Soccer Moms

Sophia and Bella with Soccer Balls 

Soccer moms aren't what they used to be. Soccer has become something that parents do so that they can put it on their own "parental resumes". "Oh look at us, we are good parents. We drive our SUV's to pick up our well-dressed kids from their state-of-the-art daycare. Then we cart them to their private tutor, piano lessons, and soccer." Whatever happened to actual interaction between parent and child? Now, we pay everyone else to teach our kids the things that we are too busy to do oursleves? Whatever happened to playing soccer so that the family can spend time together?

Soccer started for us on Monday when we went to buy Abigail's equipment. She wanted the pink ball but the black and white was $4 cheaper. I told her that if she would get the black and white one, I would let her color it with my Sharpies. She always wants to draw with my "off-limits" permanent markers and she totally fell for my ingenious manipulation. Sophia brought her ball to me on Tuesday and asked if she could color hers too. I had to let her. (see the pic above)

Abigail's first practice was a blast. It was typical of any other like it across the country. You could spot the coach's kid: she was the only one in full uniform. Then there were the three moms who are so insecure that they kept to their little clique...they are the mom's of the girls that are the friends of the coach's daughter.

One of the cliquee moms must have been coerced into letting her daughter play. You could tell because her daughter was the chubby kid who kept interuppting her mom's "mommy" time on the sideline. She just had to tell her mom that she didn't like soccer and wanted to go home. Her mom would just embarassingly shoo her daughter back out on the field.

Abigail was the "girly girl" of the bunch. She is taller and faster than the rest of the kids, but doesn't dare go for the ball. She just kept running out in front of the rest of the herd, looking pretty. LG says that she will be really good at soccer if we work with her to be more agressive. I agree, but, surprisingly, part of me wishes that we could afford ballet instead of soccer. Although, Abigail loved it. She is too young to care about the competitive stuff. She just likes to be with the other girls and squeal as they run.

Bella hated soccer yesterday because she wanted a piece of the action, and wasn't allowed on the field to play with the sister who she idolizes. As for Sophia, she was traumitized by a fall at the playground. LG and I were pushing her back and forth on this sliding pulley. She hung on to it with her feet dangling 3 feet from the ground. At the end of her longest ride, LG let her plummet to the ground. Sophia screamed in disbelief. She face planted. The poor girl trusted her dad to catch her and all she got was a scraped forehead, a broken ego, and a mouth and nose full of dirt.

I later questioned LG as to why he didn't catch her. I assumed that if you are a parent trying to let your child hold on as long as she can, that you keep a constant eye on her grip. I assumed wrong. LG said, "I didn't see her hand slipping, I was waiting for her to tell me when she was going to let go." He should know better. The kid is as quiet as her dad, if not more quiet. Poor Phia. I don't think she will ever want to go back to the soccer field.

Motorcycles

Me and Fast Eddie - Dec 31, 1994 

I love motorcycles. I used to have this boyfriend and we would fantasize about how someday we would both buy a Harley Davidson and cruise around the Country. I don't think that this scenario will ever play out in my deck of cards, but every time I see Roadsters I wonder what it would be like to be "free".

A few years back (try 10 - WOW time flies) a bunch of friends and I went to The Rose Parade. If you have never experienced sleeping on the street with thousands of people in Pasadena, CA, you haven't lived. We had a blast! The streets were one HUGE party.

All kinds of vehicles would cruise up and down the street, and all kinds of people would run back and forth to greet them. Different objects (ie., candy, confetti, marshmellows, items of clothing, drinks) would be thrown between the cruisers and the spectators. I say cars, but I mean, cars, bikes, busses, scooters, motorcycles...anything that you can imagine with wheels.

Well, of course I was so envious of those motorcycles. Every time they drove by, which was countless, I knew that their goal was just to taunt me. At one point, a big group of cyclers parked close by to take a short break. I ran over and asked this group of upper middle age men if one would let me tag along on their next cruise. They were more than compliant. The problem was which one was going to be the lucky one to take me. I was a cute 21 yr old lively girl. Who wouldn't want me on the back of their motorcycle?

My friends thought that I was crazy for jumping on a bike with a complete stranger. I have to admit that at one point during the ride with Fast Eddie I had a panic stricken feeling that he could take me to some back alley and I would be completely helpless. Jumping on a motorcycle with a complete stranger was completely irresponsible, especially since we were some of the only people not drinking at the party, but I wanted to prove that Mormons could have fun too, and prove it I did.

Well, Fast Eddie, (shown above) was the winner among his friends. He was so COOL! We rode up and down the strip for as long as I wanted. All the people that I had come to the parade with and all of my new friends that I had made throughout the night would shout my name as we cruised by. What a blast. I was on HOG heaven.

Rewind to ten years previous to 1994. I was about 11. My dad had inherited some old dirtbikes from a Great Uncle who had passed. One Saturday, he was in the front yard tinkering with them. Throughout the day, my dad and my brothers would each take a turn going through the front yard and up and down the street.

I approached my dad and asked him if I could have a turn. He said, "Sure" and gave me all of the pointers about the clutch and the brakes, how to stop, accelerate, and steer. I was ready. My dad seemed a little reserved, and kept asking me if I knew how everything worked. I was overly confident (imagine that). I waved my dad off and told him I would be fine.

I accelerated as hard as I could and I choked trying to remember where the brakes were located. I took off so fast that I felt like steering was an impossibility or if I tried to take the sharp turn toward the street I would surely dismount. I hung on for dear life going a good thirty miles an hour or so. I crashed head-on into our front door. The whole door frame came tumbling down, leaving me sitting on the bike bewildered. The bike had finally stopped; I was staring at my mom just two feet in front of me. She was standing in our hallway with a horrified look on her face screaming at the top of her lungs.

I know, after hearing this story, you would wonder why I still have a thing for motorcycles. I guess I am a gluten for punishment. I also give Kudos to my mom and dad. They handled the situation perfectly. They laughed at me for hours on end. All the neighbors came over to get a good laugh too. Back then, all I could think about was how bad I hurt between my legs, but looking back now, I am glad that I could promote good laughter....it is quite funny!

My Dad

"Here I come to save the day!"

This story will be a shining example of how my siblings and I viewed my dad when we were kids. He was and still is Superman.

My dad worked construction until I was about nine at which point he changed his career path to building maintenance. One of our favorite things to do when we were young was to go with dad on Saturdays while he "checked out" different construction sites.

Our house used to be the most east in Carlsbad. Behind us were miles and miles of dirt hills. Those hills are now ALL developed and you can drive the actual paved roads into Vista instead of taking the long way around on the H-78, like we did.

One Saturday, my dad decided to take my sister, Shannon, (18 months older than me) and I out four-wheeling in those hills. He wanted to go beyond the construction sites that we had been exploring. This adventure was much more fun than it should have been considering we were in the family station wagon. Well, Carlsbad had gotten some rare moisture previously and the hills were somewhat muddy.

Lo and behold, we got stuck! My dad decided to play out Superman. He told my sister and I to "stay put", and he "would be back to get us out of the mud". Great plan in theory, but Shannon and I were terrified. We were in the hills with nothing in sight. We knew that these hills were full of mice, rattlesnakes, and the coyotes that always ate our cats.

At one point, I voiced my fear to my "wiser" sister. She reminded me that we had just learned a song in Primary about faith and believing that God would answer prayers. (I recently taught this same song, Faith, to the children at church. When I relayed this story from my childhood to them, I realized just how absolutely absurd it sounded.)

Well, my sister and I decided to sing this song. We thought that if we could sing it loud enough, God would hear that we had faith and somehow He would save us from the Coyotes. It seemed like a lifetime. We decided that we should pray too. We did. We prayed. We sang. We prayed. We sang.

All of the sudden we spot something moving over the horizon. It was over this same muddy hill that my dad had disappeared over minutes if not hours before. As this thing edged its way over the hill, we saw that it was a TRACTOR. It was coming straight towards us in all it's glory. (It was just like the one in the picture above.) As we looked closer, we saw that my dad was driving. He had found it at some construction site, hot wired it, and drove it back through the mud to SAVE THE DAY. (Hopefully enough time has passed that no one can press charges)

My dad easily pushed the wagon out of the mud, using the front scooper, while Shannon and I watched in pure amazement. Not only was our dad really Superman, but just like our primary teachers had told us, "God had heard our prayers." He had answered our pleas with one REALLY COOL ending.

Shut Up

Eskimo Man 

This picture provided by utask

My mind has been racing with experiences from Alaska. If you haven't read "a piece of the action", I highly recommend it. This is another "Tatitlek" story when I felt that my life was in danger.

The Eskimo people in Tatitlek were more than ecstatic to get their town rebuilt for "free" by the U.S. government and couldn't wait for their new homes and school. My dad, of course, was among these government paid construction workers. This village was normally very divided but now they were finally in 100% agreement on one issue: they hated the white men that had been sent to do the building.

Many people in the village drank A LOT. Because of the excessive drinking, there were all kinds of crazy things that happened all of the time. The summer of our stay, my family had STRICT orders from Dad as to who we should not associate with. We all understood that we needed to stay away from certain locals for our own well-being.

My dad had strategically placed our shanty about a mile from the town on our own private peninsula. It had been "jimmy-rigged" together by my dad in the evenings for the month before we arrived. We had no running water or electricity and a biffy out to the side of the house. We took a path along the shore to town when we wanted to see dad and we often got stuck in the mud.

On this particular day, in was more wet than usual and my dad decided that he would give us a ride home in the boat. We all walked down to the harbor where the boat should have been anchored, but it had been let out to sea. My dad was FURIOUS. He found a friend and they left immediately in hopes of getting our boat back, which had been let free to the currents by some hateful local.

While we all kept busy on the shore (what else did we have to do) my dad went and rescued our pathetic piece of sea transportation. We all cheered when he got back. My mom had loaded in the boat as well as a few of the kids. We were finally on our way home. A group of "locals" rode up to the side of us.

At first my dad ignored the locals, but they kept pestering him. So the "words" started to fly. From what I could gather from the conversation, the ring-leader of the Eskimos (he looked much like the guy in the picture above) was the man that had let our boat out to sea.

This Eskimo wasn't happy with my dad for one reason or another. (It could have been as simple as someone else's house got sheetrock before this mans...who knows) Well, the vocal altercation became more and more intense. The Eskimo pulled out his shotgun and pointed it at my dad. He insulted my dad repeatedly and made some kind of threat that he would shoot my dad right here in front of his family.

I guess my dad wasn't too worried because he knew that the guy was just showing off for his friends, but I was terrified because I knew this man was on our "Black Dangerous" list. He was aslo drunk, and he had a shotgun.

While my dad had it out with this man, he was trying to get the rest of us in the boat, so that we could get onto the safe waters. I was the only one left on shore when this man pulled out his gun. As an eight year old kid with obnoxoius tendencies, I saw this moment as my chance to prove that I could be like my hero, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And, prove myself I did. I freed myself from my dad's grip as he was trying to push me into the boat. I stood all four feet of myself as tall as I could between that mean eskimo and my dad and I gave him a peice of my mind, "If you want to shoot my dad, you will have to go through me first."

This brought howls of laughter from all of the local men on the boat. My dad turned his anger towards me and quietly said, "Alice, shut up, and get in that boat." The urgency of his voice made me think that I earned my dad a bullet in the head. I was devastated. I was very surprised that my dad jumped in the boat after me and off we went. I guess the Eskimos were either too entertained by me or distracted laughing that they had let my dad go without any kind of harm.

I got the lecture the whole 4 minute ride home. I don't know if my dad was more embarassed that he couldn't keep his eight year old in line or that she had just saved his life. He said,"Alice, you have to learn when to keep your mouth shut." My mom said,"You almost got your father killed." My 14 year old brother,"You aren't supposed to talk to that man, especially when he is drunk." My 10 year old brother,"You are a big mouth." On and on, the insults came...all the way home.

I couldn't believe it and I didn't understand it. All of the sudden everyone in my family was MAD at me. I had just SAVED all of us from death by gunshot wound. Why wasn't everyone thanking me?

A piece of the action

A floating piece of The Prince William Sound 

I have already established that my parents are kinda crazy. They are where I got my craziness from. Well, the Native American's in Alaska would call my dad "Insane". The reason.....he got out of his boat and climbed onto a floating piece of an Alaskan Glacier, just like the one above.

My dad spent two years in Tatitlek, AK rebuilding an "Eskimo" village. My family had the great fortune of visiting him for a whole summer. I was about eight, and I have many fond memories of Alaska, as do most of my family members. I think that God knew I was destined to by the wife of a "professional student" and gave me a lot of wonderful adventures as a kid, to make up for the first ten years of geographical monotany in my marriage.

One of the memories, that I do not like to think about from my stay in Alaska was the day that my Dad took us to Prince William Sound. It was a stormy day and my mom refused to come with us. She stayed home with the baby. I think her and my dad had some kind of arguement about whether or not we should go, but my dad won, like usual, and he loaded the six of us into our little "skipper."

Touring the Prince William Sound in a skipper is unheard of. On a stormy day, it was a suicide attempt. I do recall some of the MOST beautiful scenery. A glacier is truly AMAZING! As we crept closer and closer, we heard the cracking of the ice breaking of the glacier. We spotted many seals, Bald Eagles, and Polar Bears. We also witnessed a few Cruise ships go by.

We also saw the HUGE pieces of glacier, like the one above, popping up from all parts of the ocean floor. Call me a BABY, but I was scared! It was so hard to have so many emotions at once: I was in pure AWE at the beauty, yet terrified that I would never live to tell anyone about it.

As if just being there wasn't enough sensory overload for us kids, my Dad had a better idea to ensure that we would all get the MOST from the experience. He anchored the boat to a floating piece of ice and proceeded to climb out onto it. This thrilled my older brothers who begged for their chance at it. The rest of us children were content to just observe, but my Dad cajoled us each to take a turn.

We all got up on the floating ice without being tethered to anything. Dad made sure that we each ventured to the middle to see the "Black Hole". This was a hole big enough for any one of us kids to fall into and never come back, because we would be stuck under the water that lay under the iceberg. This was when I called it quits. I begged to get back in the boat. My dad relented, and for what seemed like a year, I sat in the boat wondering that if the rest of the family died, would I be able to drive the boat back to some kind of civilization.

Well, everyone, by some miracle of God, made it back into the boat. A few minutes later, dad stopped the boat about 100 feet away so that we could look back on the iceberg that we had "conquered". My brother got a bad feeling and told my dad he needed to move the boat NOW. My dad did, and we were on our way. Not more than 10 seconds later, a huge piece of the glacier popped up right where we had stopped. We would have been like a sitting minature Titanic.

The way home was the worst part of the trip. The storm was in full blast and we were being tossed to and fro (like it says in the Bible) by the storms of the sea. My brother and sisters and I all bunkered down in the part of the boat the was jimmyrigged by my dad with a plywood shelter. We were all being tossed to and fro and as I lay down close to my sister Shannon; both of us holding on for dear life, she got sick to her stomach.

I can't really find any humor to this story, except that it is no wonder that I have huge issues about PROTECTING my children. Looking back, I have to say, it really was a piece of action that was ONE OF A KIND.

Holes

A hole in the middle of two studs....hmm. 

I am not talking about the critically aclaimed book. I am talking about holes in drywall. It wasn't until 1999 that I knew how easy they were to patch.

You see, growing up, my brothers and sisters had a favorite game to play. Remember how I talked about that long hallway in The Home of the Free entry. Well, besides lining up for our Grand ol' Flag March, there were a few other things that we did in that hall on a regular basis. Our absolute favorite of all time, was scaling the walls. The hall was just wide enough that when our legs and arms would get to a certain length, we could jimmy ourselves up the wall, like regular mountain climbers. We would place our left arm and leg on one wall and our rights on the other and up we would climb all the way to the ceiling.

Well, as you can imagine, once in a while, there was some damage. It was the COOLEST when someone's foot would go through the wall. This happened several times, mostly to my brothers. My dad is a contractor and so you would think that the holes would automatically be repaired, but NO, they weren't; those four or five holes stayed in those walls until we sold the house 10-20 years later. I always assumed fixing holes in walls was a difficult thing to do until....

Move ahead to 1999. My husband's sister and brother-in-law had just bought their first house. Everyone in LG's family was bursting with pride because they were in their early 20's and were so RESPONSIBLE. LG's parents came out from TN, and we all went to have a house-warming party. Amy and Tyler didn't know it but, our main mission was to break in their house, literally.

LG and his younger brother Jordan, just had to be boys, and at one point they were monkeying around in the dining area. Jordan jumped on LG's back. LG, because of his "man gene", for who knows what reason, decided to play out some kind of move he learned watching WWF. To make Jordan regret jumping on his back, he lunged backward, with Jordan on his back, smashing Jordan's backside into Amy and Tyler's brand spanking new wall. You can imagine Amy and Tyler's absolute HORROR at the sight of Jordan's gluteous maximus impression, and I mean, MAXIMUS, in the middle of their wall.

Amy came at LeGrand will all her vengence (this was her BRAND NEW HOUSE). LG put his tail between his legs and went, beside his dad, like a disciplined child to the local Hardware store. They bought a Drywall patch kit and fixed it up as good as new. Amy says that she can still tell where the bum went through the wall, but I think it looked fine (then again, my bathroom is 1/2 way remodeled and I am OK with that).

Well, on the way home LeGrand was on the virge of tears. (He is going to kill me for writing this) It wasn't that he felt so bad for his "man gene". No one can explain that! He mostly just felt so bad because Amy was never going to forgive him. I thought that his WWF wrestling move was impressive, and I tried encouraging, reminding LG that he had been successful at getting Jordan off his back. I, being the bistander, saw the hilarity of the situation and I tried to make light of it as best as I could. I reassured him that the wall was as good as new and that Amy would eventually see the humor.

Eventually, was the right word. It wasn't until this past year, 2004, that I FINALLY heard Amy laugh when replaying the scenario for friends. She still emphasized, "It was our BRAND NEW HOUSE."

WT

Abigail's "Barbie" blanket 

Here's another confession. Not a proud parenting moment.

When we moved with our three kids to Tennessee, I was plagued with anxiety about how people would view me and my family of 5. I think I was justified, as to the fact that we live on $12,000 of student loans a year + whatever wages my husband can scrape up in his spare time during the school year and summers. [The big fat greedy lawyers do not pay clerks enough. Whenever LG is high and mighty, he is going to fork over some cash to those starving students. Or, maybe he won't, maybe it is some kind of passage of rite: if you can make it through law school alive, then you deserve a decent salary.]

Well, embarassingly enough, I was heard to encourage my children not to do certain things in fear of fitting into the "poor" role. I would give them good advice like: wear your shoes, brush your teeth, comb your hair, don't say bad words, be nice to your friends.....all good pieces of motherly advice. Sometimes, I would put a little add-on at the end, "Now, you don't want people to think that we are white-trash."

One night, we were all taking a late drive home. It was a sure thing that all the girls would fall asleep on the hour and a half drive. Abigail had gotten her pants really dirty or wet so that she didn't want to wear them on the long drive. We were caught without a change of clothes and so we told her to just take her pants off and put her blanket (pictured above) over her legs to cover her up. She was satisfied with the solution to the problem.

Well, we ended up needing to take a potty break and a stop for some more baby formula. We stopped in at the local grocer. I wrapped Abigail up and told her to keep herself covered as we ran into the bathroom. Abigail was only about 4 at this time. When she finished her business, she caught me completely off guard when she said matter of factly to me:

"Mom, now, cover me up good, we don't want anyone to think that I am white trash!"

Be Grateful

Let's play princess 

This picture provided for free by ace-clipart.com

I often remind my children to be grateful for what they have. It isn't uncommon to hear me say things like, "Be grateful for those shoes; some children in this world, don't have any." "Be grateful for your sister, some children never have any sisters." "Be grateful for that broccoli, some kids are going to bed hungry tonight."

Yeah, yeah, yeah....I know I sound just like my mom. As I am writing I am realizing that maybe I need to stop saying these things because my children may learn to only see the negative. But, then they may turn out a lot like me and wouldn't that be so fun?

Well, when you are a mom, you get rare moments that let you know that your kids are actually listening to you. I had one earlier this evening. It went something like this:

I was in the family room with the girls trying to pick up all the toys so that the house would be clean when LG got home. My girls were determined to play dress-up, which means that they HAVE to dump out every costume item from the dress-up chest. I told them to pick ONE thing, so that we could put the rest away. They complied. I walked out to the laundry room to change a load and this is what I heard:

Sophia (3) says, "I want to be a princess, but I can't because I have short hair." Abigail (5) responds, "Some princesses have short hair; you can be a princess." Phia then says, "No,I can't, I need long hair."

Abigail ended the conversation just as she has been taught. She sounded like an old pro when she counseled her little sister, "Sophia, you can be a princess, and you just need to be happy that you have any hair; some people in this world don't have any hair."

Oops!

some random person taking a plunge at Lighthouse Park: Jupiter, FL 
Picture provided by: jupiter-rope-swings

I just had to find a picture of a good rope swing before I tell you this story. Here is the best free picture I could find in ten minutes. (Hey, it's time to make dinner)Some company wants a startling $129 for a picture just like the one above (Ridiculous)

Well, when LG and I had been married about a year, I was privileged to be a leader at another girls camp for the church. This camp experience was really fun. Probably because I didn't have a whole lot of responsibilites except to teach some clases and help other leaders out as needed.

The camp lasted a week up in the mountains in Utah. It was a beautiful place. By Wednesday night I really missed my new husband. So, you can imagine my surprise when on Thursday morning my knight in shining armor drove up a day earlier than expected. I was so happy to see him! LG had brought his mom and dad and sister with him. They had come to just say Howdy, but I ended up leaving with them because my responsibilities were really through, and I REALLY missed my husband. Plus, I thought it was more important to spend time with his family who had come all the way from Tennessee.

Well, before we were to leave, I had to give LG and his family a small tour of the campsight. I showed them the pavilion, the biffies, the girls' tee-pees, and all the other points of interest. We ended the tour or maybe I should say I put an automatic stop to the tour at the small lake. I showed them the canoes and told them about the lakeside meeting we had on the first night where there were candles all afloat and a fire burning in the middle of the lake. We all stood on a small dock as I played tour guide.

At the end of the conversation, I told them about the recreation time we had, just that morning. I said, "The girls really liked this rope swing." There was just one small rope swing that hung off a pole on the teeny dock. As I said this, I grabbed the rope swing and swung out over the water. The only problem was, I didn't land back on the dock as I had intended.

I plunged down to the bottom of the lake fully clothed, leaving my four family members there in astonishment. Now, you know I am Crazy Ali and so, they were really trying to figure out if I was playing some kind of joke or if I had my swimsuit on underneath or if I dove in on purpose for their reaction.

To my dismay and utter embarassment, it was none of the reason above. My hands had just slipped, leaving me under the water trying to figure out how I could swim away. I was thinking, "If I stay under here long enough maybe they will go away". Well, they didn't. I surfaced with a squeal, at which point, they knew I hadn't intended to take the swim. Their howls of laughter almost made my embarassment worth it.

But, for now, I am not going near any rope swings when fully clothed.