Soccer in Boise

This weekend was jam packed with excitement, beginning with Janel's parents' surprise visit to Boise--well, it was a surprise to her since I was in on the little secret from the get-go. You must go to great lengths to surprise Janel; however, I believe her little investigative personality (one which is already emerging in little Faith) likes to solve the mystery of surprise. But this one left her baffled and dumbfounded.

I'll let Janel have the honors of sharing about our adventure to the Western Idaho State Fair (yee haw!) and Faith's dedication at church, but I couldn't resist from posting this little family portrait first. Now, never mind that the horse looks like someone just dumped a gallon of Texas Pete hot sauce into his bucket of oats and that I retook this photo from one that we were snookered into buying at the fair--it's just plum cute. I was almost waiting for Faith to toss her hat and give us a big whoop!



Now, I know nobody cares about my soccer league I'm playing in here in Boise, but I feel compelled to write about it, much like I journaled about my sandlot exploits in first grade while living in jolly old England. They usually consist of a sentence about how many goals I scored and that we won, which happened to be the most important thing to me as a child and has followed me into my adult life. At the ripe old age of 32, I'm beginning to realize that winning isn't that important--that's what all the losers say, right? But the real reason I'm writing about it is because Janel's dad, Ed, took some of the best action shots of a recreational soccer game I've seen in a long time. And since they happen to be of me, I thought I'd post them here.



Don't get too excited just yet. There's no happy ending to this picture because pulling my leg back like that took about as long as it did for communism to fall in Russia. So, by the time I made my perfect strike, aiming to curl the ball around the ranging keeper and into the left corner of the net, he was in position to make a diving save. Oh, well. I probably should've passed the ball to my open teammate seen in the far right corner.



This other great action-stopping photo by Ed captured a guy fouling me from behind. You get yellow cards in most leagues for such a challenge, but in the three-inch, jungle-thick grass we play on in Boise, chances are that you just tripped on the grass long before another player slid in and challenged you from behind. However, I am an actor and managed to roll around and grabbed my knee to earn the foul. It made me happy to know that good gamesmanship lives here, too.

And, oh, yeah ... I didn't score a goal and we lost 3-1.