It’s Soccer Season

The craziness of sports kicks in this week.  Both Jake and Abby have soccer camp, although luckily neither of them have an all day session.  Jake is trying out for the Pope John Paul II soccer team (either JV or Freshman team), Abby begins her fall travel season with the Cheetahs.

Jake is having the roughest time of it right now.  It’s only the second day of tryouts and he’s already sore and limping around.  They are practicing for 3-1/2 hours per day, which consists of a lot of running and conditioning work.  It doesn’t help that the first three days of camp start at 7 am sharp, which means Jake has a 6 am wakeup.  To say he’s not a morning person would be a bit of an understatement. 

The coach is intent on gauging whether or not the boys are in shape.  It’s a real quick way to get rid of the players who aren’t quite cutting it.  Jake did some preseason training (which is really just another word for running) but tonight he admitted if he could do it all over again, he would have logged a lot more miles this summer in preparation.  At least he knows what in store for him next summer, so it’s already been a good learning experience for him. Regardless he seems to be handling it pretty well and I’m hoping he can make the cut.  It would be a great start to his freshmen year at PJP to be on a sports team.

Abby soccer season kicks into full gear this week.  She has three hour training sessions each afternoon and then the girls take part in the Battle of Hilltop, which is the West Mont Tournament and the worst one we’ll play in all season simply due to the amount of time they will spend on the fields.  They’ll start first thing Saturday morning and play straight through until Sunday evening.  It really is a draining event.

Abby also is playing CYO soccer for Sacred Heart.  Practices for that started earlier this month, but Abby won’t be reporting to training until Monday.  I figured she would get enough soccer in this week and weekend and there was no need adding some extra practice time to her schedule.

It’s still another 10 days until Brett begins his soccer season, but his is not nearly as intense as the other two.

 

Friday Night With the Cheetahs

Friday night we attended a pool party at the Lynam’s house.  It was the first official gathering of the Under 13 edition of the West Mont Cheetahs.

We added five new girls to the team from last year, and Coach Cunningham felt it was important to get all of the new families together so that the girls and the parents could all get to know each other.  We added five new girls to the team, so welcome aboard Marissa, Rachel, Caroline, Harley, and Bridget.

The Lynam’s have a fantastic set up around their pool, which includes a pool house with an outdoor kitchen and bathroom.  Dinner was potluck, with each family providing a dish and the main fare was burgers and sausage grilled on the barbecue by Coach Cunningham.

Thank you so much to Joanne and Jerry for having us all.  It was a fun evening and the girls and their siblings had a blast hanging in the pool and hot tub.

Abby’s Birthday Party With the Cheetahs

Nothing like staying on top of things, but we finally got around to having Abby’s birthday party with her friends on Thursday, June 17th, which is only 29 days after her actual birthday.  It worked out well because she’s always wanted to have a pool party and mid May is never really a good time around here to have one.

We had the party at 9 Oaks, and Abby wanted to invite her soccer team to share the day with her.  We were able to get 11 girls to attend, which is a pretty good turn out considering that school didn’t end for some of the girls and many of the girls had a basketball game that evening.  We ran the party from 4 pm to 8 pm, and it ended up being a wonderful day to hang by the pool.  We essentially had the entire complex to ourselves.

We ended up getting her a cookie cake as well as some of the coolest cupcakes.  If you peek at the picture above, you’ll see the hamburger and hot dog decorations on top of the cake.  Pretty cool use of icing, huh?  We got them at Giant, and they were a huge hit with the girls.  We also ordered pizza from Penny’s and there were plenty of others munchies to snack on.

Crazy Vacation/Work/Camp Week

Things are a little odd this week with the McMenamin family all spread out.

For those who didn’t know, my mom rented a beach house in Ocean City, NJ for 6 weeks, beginning June 20^th and running until August 1^st.  We went down to the house that first weekend (Father’s Day) to open it up and move everything in for my Mom, who was still recovering from surgery and is still not back to full strength.

We then went down for vacation from June 26^th until Monday July 6^th.  We spent the first two nights of the trip in Wildwood at a beach soccer tournament (Cape May Beach Blast) for Abby before heading over to my Mom’s.  Jean and I had a funeral to attend on Wednesday for Jean’s friend Sandy up in North Jersey, but other than that it was spent just hanging on the beach.

Jean’s parents also rented a house down in Ocean City starting on July 4^th and running through July 18^th.  That first weekend, they had Mike and Dottie and their kids down for the weekend, as well as my niece Natalie.  We invited them all over to my Mom’s beach house on the 4^th for a nice little clam bake, which was a relaxing way to hang out with some cocktails and fireworks.

On Monday, things got a little hectic as we went our separate ways.  I left the beach house early Monday morning (5:30 ish) to go straight back to work for the week.  Jean and Jake came home a little later on Monday.

Jake has basketball camp at Villanova this week, so Jean dropped him off and helped him get moved into the dorm room he’s sharing with his cousin Michael.  The two of them went together last year and they had a blast; Jake liked it so much he also recruited two of his buddies from Sacred Heart to go this year (Connor Tivanen and Tim Carroll).

Jean had to come back for a variety of reasons.  She started her final school course (yahoo!!) which is being given on Monday and Wednesday nights for the next three weeks.  She also has to teach Spinning class at the YMCA on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, as well as squeeze in her little side job.  She’ll bring Jake home from camp on Thursday afternoon so he can spend one night at the Sacred Heart Fair before they both head back down to the beach on Friday morning.

Abby has spent the last few nights hanging out with Jean’s parents and her cousin Natalie, while Brett spent a couple of nights at my Mom’s house before heading over to the Wynne’s on Tuesday night.  I’m not sure which of the two beach houses the kids will be sleeping at tonight?  What a great parent, huh?

This will be the longest stretch that Brett hasn’t been with us, but he really doesn’t seem to be missing us yet.  We’ve made a few calls to check in on him, but he can’t be bothered to actually get on the phone to talk to us.  I’m guessing that means he’s enjoying himself.

Memorial Day 2009

Our plans for the Memorial Day Weekend were pretty low key.  Aside from Jake’s sleepover on Friday night, we had very little planned.  The kids had no games or parties scheduled, so it really was a weekend with no commitments.

Jean had a bunch of homework to catch up on, and I had 5 cubic yards of mulch that I needed to deal with.  I spent three days working in the yard (busting my ass); sadly, I have at least another weekend of work before I’m done.

Saturday night we had the Haffey’s over for dinner out on our back porch, where we enjoyed a few glasses of wine while sitting around our new cast iron chiminea that we got at Lowe’s.  Sunday we made it to two parties; the first at Brad Hess’ and the second at a Cheetah type function at the Cunningham’s.

We went to get the chimea at Lowes because we had a gift card.  I was originally looking for a clay one, but they were out of them and they weren’t planning on getting any more this season.

I grabbed the cast iron one and proceeded to the checkout line, wondering how much money was on the gift card.  I have to admit I was a bit shocked to find out we only had $7.38 left on the card.   So much for saving money at Lowes.

The Jefferson Cup

This weekend, Abby’s soccer team (The Cheetahs) qualified to play in the Jefferson Cup down in Richmond, Virgina.  This tournament is the #5 ranked youth soccer tournament in the United States.

More than 400 teams that applied to enter the tournament were rejected, so it was quite an accomplishment for our girls to get accepted, especially when you consider that we are our clubs “B team” for this age bracket.

I ended up taking Friday off because I didn’t feel like making the 5 hour drive after work.  Jean stayed home with the boys, so it was just Abby and I who made the trip.

We ended up driving down with Chris Haffey and his daughter Meghan; we also ended up sharing a room.  Lucky for me Chris even volunteered to drive.

We stayed right in the heart of downtown Richmond at the Marriott, but I’ve got to say that Richmond was a depressing place to visit.  The downtown area was virtually empty, with a lot of empty buildings surrounding our hotel.  It was weird to be downtown without any sort of people milling around.

Our “A Team” (the Wildcats) also qualified for the tournament, and we ended up sharing the same hotel with them.  It was a bit weird to have the two teams together because for whatever reason the parents don’t seem to be comfortable with one another.

The results didn’t quite go our way; we lost two games and tied the third.  As always, the girls seemed to have the time of their lives.  They got to play some really good competition, swim in the hotel pool, as well as run around like crazy ladies throughout the hotel with little to no adult supervision.  What more can you ask for when you’re 10?

We didn’t get home until almost 5 pm on Sunday, so it felt like a bit of a lost weekend, but I know that Abby really enjoyed herself.