This is serious business!

AYSO is serious! I'm still wondering if this will be our one and only season. I like both of the girls' coaches... I think they are good with the kids and both girls seem to be having fun. Here's Miss Marika receiving instruction from her coach. Look how attentive she appears!

She seems to be more aggressive at practice than at the game. Well, it's only been one game. Maybe she won't look so shell-shocked at the second one... it must be confusing to them. We tell our girls to play nice and share and all of a sudden, we're yelling, "GET THE BALL! GO GET THE BALL!" and telling them to take the ball from some other innocent little kid.

Miss Mika is really athletic and seems to have a little more potential. Here she is, battling for the ball against four other people. Her nearest teammate is well behind #3. Mika has speed and I've told her to use it, but she lacks that hunger for the ball. Her ball control is pretty good, though, for somebody who's only had a few practices and one game!

I'm playing in soccer 3 days a week now and the girls go to most of my games. On Monday's game (7x7), I asked them if they watched the game. "Yes, we did, Mommy." Did they learn anything? "No..." but they sure do have fun playing with other little kids and swinging on things!

This morning, I went to meet a lady I always see at the library used bookstore on Tuesday mornings. Here are all the kid books I got (they qualify for AR quizzes)...

And here are the "adult" books I got. I don't know why I've heard of "David Sedaris" but the lady said he wrote funny books. I'm always looking for humorous short essays, so I picked them up. The book on the right - The Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Society - was one I'd been waiting to purchase (at half.com) for quite some time. It was highly recommended by my OB/GYN (who also recommended The Help - GREAT book!).

Oops, not pictured is a Chinese cookbook for little kids - I thought the girls might enjoy some joint cooking adventures. As you can see above, I also picked up one of those restaurant recipe books - we try to save money by eating out as little as possible, so it'll come in handy. =)

And how much did all this cost me? Only $14.25! She charged me the library used book rate. I would have paid that much alone (if no more) for the Nancy Drew books alone (I picked up 16 hardback copies). She said she has 3 more rooms to clean out, so I'll be back to visit her again, I'm sure.