Soccer Mum.

This weekend is was my turn to play single parent (fair's fair, I've had a few craft camps away) as Fixit jetted off to Brisbane to visit the recently relocated Bike Nazi, his pain-in-the-arse friend. All weekend, as I froze my backside off in the cold Melbourne gloom, Fixit sent excited texts : it's 22 degrees! and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt! Good on you, hon, thanks for sharing.

Meanwhile, the boys and I were very excited because for the first time ever I got to watch them play soccer. Usually I can't be there because I'm teaching tap at exactly the same time, but this term tap finished at 10 weeks and soccer ran for eleven.


The weather forecast mentioned hail, so it was a bit of a relief to only have biting cold and a bit of rain, really. I was well rugged up, operating on the human-snake principle that it's better to be overdressed than under-dressed if you're stranded out of range of a direct heat source.



I thought (of course I did) that both the boys were very good. They're doing what's known as the Small-Sided Games program for 5-9 year olds, where they play on teeny pitches and learn ball skills in a fun environment. One of the great things our club introduced this year was bringing in kids from the proper teams (the Under 14s it looked like) to be coaches, with an adult helper as well. I reckon it's great. It gives the older kids coaching and directing skills, plus responsibility, and the one I observed with Cherub's group was fantastic and managed oh-so-kindly to pull Cherub back from the brink of it'snotfairIalwayslose tears. And the younger kids just love being coached by these energetic older kids.

Here's an action sequence of Cherub winning a tackle:




And here are some shots featuring Action Hair.




Love the action hair. It was really ace to see the boys play, I was very proud.

As well as soccer, Cherub had 2 parties to go to (they were both awesome, he says) and Climber and I went to the bookshop to spend a generous voucher from my Aunt Carmel who is the patron saint of Climber's zest for reading. We also had to cope without power for a large chunk of Sunday due to a scheduled outage for street repairs (no internets and no heating in the middle of winter, blah!)

Then on Sunday night we went to the airport to pick up Fixit.



Of course we missed him, but not because we needed an extra pair of hands, if you know what I mean. The kids were excellent and easy to look after on my own: I think this has a lot to do with their age, because if Fixit went off for a weekend when they were younger I'd be wiped out when he returned. But this time was easy, and we all had a good time.