Welcome Anyway: Look ma, no hands!

Sunday, June 22

Look ma, no hands!

As stated earlier, last night I took my mom to see my nephew, Kris, play soccer in Salt Lake City. He plays for the University of Utah. The game was enjoyable, even more so because we were sitting on the shaded side of the stadium – it was a whopping 98°. Highlights of the evening:

• Kris playing goalie
• Harold yelling at the refs
• Lupita, McKenzi and Noah squirting everybody with water from squirt bottles – which no one minded too much because of the aforementioned 98°
• My mixing and matching of sports terminology (i.e. can’t they get a rebound, if they shoot a goal from mid-field does it count for 3 points, and if anyone had scored I would have yelled “touchdown!”).

But the #1 highlight of the evening goes to my sister-in-law, Kathy. In a rare moment of sports seriousness, I asked the difference between throwing the ball and kicking it, of course, referring to the goalies. Kathy turned around to explain to me that only the goalies are allowed to touch the ball with their hands. She was so nice about it, and I was so shocked that she thought that was my question, I couldn’t even respond sarcastically with “Really? That’s how you play soccer?” Maybe I should have rephrased my question to be more specific, but I understood what I was asking, AND I did ask it right after a goalie chose to throw the ball instead of kick it. After we all started laughing about it, and I explained that I really did know at least THAT rule, my cute niece Amber said that she was going to say something sarcastic but refrained just in case I seriously didn’t know. Maybe somewhere in my mixing and matching of sports terminology, some people missed that I was joking?

Kudos to my mom!! Her health isn’t too great, and walking around too much is very painful for her. To get from where we parked to our seats about did her in, but then when we left, we had to hike for awhile as well. Good thing she wore here tennis shoes and not her 4-inch spike heels.

I took some cute pictures (it helps having such a cute family), but somehow missed a picture of Kris playing soccer – I’m a bad aunt.