Ashton is sick… he came home from school yesterday not feeling well.  Todd took duty yesterday, so I did not have to leave work.  We thought he was fine last night… even remarked that he should have gone to his baseball game.  At midnight he woke me up and said he was having nightmares… I went in and layed with him.  At 3am I woke up to gurgling noises and him sitting straight up in bed, by the time it registered what was going on and I could shove him out of the bed and towards the bathroom, he was puking all over his room.

One solid hour of scrubbing carpets, getting him cleaned up and setting both of us up on couch downstairs and we both went back to sleep, with him on towels and with a pot next to him.

He has not thrown up since, but I just went up to his room and there were three pairs of underwear on his floor… “Hey bud, why are all these underwear on your floor?”  “Oh about those, I have diarrhea real bad and I accidentally pooped some in all of those underwears…also, I accidentally used too much toilet paper and I cant flush the toilet or it will overflow… so yeah, you may want to fix that”  AWESOME!

Definitely a fun day.

This past weekend was the North American Sand Soccer Championships down at the oceanfront, a yearly tournament that many of the local soccer teams compete in.

FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
"This "Grand Prix" of international amateur beach soccer events is hard to miss and attracts teams from all over, including nearly 20 states and as far away as Africa, Germany, Brazil, Norway’s rocky seacoasts and the wilds of Canada's Northwest Territories. The Championships are staged over 22 full City blocks of prime oceanfront real estate, on over mile and a half of white sand - against a backdrop of diving gulls, banners waving in stiff ocean breezes, thousands of Boardwalk bedazzled spectators, live music and great food. Meanwhile, surf’s up just a few steps from the soccer action and, when day is done, most participants and fans head out to the area’s unbelievable lineup of region entertainment."

Our team was the bulk of our travel team from last year and since our coach had two daughters of his own that he was already supporting with their sand soccer teams, one of our girl's older brothers and his two friends (all three being phenominal soccer players in the area) stepped up to coach the girls for sand soccer.  They did an AMAZING job.  They held multiple practices down on the beach to get the girls ready for playing in the sand and to go over all the rules.  Once at the tournament, I had a really hard time deciding what I enjoyed more... watching how AWESOME this group of girls played soccer in the sand, or watching the three guys coaching for their first time and how proud they were of "their girls."  They came to each game with their notes jotted down, rosters, etc. and were completely prepared.  This was serious business for them.  The girls gave them each nicknames and immediately loved playing for them. Each time one of the girls scored, they were on the side line giving each other chest bumps. If they did something good, like make a break away, or some other great move, you could hear them yell "THAT'S HOW WE DO GIRLS!" - It was hilarious!  Ali's brother Josh wore his backpack the entire time... at one point he got hot and took it off. The other team scored, so we screamed at him to put the backpack back on! He did and our streak continued!

Our team ended up winning the whole thing, going undefeated the entire weekend.  Our awesome coaches handed out "Champion" t-shirts and medals to all the girls and told them how fantastic they played!  They immediately came around to all of the parents asking if we were a yes for next year. They wanted committments from us now that they could have our girls again next year for Sand Soccer.  So funny.  We of course said "absolutely!"  How could we not commit to play for these guys?

It was such a great weekend.  We did not leave the beach until almost 7pm on Sunday and when we finally got in the car, the smile Kaiden had been displaying melted off her face and tears started rolling down her face.  She was exhausted to the point of physically shutting down. So many games, out in the sun and heat all weekend, plus a sleepover with teammates had taken it's toll.  It took everything in her to shower, shove some food in her mouth, drink some water and climb into bed. I don't think I even finished pulling the covers over her and she was snoring.  All of the girl's eyes were completely bloodshot and hurting from a mix of having sand kicked in their eyes all weekend and the saltwater from swimming in between games.

When Kaiden woke up this morning, I asked her if she still wanted to do it again next year, knowing how hard last night was and her immediate response was "HECK YES!"  Below is some video footage from one of her games this weekend.

This past weekend was Kaiden's End of Season Soccer Party.  It was bittersweet. This was a great group of girls and a good group of parents. The girls got along well and the parents all got along well. A couple of weeks ago we had two weeks of hellish tryouts. We decided to have Kaiden try out for both Beach FC and Rush, to keep options open.  This past year, she played for the U11 Beach FC "B" Travel Team - there are three travel teams in that age group, A, B and C.  A lot of the girls in the photo above will split up next year.  Three are moving up to the Beach FC "A" team, several are staying with the Beach FC "B" team and three of them have made the decision to accept the offer from Rush's "A" team.  Kaiden is one of the one's that is moving to Rush.

Kaiden, two of her teammates and one of the girls from Beach FC's current "A" team were all offered spots on Rush's Premier "A" team. It was a really hard decision to leave Beach FC.  Kaiden loved it there, but we feel that by moving her, she will have a more difficult and more competitive level of play, which will help her grow and get better.  It is more expensive than Beach, and we now have to purchase an entire new uniform kit, but we are okay with it.  Hopefully we will see great things from Kaiden in the upcoming year.

The hardest part of the whole thing is these four girls splitting up.  They have become so close over the last year and I love seeing them all together.  Two are going to Beach "A" team, one is staying with Beach "B" Team and one is going to Rush "A" team. Kaiden will still play hockey with one of them, her buddy Ali, so she is happy about that.  And they have all pinky-promised each other that they will still get together all the time. I am sure we will see them on the fields.

This kind of stuff is hard for me to watch Kaiden go through.  Really hard.

THE NEW SIDING IS FINALLY GOING UP ON THE HOUSE!!!  Do I sound excited? I AM!!! We moved in a year ago and on Friday, new siding for the entire house was delivered. By the time I got home from work on Friday, Todd had already ripped all of the crappy. ugly, disgusting wood siding off of the porch area of the house.

I was surprised he had already done that... and at the same time I was like SWEET! LETS DO THIS!!! So he spent all day Saturday and Sunday replacing siding on the porch and putting up pretty bright white soffit on the ceiling.  His buddy Cleatus watched intently from the window inside.

The porch looks amazing with the new siding.  We are doing Cedar Shake on the front of the house and a higher end regular siding on the sides and back of the house.  He rounded the corner of the porch to let me see what it would look like.

We also bought all new light fixtures for the outside of the house, three for front, side and back and then a matching fourth one that is a motion detector for above the garage.  They look great.

He had a crew come over to the house two days this week and get the garage area done and he will work on the side of the house this weekend, sending a crew over to help when he can.  He is having all new gutters and downspouts being made right now and all windows, doorways, garage door frame, etc will all be wrapped in metal.  It is going to look like a completely different house when we are done.  We painted the front porch swing black and will be painting all the shutters and front door black.  Cannot wait to see it when it is all done.

Several months ago, Kaiden decided she wanted to give Field Hockey a try. I didn't think much of it and signed her up for a season of Rec Field Hockey.  We were able to make it to like two of the practices due to our already grueling soccer schedule and she had games every Saturday, which were no problem to get to, since soccer games were on Sundays.  As the season neared an end, Kaiden decided she wanted to try out for Select Club Field Hockey with her soccer buddy Ali.  So we attended the "757 Field Hockey" tryouts and she spent two hours out on the turf trying out.

Well... she made it.  So now we are neck deep in soccer AND field hockey. How the hell did that girl spend a month or two with a stick in her hand for the first time EVER and turn around and make a select team? Even funnier... we had our last rec game and after the game were approached by the coach for TCOYO Field Hockey Club and asked to have Kaiden join their team.  e told her we had already accepted another team and were seriously told she did not care, she would like us to be on her team.  GO KAIDEN!