A day outdoors

Today ending up being a day spent almost exclusively outside, the first of the year. First up was Sophie's soccer game. She and Erin were car-pooling with another family to Nakusp (40 minutes away) for their games there while Noah and a child from the other family had their game here. So we were up early to make the swap of children in time for the first game.

The entire morning was taken up with soccer games and transportation. Noah's team lost their game, but this was after donating two of their decent players to the other team who were short, and having those two score the two goals that put the other team ahead. The donation of players really helped keep the game collegial and mutually supportive. Very nice to see. Noah had some great saves in goal and did a great job as centre-forward in the second half.

After his game, we came home with two of his team-mates, one the product of the earlier kid-swap, the other a fellow violin student who was planning to spend the day with us. They played outside a bit, waiting for Erin and Sophie to get home.

When the girls got back, we were left with our four kids plus the extra violinist-cum-soccer-player friend. Erin, Noah, Sophie and their friend D. are all in the same art class which is holding an exhibit next weekend. They have agreed to be the musical entertainment at the Hidden Garden Gallery, so they spent almost an hour practicing outside, working out a "set" of pieces gleaned from the Suzuki repertoire for the most part, but with harmony parts. Fiona was obviously wanting very much to be a part of things.

More outdoor play followed, while I got supper prepared.

After supper the kids retreated to their bedrooms for a quick bit of practising on their current lesson assignments. Then we headed down to the GRUBS Garden for an evening meeting. We did a bit of digging and weeding and then inspected our bat house by torchlight (still no residents), watched for other bats coming out for night feeding (there were a few), played flashlight tag on the lawn and in the woods, and dug small lagoons out of the pebbles at the interface between the beach and the lake. We had planned to float a whole series of floating candles in the waterfront lagoons, but it was a little to breezy to keep the candles lit so while we got a couple lit, we decided to try again another night. The stars came out; we chatted and snacked on popcorn.

Then we headed home. The kids wanted some hot chocolate. Erin, who is getting a big kick out of the geometry problems in her math text lately, insisted on doing a bit of math. She got to work on that while I read "Hat Full of Sky" by Terry Pratchett to the other kids (Erin, as usual, has already read it). Everyone was really tired when they headed off to bed! Hopefully they get enough sleep to be in good humour and well-focused for tomorrow's orchestra and ensemble performance.