Full Swing

 This week I felt the shift and it feels like we are in the full swing of the school year.  It's always a soft start in the beginning as things get rolling, but we have arrived at the main event.  The sports have started, homework has started, and the "back to school" events might do me in.  This past week I attended two curriculum nights (one for Merrick and one for work).  We have at least two more curriculum nights to go and we'll see if I end up squeezing in any more for work.

On the sports front, Elsie has started soccer.  She had her first practice and first game this week.  Unfortunately, I couldn't make either.  I may have mentioned it, but Jeremy is coaching and Merrick is assistant coaching (as his sports schedule permits).  Since he has to be there, if C.C.'s volleyball conflicts, I am on C.C. duty by default.  I'll hopefully be able to make it to something sooner or later and report back with some pictures.

Carrigan is still doing horseback riding lessons and has started volleyball.  She has practice twice a week and games every Saturday.  Despite only having one practice so far, one got cancelled due to curriculum night, I have already notice big improvements.  Her serving has started to improve.  There is a lot of pressure to serve overhand.  This has been a challenge for her tiny self, but yesterday she made it over the net and scored a point in two of her three chances to serve.  She also returned a volley and has started diving after the ball.  I'm excited to see where the season takes her.

Merrick has been staying plenty busy, despite the fact that his sports are still ramping up.  He's helping with Elsie's team, as I mentioned, cleaning horse stalls, and tackling lots of homework for a challenging academic schedule. Basketball should start this week, but in the meantime, he picked up a baseball game this weekend just for fun.  Fall ball is an interesting beast.  It's less competitive than spring baseball and they encourage coaches to play kids at different positions. While that's the plan, we have never seen that play out for Merrick.  He always ends up camped at first base.  Today, he started at first base as usual.  I will a little surprised to see that they next put him at right field, but the next inning I nearly fell off the bleachers when they put him at shortstop.  He played two innings at shortstop and did a decent job.  He jumped and almost  caught a ball hit above his head, probably 11 feet in the air.  He then made up for it by tagging that kid out as he later tried to steal second.  It was an unusual game to say the least, but it was great to see him in his element again today.

These kids keep me unbelievably busy.  Most days I feel like I have a very tenuis grasp on all that needs to be done, but mostly we get there.  As if we don't have enough on our plates, today they girls decided it was time to start decorating for Halloween.  Things are getting spooky around here.