Soccer!

We signed Joseph up for soccer with the YMCA for an 8 week program.  He is on the same team as 4 of his (and our) good friends which has been a nice bonus since we know half of the team and enjoy seeing everyone twice a week.  The team practices on Thursdays at 5:30 and games are on Saturday.  

The first practice was on Thursday, February 13th and Joseph was just SO excited!!  He was totally into it during the entire practice and especially loved the end of it when they had a team huddle and yelled, "Go Dallas!"  

That little speck in the blue is Joseph going for the green ball!

And there he goes chasing the ball!

They practiced playing goalie during the first practice.  Kind of hard to get the concept down where the entire time they are being told they can't use their hands and then all of a sudden as a goalie they are supposed to use their hands!  Thankfully in the games they aren't using goalies so they haven't done this since the first practice.

Go Dallas!!

Coach Jim is the father of one of the little girls on the team and is so patient and just excellent with the ten 3 and 4 year olds!

They received their jerseys and socks that night at practice and Joseph slept in his jersey that night!!!  SO excited!

His first game was on Saturday, February 15th and I couldn't make it since I had a baby shower brunch but Daddy and Poppa both went and I received a full report when I got home!  "Hilarious but frustrating as a parent to watch!" was the report!  Daddy said that at one point he pulled Joseph over and gave him a 20 second pep talk about chasing the ball down the field and to run as fast as he could with it, Joseph just looked at Rich and said, "I'm hungry!!"  Ha!  Rich said all he could do was laugh!!  Joseph was one of the few kids that did stay on the field the entire game whereas a lot of the kids were picking flowers, taking breaks, etc so I guess that is a good start!  

Very excited!

Just a few other pictures from the past few practices and games.  

Tried to get a picture here of how muddy his socks were-hard to see but they were white socks...now covered in mud!!

On his third game (March 1st) Joseph scored two goals!!!  One for our team and one for the other team!  Ha!  

The team really has improved so much.  Rich said the difference from game 1 to game 2 was incredible so it has been really fun to watch and we just love seeing Joseph get so excited about the practices and the games.  Looking forward to the rest of the season!

Ella has fun at the practices and games, too!  During practice she just chases the balls around and gets really dirty!!  The practice field is always really muddy!

And at the games she hangs with her besties!  Three of the families that we are good friends with have daughters exactly Ella's age (Eva-November, Ella-December, Emma-January and Victoria-February!) so the girls just go from stroller to stroller looking for snacks, sharing chairs and just toddling around!  Next week I'll have to get a picture of the four of them but here is Eva and Ella from the third game on March 1st.  Too cute!

It is crazy to think that we are at the age of "organized sports" already.  We debated about signing him up thinking that it may have been too early but he is having such a great time and definitely loves being an athlete so we definitely made the right decision and are looking forward to many years ahead on the ball fields!!