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Day 3 + Cheeto’s Report

It’s noon, so far so good.

Maria’s game was at 10:00am.

We all slept in until 9am, which is good and bad. It means that some of us didn’t get to eat breakfast, or enough of it. I made it, but some of the kids didn’t eat it.

We did get out of here on time and weren’t late (bonus), and Maria had her entire Soccer wardrobe with little hunting.

She played great, she continues to improve. She is an awesome defender.

There are some great photos of her in action in the gallery.

The other team had a little blond Pele, who was determined to slide tackle. He got tossed out of the game for the remainder of the 2nd quarter. Maria stole the ball from him a couple times.

In the 4th quarter she scored her first GOAL! It was sweet, she carried it 3/4 of the way down the field, into the box and shot!. Only problem was it was the wrong way… They were winning 4-2, now 4-3. So she was put back on defense. It was sweet though and she didn’t know any better.

There are no more practices for the Cheeto’s. They are good enough for this league. My dad asked them why they win so much and Maria said, “Because we have a big kid that’s real good and and almost big kid that’s pretty good”. 🙂

After the game we took care of Cisco.

It’s a beautiful day. I had to let him out. He went for the jail break when I went for the treats. All of his buddies are out and he knew it. So, well, he’s out. I hope this is a good thing. He seems very happy.

After that we went to pool store to re-buy the items needed to close the pool. We’ll see how that goes.

Currently Molly is fixing the dreaded pizza bites for lunch.

After that we’ll close the pool, and maybe, just maybe take the training wheels off of Maria’s bike.

It’s only noon-thirty, and we’ve done a bunch already. More later.

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Day 2 of Home Alone with the kids

Day 2 of Home Alone with the kids. Well I guess that really isn’t fair to say. Today I had lots of help.

My mom took this kids for the day so that I could work and keep my job. Both of those are pluses. Mom’s are wonderful, everyone should have one.

She showed up around 8:45am, we covered a few things, made sure I knew what was going on. That she had a meeting in the afternoon and that I’d meet them at their house for dinner. (yeah! one more night of frozen pizza rolls avoided!). Spaghetti at moms.

So off I ran to do the horse and on to work.

Work was an average day, nothing to complain about, ran a little late, but not too bad. But I needed to run back and do the horse after work. Of course this is in the opposite direction of my parents. I took the time to take photos of Cisco’s eye. A small detail I forgot to mention to my mother. So, they didn’t wait for me to eat. 🙁

I *think* he’s making progress. The vet says we want to see the pupil that’s sticking out turn pink. Of course I didn’t know this so when I was there this didn’t look good to me. I know I couldn’t blink or deal with something sticking out of my eye a 1/4 of an inch. But he seems very happy at this point in time.

No harm no foul. I got there and the food was still warm.

Dad and I chatted about his future website needs we got that covered, and I rounded up the children.

Off to home. Maria was exceptionally un-Maria like, until we got home, that’s when she kind of exploded over Molly being in the bathroom when she wanted in there. Never mind the fact that we have another one downstairs. She was over-tired and over sugared I think. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Currently it’s 9:55pm and they are in bed. I think I’ll go watch Survivor and chill.

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And so it begins life as a single dad.

It started mid-day today. 3:30pm to be exact. I bolted out of work to meet Claudine at Cincinnati Gymnastics where she was dropping of Molly and to pickup Maria and Michael.

It’s here I am to say goodbye to her and Maggie as they take off for a long weekend in New Hampshire visiting family and attend a wedding.

That’s right, leaving me with 3 of our 4 kids at home; me alone to take care of and feed them on my own.

Well, not all on my own, I’ll have some help. I do still have to work you know 🙂 (Thank heavens)

The trade off at CGA was a mixed blessing; it was to distract Maria from the inevitable. Mom was leaving and she already told Claudine that she didn’t want her to go the night before. She didn’t want her to leave because, and I quote, “I don’t want Dad to be in charge of me”.

We dropped Molly off, talked to her coach about Molly having trouble with a foot, and that she has an issue with Severs.

Ma Ma Lich explained to me how to stretch Molly’s legs to start treating it as well as icing it 3-4 times a day. Something again I’ll have to do when we get home. Something else I have to remember.

But we pulled it off.

From there I had to run her to Maria 5pm soccer practice, wait for that to be over (1 hour approx.), then run back down to Fairfield, pick Molly up from Gymnastics, feed us, treat the horse, and go home and put some little ones to bed.

At the soccer practice, I took that opportunity to nap in the car for 30 minutes. I needed that.

Maria got her invitation to a birthday party and was hell bent on hanging onto her ‘card’. I tried to reason with her. That’s impossible. We have to have that so we know when you’re supposed to go. I need to put that on the refrigerator. Then I realized that I didn’t check with the coach to make sure her game time didn’t change, a call I’ll have to make.

On to CGA.

We ended up with 20-30 minutes to watch Molly. Maria wants to do gymnastics so bad she can taste it. She’s mesmerized when we’re there.

Molly got ‘released’ and we headed to McDonalds. I hadn’t been there in a while with the kids so it was time.

Look Claudine, no coupons!

After diner it was a quick in and out with the horse. His eye is healing (I think) looked rather funky tonight. The hole is closing but it’s pushing some of the pupil out more. I honestly don’t know how he closes his eyelid, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s a happy camper at the moment.

Off to home. I get a phone call from Claudine, she can’t be there yet, but perhaps she’s at her first lay over. Not so lucky. The plane was delayed, so they cancelled her flight, netting us two free tickets in the US as well as a free night’s stay at the luxurious Drawbridge Inn. They get to take a new flight in the morning.

We get home let the dogs out and I send the kids to bed. After about an hour of wrestling with Maria and her fears of Mom dying, I can finally get some work done.

Tomorrow my mom picks up the kids in the morning. 1/2 day down 4 more to go 🙂

So far:
Injuries: 0
Beatings: 0
Deaths: 0

All good.

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Jacksonville, that’s “Who Dey”

Jacksonville, that’s “Who Dey” and don’t say I didn’t tell ya so.

OK, so they had a ‘chance’ at the end.

Fact is they played like crap. As Marvin said, “They didn’t play well enough to win.” 23-20 is not indicative of the way they played. They were owned.

They can’t stop the run, no way no how. They didn’t tackle. They didn’t really give up the ball until that last drive when Palmer fumbled, but they gave up field position all night long on stupid/bad penalties.

Recover a fumble on the 20 and have to kick a 50 yard field goal. Sheesh.

I will give them this: “There was no quit”. That is a HUGE improvement.

But they are not Super bowl bound. There are too many good teams on the schedule, and I don’t think they have the talent (yet) to play with those teams.

Prior to Sunday night the combined records of teams they had beaten was 3-10 to get them to 4-0. That was a large part of what got them there.

Had they played Pittsburg or other teams in the first 4 games and things would be quite different.

I don’t blame the fans or the media. Cincinnati is so starved for a winner that we’ll take anything positive and run with it. But let’s be realistic folks.

This guys are good, but they are not _that_ good yet.

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The Soccer Report

Whew, winter is moving in…

It was freezing this morning.

The 10am game featured the Cheeto’s vs. the blue team in another game of attention span soccer.

Maria played her best game yet. She made some great plays. While on defense she stole the ball and carried it out to the center line. She was all alone, on a break away! The coach was screaming, Go Maria, Go! But she got to half way dumped the ball and ran back. After all she was on defense and that wasn’t her job.

Full size pictures are in the Gallery under Maria:Soccer

Even though it’s candy league and they don’t keep score, they won again 3-1 I think.

The 11:30am game featured the Green Machine vs the Yellow Bellies or something.

The Green Machine got off to their best start ever. Scoring first for the first time in any of their games! There was hope! They played better.

As with Maria, this was Maggies best effort as well. The Yellow team turned it up a notch, and broke down the Green Machines defense and again left the goalie in a number of 2 on 1 and 3 on 1 situations in which she had no chance.

Down 3-1 with only minutes to play they decided it was time to make a comeback. But it was too little too late. Final score today 3-2 in favor of the bad guys 🙁