It’s been over a month now since this amazing trip, I can hardly believe it.  Doesn’t even seem real.
Here are some pictures of our amazing adventure!
My brother is an amazing teacher and guide and took Dee, Mary and I on a trip down the San Juan River by raft.  There we learned about Anasazi history, saw ruins of small villages and held ancient pottery.  We sat by campfire and reminisced and listened to great music.  We saw nature (even caught a little lizard!) and the scenery was absolutely breathtaking and changed at every bend in the river.  I missed the kids terribly, but the adult time with Dee, Mary and my brother was just what I needed.  We hardly ever get a chance to talk without someone interrupting so 6 days was indulgent.  Hoping to make a slideshow of all the pictures, but this is a little glimpse.

There are times when you see you child step into an activity and their whole being lights up.  That would be soccer for Carlos.  As a former player, I have to say this makes me incredibly happy.  I love soccer.  The excitement, the camaraderie, the action.  Good people play soccer.  It’s a great game.  I hate to miss a game, it’s fun to watch and now that they are at the “not a blob running around a ball” stage, it makes it even better.  They are actually playing intense, good games.
Last weekend, Azzuri was ranked #6 in the league and playing against the #3 team.  It was an intense game, very evenly matched teams.  Things started to go downhill when a mom stepped onto the field and kicked a ball (in her defense, she thought it had gone out but then had a TON of attitude about it).    We were leading 2-0 and the other team started to panic.  The play started to get much more physical, the refs weren’t calling much of anything.  At one point, our goalie went up to grab a ball and got elbowed in the chest.  He had to leave the game.  No call.  Play got even more rough, and as one of their players were near the sideline, he told another teammate to take out the new goalie.  There was a cleats up slide into goal and still no call.
  Where I’m going with this is that Carlos was defending the biggest, roughest kid as well as the one who said to take out the goalie.  Mama Bear came out in me and I watched a bit more closely.   Watching my son was out there getting elbowed and pushed down and manhandled a bit, I was curious how he was going to react.  I am proud to say, he raised up his game and met the challenge.  He is a physical player already, but his intensity tripled and he did it in a fair way.  There were no dirty hits or attempts to hurt anyone, he just played good, clean, tough soccer.
   Not sure how the other player’s parents felt about how that game went, I think they were upset about the loss.  There was so much more going on, encouraging kids to play nasty,  the part of youth sports that I hate.   Way to go Azzuri, you played with honor and heart and pulled out the win.

I had thought it would be funny to mess with Dee and bit last night and switch sides of the bed.  She is such a creature of habit, this wasn’t easy for her to accept but I insisted.  I mean, we are in a hotel for 2 nights and why not?  Live a little!  Well, my little scheme brought a couple of laughs from the kids as Dee tried her best to negotiate changing back but in the end the joke was on me.  Woke up bright eyed at 4am and Dee was still sleeping peacefully on my side of the bed.
This little joke backfiring has led me to find out that there are interesting discussions to be had in the hotel lobby at 5:30am.  It’s the time before the breakfast buffet starts, there is CNN streaming with news of the Paris attacks and a 40 something man came up to ask me if there had been any updates.  I told him what I had read this morning and he said, “you know, this is why I don’t want grandchildren”  I immediately thought he meant that the world was such a horrible place that he wouldn’t want his grandchildren to live in it, but no…I asked him why he thought that and he continued on to say that he loves his kids and all, but that he worries about them all the time and he knows he would add that same worry about grandkids and he doesn’t want to go through that.  He also loves his kids so much he doesn’t want them to have to feel that.  So selfish yet with deep love.
It’s interesting, because you do worry about your children in a way that a non-parent just can’t understand but I would never let that worry stop me from experiencing the love that comes with being a parent.  It’s pure, it’s deep, it’s something you also can’t explain to someone who has never been a parent.
Parenting isn’t easy, it’s not always fun but the rewards are incredible.  Does the love outweigh the worry?  For me, it does.  Apparently not for all.  Food for thought for the day.