up the crusade on my own. Shouldn't be too difficult - running every other day and keeping the pace reasonable means I actually enjoy it. Since it doesn't hurt - knock on wood, no injuries yet. Come on, calves! Hang in there!

Back to the day - updates as time allows, what with more relatives arriving in the next few days. The first is Milena, tonight!




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