Ella The Soccer Star

Today we introduced Houston to the cutest soccer player in town!  In true Ella style, she did the complete opposite of what I expected.  Her team color is light green, but the uniforms are not in yet, so they said to just wear the closest you had - this is about the only light green shirt we have and Ella put it on with no fuss.  I had zero expectations of her wearing shorts, but the biker shorts came to mind and she put them on again with no fuss.  Then there were the shin guards and shoes.  Our past attempts at putting these on did not go well, so I expected screaming.  Nope, she put them on like she had been wearing them for years.  The shin guards did come off mid practice, but she doesn't have the right socks yet, so they were scratchy - I was just amazed she wore them as long as she did!  I asked her if she wanted her hair in a pony tail, yep, no problem. 

Here is Ella with a sign that Addison made for her. Addison really got into getting Ella ready and was helping at practice until she found one of her friends, then they ran off together!

So, when we got to the field, I expected her to cling to my leg.  There were periods of that, but she did awesome otherwise.  We started out with a "practice", so there was some kicking into the goal, attempts to kick to other team members.  Basically a lots of kids, parents and soccer balls running around on the field.  Ella was a huge fan of setting the ball up by the goal and kicking it in.  Then we had a "game" with another team.  Pretty much the same as practice, except there was only one ball and parents were at least trying to not be on the field as much.  It was minutes of chaos mixed with minutes of what looked like proper soccer.  The kids are obviously not use to playing ball only with their feet, so we'd be yelling to go get the ball and they would run over and pick it up.  When Ella was engaged she definitely showed potential, she is a fan of trying to get the ball and kicking the ball, but not really a fan when she didn't get the ball, so that typically resulted in her running over to me.  Overall week 1 was a huge success I'd say.  Not going to lie, I was dreading it a bit, but it was a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to the weeks to come!