Being the 'FIRST' isn't always a good thing!

I haven't blogged in awhile. I always think I have so much going on but then when you decide to start a blog nothing seems that interesting anymore :(  My mom came to town on the 16th. She bought our old house a few years ago and recently started renovations on it. I thought that when we bought the house from Jeffs mom (yes we like to keep it all in the family) that we had made major changes to it, but what we did is nothing compared to what my mom is doing.. I can't wait until it's done. One, because I can't wait to see the finished results, but two, because then I won't have to constantly go over there and meet contractors or hear about it (hopefully) anymore! See, my mom lives on the West Coast. This house is supposed to be where she will live when and if she ever returns to Goldsboro. It's kinda hard to get things done when you live thousands of miles away from where the work is being done, so guess who gets that lovely job? Yay me!! ;) BUT like I said mom came to town and things really started getting dirty at her home. She had the kitchen gutted and bought all new everything! Course, now she is gone so it's going to be up to me to make sure it actually gets finished! LOL Still it's always nice to see her and the kids get soooo excited when she comes. We didn't do a whole lot while she was here..the kids were in school and mom was trying to get as much accomplished in the 10 days she would be here as possible.
One thing that did happen tho while she was here was the Sullivan family had their FIRST bone breakage!! Yes, Jeff and I managed to go 13 years as parents with a clean record until that fateful Sunday March 20th! I was taking my littlest girl Peyton to a birthday party at Coco Darlings and Jeff was planning on going somewhere with Dylan..which left my mom with Madi and Kaitlyn. Coco Darlings is a cute little place that allows little girls to play dress up and then they can get mini makeovers and make bracelets and have tea parties. At least that is what they did that night, I think you can do different things tho in different party packages. I got the call about midway thru the party. When I answered I noticed I had several missed calls. It was hard to hear in the place with the Hannah Montana music blaring. The call was from my oldest daughter Kaitlyn. Her first words were.."Mom, first off, Madison is alright"...nothing good can follow a statement like that. She then told me that Madison had fallen outside on her ripstix and she was ok but dad was going to be taking her to the hospital. A ripstix is like a skateboard but instead of 4 wheels it has 2. Kinda like inline skates vs regular skates. Oh and also you are supposed to kinda wiggle back and forth to make it move that way you don't actually keep pushing off with your foot to make it go. Madison is quite good at it and goes back and forth on our road mulitiple times without stopping. However, when she fell she wasn't on the smooth pavement of our road. She was on our driveway..which is segmented..she hit one of those segment lines and the ripstix stopped and she kept going! lol Jeff said he had JUST told her to get off of it and she said she wanted to get on "one more time" to show her Grandpa who had stopped by something. Isn't that always the way? One more time always gets u in trouble. So I called and called Jeff many times ..called home to see if they had heard from him., not knowing if they had gone to the ER or to the immediate care...nothing..so after the party I drove to the ER..there they were in ER room 15. She wasn't crying or anything..but she did have a broken arm :( She got a little teary when they told her, not because she was in pain, but just the realization of her "poor little arm" being broken as she said! It really sucks for her tho because just the day before had been her first soccer practice for Spring soccer. She LOVES soccer and is really good at it. She has played with her same coach and the majority of the same kids since she was 7! They have been undefeated for 4 or 5 seasons now.This year she was going to be playing on 2 teams too one 9/10 and one 11/12 (she is 10) She was determined to still practice and play..even had Jeff check out the rules about it. Which by the way said she COULD play as long as the cast was wrapped in foam. However rules don't matter when the doctor says NO and so does the coach :( They both said that they would worry about her falling and messing it up even more. I knew she wasn't going to be playing but was more than happy to let the coach and Dr. be the bad news bearers.  So she got her cast on Friday ..red with glitter...and is supposed to get it off on April 29th. Her coach has them practice for about a month before the games start so hopefully she will only miss a week or 2 of games..we'll see when the schedule comes out. It's difficult for her. Right now she would be practicing 4 days a week..instead she sits and watches all her teammates on Wednesdays when I take Peyton to her practice. It's hard for her to not run out on the field with them. Hopefully the month will fly by for her. She has alot of other stuff going on with school the month of April so hopefully it won't seem so bad..

Competative? Who me???

So today was Kaitlyns 2nd soccer game of the season. The first game did NOT go well. Kaitlyn has played since she was 5 years old thru the YMCA, on a traveling team one season (only girl on the team) and later thru the Spring Creek Youth Association (the last 2 seasons again the only girl on the team, other than my younger daughter Madison who would also play on the 11/12 year old team even tho she was 9 because they didn't always have enough players). I've gotten used to winning. Kaitlyns team always won..Madisons team has been undefeated for 4 straight seasons. Winning is fun... I often would worry about how my girls would take it when they ever lost. I always tell them before a game there are 2 phrases I NEVER want to hear coming out of their mouths... "It's not fair" and "They cheated"....I say, you are on top now but eventually you will come against a team that is better than you are or your team will have an off day - so be happy about the wins but never gloat on the field..save it for the car ride home! :)
So now Kaitlyn is in middle school and is on the school team and the majority of the girls on the team have never played before (should of saw that one coming since like I said Kaitlyn was often the only girl on her team). Therefore I shouldn't of been surprised when we lost our first game. But I was. I think I was MORE upset than Kaitlyn..and Jeff (who used to play soccer and has coached) was worse than I was. After that first game I DREAMED of it several times..replaying it in my head and the things that should of been done differently. Their coach I don't think had done much coaching before either which is unfortunate. Five minutes into the game the goalie got her glasses broke and Kaitlyn had to go into the position. Kaitlyn hasn't played goalie since she was 8. No one wants to be goalie. I hated it when she is in the position when she was young and I esp. hated it during this game because she hadn't practiced in that position at all. People tend to blame the goalie when they lose a game but I never have. Like I told the mother of the first goalie ..they have to get past every other girl on the team in order to score..and if they can do that, then how can you blame the goalie? Kaitlyn missed 6 goals.. :( However she blocked over 20 :) Which tells you how good her teams defense was that day. She was bummed but like I said Jeff and I were sick..I honestly couldn't imagine having to go to a whole season of games that were played like this game was. Isn't that terrible of me?!!! I of course told Kaitlyn how great she did and I WAS very proud of her, but still part of me was just cringing inside thinking of how this was how the rest of the season was going to be. Which leads me to todays game...

It was like a completely different team stepped out onto that field today!! They passed the ball, they were aggressive, they power kicked..it was amazing to watch! And after they scored their first goal you could see something come over each of the girls faces..excitement, confidence, and pure happiness! And within 10 minutes they had scored ANOTHER goal!! This one assisted by my daughter! :) She kicked a long ball from left field the went to the far right side of the goal and was going in, when her teammate Madi sealed the deal by running up and drilling it into the back of the net!! OMG! Thrilling!! Kaitlyn actually had 2 other goals that unfortunatley weren't counted but that is ok. The whole team completely stepped up to the challenge today and it was wonderful to see! I was sooo happy after the game and I wish Jeff had of been there to see it. But it really really made me stop and think and question myself. I like to think that I'm a good mom and that my talks with them about being a good sport win or lose are getting through to them but if I get as upset as I was over that first loss, then how can they take me seriously??? I mean - it's not like I was ranting and raving about it to Kaitlyn or anything. I told her how great she did and we talked about things that she can work on, but could she tell how disheartened I was? Did she believe me when I told her I was proud of her? Winning IS fun but losing with a good attitude is seriously important..Kaitlyn handled it well enough but I REALLY worry about the day that Madisons team loses..she takes after me WAY too much! So....moral of the story?...doesn't matter how old you are or how many kids you have, it's never too late to learn something about yourself and try to be a BETTER parent. I clearly am too competative and don't want my kids to learn the bad aspects of that from me. So gonna work on that...we'll see how it goes...with Kaitlyn, Madison, and now Peyton too all playing soccer I will def. have plenty of time to do so! Hopefully they will all just win so I won't have to do too much soul searching! ;) kidding.....lol!! Congrats Lady Gators!!