Quincy's World

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PARENTAL BRAGGING AHEAD

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Quincy had his first soccer game this morning. His team is called the Grey Sharks because their shirts are grey and because some sharks are grey. I think that was the logic amongst the PK-K kids. What struck me as funny to begin with was right at the start of the game. Both coaches get their players where they want them to play and it looks great. But then the ref blew his whistle and it was like moths to a flame.

The kids kept up this high intensity swarm soccer for maybe 10 minutes, but then you could see that some of them were getting tired. Quincy drew first blood in this game with a nice goal for his team. There’s no official scorekeeper, but all the parents knew what it was as the game went along.

The kids rotated as the keeper and Quincy made one save and allowed no goals. In the second half, Quincy employed the, what I’ll call, electron strategy. There’d be a group of kids, the nucleus, clustered around the ball, generally missing and falling over, and Quincy would just be circling around, waiting for the ball to pop out. It worked pretty well. He was able to get back on defense and he had a nice assist on the last goal of the game.

The final score was 5-0. Quincy had one goal and our ringer, Max, had the other 4. I have no idea if the Orange team is better or worse than the other teams, but we’ll find out as the games keep coming. Quincy had a lot of fun running around and finally playing organized soccer. I took him to Dysarts for M&M pancakes afterwards (Dara was at our yard sale).

So to recap: Quincy had 1 goal, 1 assist, and 1 save as keeper. Yup, I’m one of those parents. Deal with it.

When we purchased Molly, our Bernese Mountain Dog, we had to sign a bunch of things. One of the stipulations was that we would take and send pictures of her back to the breeder at age 6 months, 12 months and 18 months (I think). Well, we put it off for a little while for one reason or another. It was too hot, then it would rain, then she got conjunctivitis in her right eye. . . .

Finally, the weather was nice and Molly was back to looking healthy. Dara took a huge amount of pictures, and out of all of them, I was able to cull out 8. Yup, 8. She was either moving, looking away, fuzzy, or something. Hopefully, these pictures will be fine for the breeder. I guess that means I need to send them to her now.

Her pictures are available over in her gallery.

Well, the time had finally arrived. It was time for Quincy to leave the comfort of the nest. He was more than ready to head out on his own. Dara and I had given him the best foundation we could while he was at home these past 5 years.

Over the preceding weeks, we had been talking more and more about his going to school so that he would be used to the idea when it actually happened. He never seemed excited or bummed out about it. As it got closer to the day to start school, Quincy was very excited to be able to go. He was equally excited about riding on the school bus. He had gotten to ride the bus the day before at the school’s open house. He also got to see his classroom and meet his teacher.

Dara had shuffled around her schedule some so she could be here when he got on the bus. The big day came and went for him like it was any other day. When I got him from school, he was all smiles and just a bit more excited at home (adrenaline from the day no doubt). We got to hear all about the neat stuff he did and were happy to hear that he was excited to keep going back.

If you haven’t seen them yet, there are some pictures from his first morning before he left for school.

One of my oldest friends, Frank from our college days, brought the family up from CT for a visit with us. They arrived on a Monday and stayed until Friday afternoon. Quincy had a great time playing with their two girls.

We had one really beautiful day, and we took advantage of it by going to Acadia. It was very busy there, but still worth the trip. We also stopped at the Oceanarium on MDI. We got to see a live blue lobster there. Those occur every 1 in a million. They boil to the same color red we were told.

On one of the rainy days, we took them to the Cole Land Transportation Museum which is very close by. Quincy has been there many times and loves all the different vehicles they have.

All in all, it was great week with the Parnins here and we’re hoping to get down to CT sometime next year. With all the kids in school, it’ll be interesting to find the time.

There are a smattering of photos from their visit available for purchase in the gallery.