Yes, yes…I know! I’ve been berated by my two most faithful (maybe only 2 at this point!) readers – apparently I have been far too absent on ye olde blog as of late.

I don’t really have any excuse other than…life happens. And it is happening at warp-speed around here and I’m just barely trying to keep up.

Soccer season has begun. And this year we are doing soccer season x two.

I thought it would be difficult to help coach Em’s team this year with double practice and game schedules, and thought it might be a good time for Daddy to step up, so I “volunteered” him to assist Daddy Alain with coaching the “Terrible Teals.” (Of course I didn’t volunteer him without asking him first…I just strongly suggested that it might be a good idea!)

But then Addie’s team was kind of limping along and her division doesn’t have very many girls, so for awhile they were trying to get me to head coach one of the teams. As I was vehemently declining I said something to the effect of “I cannot commit to head coaching – I have two in soccer this year! Maybe I could help assist if someone needed it…”

Yes. You see where this is going? A head coach (from the team that Addie was temporarily on) heard that…and made sure that Addie stayed on his team so that he got an assistant coach as well. Soooo…Mama is helping with the Purple Ponies. It will for sure make Soccer Saturdays interesting. Already on Friday nights we go in completely opposite directions for practices. Addie and I go one way and Emma and Daddy hop across the street. But so far, everyone is happy and excited for the season, although we all have to miss tomorrow’s first game as we head to Denver for a wedding!

The girls are settling into school nicely. There seems to be a lot more going on over in homework land this year, but I’m happy with the progress both of them have made in just a few short weeks. Addie was star of the week this week in her class, so she got to share her prized possessions every day this week. She brought in her cat collection every single day – including Tiger this morning.

All of the kids in class write about the star of the week and then Mrs. K. puts a book together for each student with the writings from their friends. I was peeking at some of the pages when I was in there this week working and every single kid started out with, “Addie loves cats.” A few of them said, “Addie really, really, really loves cats!” To their defense, she didn’t give them much more than cats to work with! I am pleasantly surprised and happy to report that the reading is finally clicking with her, though. And I am hardly getting any push back at all on her reading to me at night, instead of the other way around! So that is real progress, my friends.

Em is in a 3rd/4th combo class, I think I mentioned before – NOT with her BFF in the whole wide world, Audrey. There were a few rough days there, and since Em ends up lumped in with the 4th graders, she doesn’t have recess or a full lunch with Audrey, but they are managing just fine. We are trying to find time for them to hang out – and they have soccer together…so there is still plenty of bff-ness going on.

Her class seems very challenging, which I am grateful for. She is the type of kid who will rise to the challenge if it is put out there by a teacher and she seems to handle it all beautifully. If it is put out there by Mom, however…not so much of a chance. And that is reason #562 that I could absolutely never homeschool. Her new teacher is really able to motivate the kids, and Em is again with a great group of 3rd graders, so I’m very happy so far.

Oh, let’s see. What else? That hardly seems like enough to fill our days around here. The girls have both joined the choir at church. Both are taking piano still – Emma is rocking it, Addie is still struggling. In fact…they are working on a little duet piece…it’s pretty sweet. They are working the kinks out still, but getting close!! This was from a few weeks ago, the piece is much better now. But just to see all this sweetness on one piano bench makes me smile…

The Duet from carrie voris on Vimeo.

Em is still swimming on the swim team, although with soccer she can’t do much, so we are just swimming once a week to keep her spot on the team until soccer is over. And Addie is sticking with ballet for another year. Her idol (Audrey’s older sister) Yvette just went en pointe this year…so now Addie has something to shoot for. She REALLY wants to get pointe shoes. Granted it is another 6-7 years of ballet…so we’ll see how that works itself out.

Yeah…that is pretty much it. My days fly by and another week is gone. I seem to be incredibly busy but feel many days like I got absolutely nothing accomplished. It is just life, I guess.

I’m off to pack us up for the weekend, we’ll see you back here next week!