First soccer games

The weather cleared up Saturday morning and was gorgeous the rest of the weekend, so we were outside a bunch.

On Saturday, before we went out, Katharine helped Susan make brownies (pics 1-2) and then in the afternoon I look Emily and Katharine on our usual biking/merry-go-round/playground trip around the park (pics 3-4) while Susan took Alison to a get-together at her new soccer coach's house.

Today, Alison had her first game with her new teammates, who seem nice. Alison played well (she scored one goal and hit the crossbar on another shot) and they won 3-0 (pics 5-7).

Emily's league is experimenting with a new format: instead of 8 on 8, they're splitting each field into two smaller fields and then splitting each team into two teams of 4, and then playing two simultaneous games of 4-on-4. I think the idea is to reduce the huge scrums and let more players touch the ball, but it may end up having the opposite effect, as the best players now have fewer opponents to gang up on them and poke the ball away. Witness Emily today: she had 21 goals as she simply raced by/around/through the 4 opposing players and scored at will! (We tried to hold her back and she did try, but it was ridiculous!) I think picture #8 is her racing back to play defense, but it was also the picture, again and again, of her racing ahead of the field to score uncontested goals...

Katharine's First Day of School

It was Katharine's first day of school yesterday and she loved it! (Too bad it was for only one hour -- her school has a silly short schedule for the first few weeks, as if the kids haven't been going to school for years!)

Last night, two of our friends, Ciccio and Francesco, whom we visited in late July in Italy, came over for dinner. We all rode scooters to pick up the pizza -- it was the first time for them, so the girls gave the plenty of tips. 

Day at Victorian Gardens

Yesterday we went to a charity event at at Victorian Gardens (the amusement park at Wollman Rink in Central Park) and the girls had a ball going on rides and climbing on the rock wall with their friends.

The first pics are when Emily and I climbed the wall together. I've done some rock climbing, so to make it harder, I tried to do it without using any of the handholds or footholds -- just using the rock ledges (I almost made it too, until there were no handholds at the very top). Emily (surprise!) raced me -- she was using the handholds, of course, so in the first four pictures, you can see her behind me, almost catching me, passing me, and going down, while I'm still struggling to get up...

When Susan saw the third picture on the bottom row, she started singing, "I'm so dorky..." ;-) 

First Day of School

Yesterday was the first full day of school for Alison and Emily, plus Katharine had an orientation day. 

Alison's first day of school; bowling in the Berkshires

It was Alison's first day of school today -- she's now in 5th grade, which is middle school at Nightingale, which means she gets to wear a new uniform. Very exciting! Emily starts tomorrow, but she got dressed up in her uniform anyway, so Katharine had to dress up too.

It was cloudy weather in the Berkshires over the weekend, unfortunately (though we did squeeze in a little tubing and water skiing), so we went bowling twice. The pic in the lower right is a cute one of Katharine with Susan's younger brother, Uncle Kevin. 

Goodbye to Sunapee

The weather cleared up nicely the last few days at Sunapee and I took the older girls golfing the last three mornings. Some cute pics of Alison playing with Benjamin. The last few pics are of the rental car, packed to the gills with all of crap my parents and sister and her family are schlepping back to Kenya.