Scrimmage, Birthday party, Decor

The pre-season of my U-12 team is going pretty well. We finally started getting all the girls together for practices, and they're getting fit and getting a lot of touches during practice, tuning their footwork, ball control, and field reading. Friday was our first scrimmage, and we won handily, 3-0, with some good individual performances. The girls' attitude was cooperative and cheerful overall.

Tuesday will be our second scrimmage, and I'm hoping to see more confidence from the girls, some focus on using the moves we've gone over in practice, and better field positioning instead of moving in clusters, which is a problem that usually works its way out as girls graduate from U12 to older age brackets.

Saturday was Stacey's birthday party. We went back to Summit Vision this year, and did a high-ropes course with a zipline. It was trey awesome. Unsurprisingly, the more dangerous parties tend to have a lower turnout, but the 7 girls who did show joined Stacey in having a fantastic time, maneuvering through obstacles like the build-your-own-bridge, the tarzan vines with little hexagonal planks at the bottom of them, and some other equally cool near impossible tasks. I don't have the pictures from the party yet (Don, ship me that CD, man! I can't wait to see how everyone looked) but I'll get them uploaded as soon as I can.

Stacey will be 12 on Monday, is about 5.8", and could pass for roughly 16 until you notice her speech patterns and mannerisms, which are correct for her age rather than the affected adult style that girls her age use when trying to seem more mature. The days of little Action-Stace listening to my bedtime stories are long gone, but I'm thankful that she's staved off the pretentiousness of tweens for another year. She's still my girl, caring, funny, and affectionate, and I think she'll become an awesome young woman over the next few years. As a parent I've just been winging it, my main tools being love and my generic problem solving algorithm, but obviously I haven't buggered things up too much.

Liberty has been giving the living room and the old play room a makeover, and things look great now. The old play room (technically the dining room in the original house layout) has been emptied and turned into an office area with this IKEA bookshelf/desk combo:



...and a similar bookshelf under the dining room window:



In the living room she has some cool lamps, shelves and a 50's turntable/radio from her old apartment, and a desk that was pilfered from her ex, who is moving out of town:





And let's zoom in on those art pieces. The first is a piece by her mother, Heather, a skilled artist. Her work speaks for itself, so I won't brag on it, just... here:



Is that not awesome? Liberty's old boss and sister's boyfriend Eric is an amateur artist. Here is his piece, "Apprehensive Midget Tree" from his "Doodle some stuff at work" period:



It makes a nice addition to the living room, I find.

So Liberty is making the house hers, and I couldn't be happier. Plus I can't decorate for shit, so it's nice to have someone with taste and an interest living here.