Spring

The girls started spring soccer a couple of months ago. After a few good years doing soccer through the Franklin YMCA, we decided to give Williamson County Soccer a try. I’ve been very happy with the switch — better fields, more organization, solid coaches, and, my favorite part, many families I know from and see in other contexts. I enjoyed meeting other parents through the Y, but only seeing those families once or twice a week made it hard to connect. (I had the hardest time remembering the parents’ names from week to week…) Now, there are two girls on Lily’s team whose families I see regularly at church, and Hannah’s team is mostly girls from her school, whose families I see at school and at Girl Scouts. I think the girls are having more fun with the new league. I know it’s a better social experience for me.

I realized last fall that I had managed to surround myself with good friends, but almost none of them were parents. I’ve tried to be more proactive since then in connecting with other parents, starting by volunteering at the check-in desk in the kid’s ministry at church. As it happens, the daughter of one of the couples I work with there is on Lily’s team. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them and other parents I’ve met through soccer and church in recent months. One of my goals for 2014 is to cultivate relationships in my life, and I’m glad that soccer (and church) is helping me accomplish that goal.

The first couple of weeks of soccer were rough, since they fell during this stupid-cold winter we had this year. And a number of practices and games for both girls have been rained out in recent weeks. But the last couple of weeks featured pretty fantastic weather, and I’ve really enjoyed spending my Saturday mornings on the soccer fields with the girls. Their last games are this coming Saturday, and I’m definitely going to miss the experience. We’ll be back in the fall, however, hopefully with the same teams.

Meanwhile, back in March we had a couple of weekends in a row without soccer games, thanks to spring break. For the first weekend, I was determined to get out of town and enjoy some nature with the girls. After receiving two independent recommendations for Foster Falls, just this side of Chattanooga, I figured it was worth a day trip. I thought that even if the trees hadn’t gotten their leaves back, we would still have a nice waterfall to look at. As it turned out, not only is the waterfall there spectacular, there was plenty of greenery, too. The trail down to and past the waterfall was just hard enough, just interesting enough, and just long enough to fit our needs, and the scenery along the way was beautiful. We spent a couple of wonderful hours “hiking,” enjoying the waterfall, talking with some of the rock climbers there, and playing around in the small streams that feed the waterfall. Totally worth the two-hour drive.

That was the first weekend of spring break. The second weekend found us in Houston, visiting my sister Kathryn and her family. Kathryn has two little boys, ages 1 and 4. The girls hadn’t seen their cousins since the 4-year-old was a baby, so we were overdue for some cousin time. Getting to have fun with Kathryn’s dog, Norma Jean, was a bonus. (That’s Norma Jean in the picture, taken by Hannah using my camera. My girl has an eye for photography!)

I can’t tell you how much of a joy it was to see the four cousins playing together in Kathryn’s back yard. Her boys, being boys, were on the move the whole time, mostly hitting various balls around the yard. My girls were so good with their cousins, entertaining Kathryn’s youngest and playing hard with her oldest. Lily is six now, and getting to see her be something of a big sister to Kathryn’s boys was a real treat. There was also much coloring, not only by the cousins, but by me. My (very rusty) super-hero drawing skills were requested by my nephews, and I left them half dozen doodles of various Avengers.

As I’ve been talking to other parents, I’ve come to realize how very different boys and girls are, and I saw that with Kathryn’s boys. They were very active, as I said, pretty much in constant motion. But they didn’t say much, at least not compared to my girls, who probably pack in ten thousands words a day. I’m so used to my little chatterboxes telling me every last thing on their minds, that I had trouble figuring out what Kathryn’s boys were thinking. Did he like that doodle of Thor I drew? I wasn’t sure until a while later when he asked for one of Iron Man. I know Kathryn has a better sense of the cues her boys give to what they like and how they’re feeling, but they kind of mystified me. They were adorable, however, and I loved playing with them in Kathryn’s cozy backyard or the park across the street. We got to see her oldest’s first t-ball game, too. He was so thrilled that we were there to cheer him on.

Hannah quickly bonded with her Aunt Kathryn, so much so that she cried as we left on Saturday to head for the airport. I realized that most of Hannah’s female relatives are my age or older. Kathryn is nine years younger than me, which immediately made her the cool aunt. Even better, Kathryn is wonderful with Hannah, engaging her in conversation in a way that I just can’t. We spent a day at the Houston Space Center and a half a day at the Houston Zoo, but I’m pretty sure the highlight of the trip for Hannah was hanging out with her aunt.

That was March. In April, Cheekwood Botanical Gardens was the place to go. I went three times in eight days, first to take some photos of the 100,000 tulips Cheekwood planted for the spring, then to go back the following day to enjoy the flowers with Hannah and Lily, then the following weekend for some Easter fun. Those first two visits were strategic on my part. I really enjoy photography, and I knew that if I went with the girls, there was a good chance I would be too distracted taking pictures to really enjoy the visit with the girls. (That was a lesson I learned from the Foster Falls trip, during which I got a little too obsessed with getting photos.) So I went by myself on Saturday to take photos of tulips, then went back the next day with the girls. They borrowed my camera and took photos (the tulips really were amazing), and I took some good shots of the girls, but I had gotten enough good flower photos the day before that I could focus on my daughters and their enjoyment of Cheekwood’s flowers.

We went back to Cheekwood the following week, on the Saturday before Easter, because I’ve learned that my girls really enjoy an Easter egg hunt. Hannah got to go to “Eggspedition” at church that morning with a friend, but Lily missed the church event because of her soccer game. That wasn’t going to do, so we spent the afternoon at Cheekwood, with the girls joining in a couple of the Easter egg “hunts” that Cheekwood organized for the kids. I put “hunts” in quotation marks because they’re not like the hunts I grew up with. Back in my day, the adults hid Easter eggs in tricky places all over Grandma’s back yard, and the kids took twenty minutes finding them all. Then we would repeat the process a few times, sometimes with the kids hiding the eggs for the adults. So much fun. These days, Cheekwood and the Nashville Zoo and other places, I’m sure, just toss a few hundred (or thousand) eggs in an open field and turn the kids loose to go collect them. The whole thing is over in about 60 seconds. Fun, yes, but not as much fun as I had searching for eggs at Grandma’s house year ago.

(The photo above is from the Zoo a couple of years back. See if you can spot Hannah!)

Making the Easter visit to Cheekwood more enjoyable was the fact that we went with another family. Remember what I said about getting to know other parents in multiple contexts? Well, last year, when the girls were playing soccer through the Franklin Y, Hannah got to be friends with the daughter of one of the coaches, and I got to know the coach and his wife a little during practices and games. Near the end of the season, I was surprised to run into them at my church! They had been going for a while, but I hadn’t seen them there. (It’s a big church, with two Sunday morning services.) That was a nice small world moment, but we had another one in February, when I learned that they live in Fieldstone Farms. That’s the neighborhood I moved into back in December. So now Hannah has a friend from soccer who goes to our church and lives about four streets away. It was that family that joined us for our Easter trip to Cheekwood. The dad and I get along well, and all the kids (they have a daughter Hannah’s age and a son just a bit older) have fun together.

We managed to get in a proper Easter egg hunt, too. Easter afternoon, we were invited to lunch at my friend Barb’s house. Barb hosted the small group I was in back in 2011-2012, and she invited the old gang over for Easter lunch, along with other friends of hers. Only a few of the old group were able to come, but it was great catching up with them. And Barb made sure to hold an Easter egg hunt for the kids at the party — in her backyard with eggs hidden in all kinds of tricky places. The girls loved it, and I love cheering them on. Thanks, Barb, for your always wonderful hospitality!

With the move in December, that stupid-cold winter that didn’t want to end, and five work-related trips in a two-month period, the last few months have felt very busy and not  always a lot of fun. Looking back on these outings with the girls, however, has helped me see just how much quality time we’ve had in recent weeks. I may complain about the traffic here in Franklin from time to time (it’s terrible), but, overall, I’m pretty content with the life we’re living here.