Score!

It's not a secret among any of my children who the soccer star of the family is this year. This is our first year participating in soccer. Previously my children hadn't expressed any interest. This year they're expressing interest in just about everything they hear of. Which... makes me feel tired just thinking about it. But I also want them to explore their interests to find where their talents and strengths lie. With six children I'm hoping that at least one could receive an athletic scholarship to college! I'm going to keep pushing grades for everyone to be realistic.

We had such a long talk about college, tuition, and scholarships the other day. It stemmed around my advice to save $10 they each received as a gift from a benevolent great-grandmother. After a long talk about saving it turned into what reasons would one have for long term saving. Which lead to my kids asking me questions about my own higher education I'm pursuing currently. I explained to them how if I continue to do well with my grades in my current undergraduate studies that hopefully will be of great benefit to me when I am applying for graduate schools. It made sense to the oldest two, maybe to the third child. They all were quite intrigued with the whole process and hopefully the conversation serves as a foundation for hard work in school and pursuit of higher education.

Nora earns rookie of the year as soccer player in our family. She's an animal out there! In a very gracious, non-boastful type of way. In fact when the soccer moms and I are all jumping up and down cheering after a goal she typically looks at her feet or the other way. She is incredibly focused, driven, and aggressive. It's been a wonderful thing to watch a child coming into something of her own, especially since she falls in the middle and is often in the shadow of her older siblings. That being said, it has also been an excellent lesson in humility for Isaac and Giovanna. They are used to being the best simply because they're older and more capable than their younger siblings. This is the first instance in which that is not true with soccer and Nora. I'm quite sure she could dribble circles around them.

That being said, Isaac scored his first goal of the season tonight. He has been trying so hard, not all the time - there is a little distractibility for him at times, and we often have post-game discussions on why things played out as they did. He can be quite hard on himself, which is always difficult to balance out my response to his harsh self criticism when he is so apathetic at others. Balance.. balance.

It was amazing to see him actively trying out there tonight and using the input I gave him to actually achieve scoring a goal. He's been itching to as the season is coming to a close this week. It's so very cool to see your child when they come to the point of being able to use direction to cultivate a skill when they don't necessarily have the natural born talent.

All in all, while it's rather taxing at times and eats up a huge part of our schedule... I'm really enjoying sports activities for our family.