Soccer Season

Soccer season is officially over. Shelby's last game was on Saturday.

Shelby is definitely not a head-to-head competition kind of girl. 

She loved learning soccer skills and doing drills, and then the game would come along and she'd kind of trail along behind and get distracted. 

She'd look at the clump of girls around the ball almost with an attitude like, "Ok good, looks like you've all got it under control! I'll wait out here!" It was so funny to watch.

She tried to pose like a tough girl post-game...

...but we prefer our happy girl!

That evening we had a Cotton Candy Kickers team party. Coach Missy was so sweet the whole season and made the party special for the girls.

They got trophies...

...and showed them off in a team picture.

Abigail, Shelby, Lilly, Taryn, Michelle

Shelby is so excited about all of her soccer memories.

Coach Missy also cut each girl out of the banner so she could have it as a souvenir. 

We had cupcakes at the party, but we didn't want Cameron to eat his until he had some sort of dinner. But we were at a pizza place, and he strangely will not touch the stuff. What kid doesn't like pizza? He continues to be a weird eater. We tried to find something from the salad bar, but he snubbed everything but a few bites of corn. 

We waited until we got home and I made his request - couscous and roast beef. He ate it up without complaint. He's funny. 

He earned his cupcake, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'll leave off with our favorite story from a funny soccer season.

It was apparent early on that Shelby wasn't going to run around the field scoring goal after goal each game. And that was ok, as long as she was out there enjoying herself. 

Tom came up with a great idea to give us something different to cheer for. Before each game he'd have Shelby make a goal for that game. It usually had to do with how many times she wanted to kick the ball when she was on the field. 

For this last game, her goal was to do one pullback. That's where she would grab the ball and roll it under her foot to get it to change direction. It's a move they've been working on in practice. So the whole game we cheered for her to give it a try. 

At one point near the end of the game she'd gotten some kicks in, but no pullback. Suddenly the goal opened wide and the ball came right to Shelby. It could not have been easier for her to kick it right in for her first goal. 

And...that's when she did her pullback. She changed the ball's direction so it rolled away from the goal right to the other team. And Shelby could not have been happier - she got her pullback! It didn't even click that she could have kicked a goal. She was focused on other things. We all laughed and enjoyed Shelby's moment. 

That girl is a cutie.