Volcanoes, Crushing Dreams: All in a Monday

As promised, we erupted our volcano today, and I remembered to photograph the event. Of course, since it was over so quickly, it was a little anti-climactic, but the kids all oohed and ahhed over it for a few minutes anyway.

Overall, even without taking the volcano into account, it was a productive day for a Monday. And I didn't start crushing any dreams until this evening.

Crushed Dream #1:

A couple weeks ago, we left church on a Wednesday night with Alex full of all kinds of enthusiasm. There is a dance/singing group full of girls her age that practices Wednesday nights and performs at various times on Sunday mornings. This past Sunday, however, we ventured out to a new church where some dear friends from our old church have been attending. We all loved it. In fact, Alex was the first to ask, "Can we come back here next week?"

I worried all day about bringing up the subject of Wednesday night because if we are not going to attend our new old church any longer (to clarify, our Old Church is the one we attended for 7 years before its closing; our New Old Church is the one we've attended since Christmas; our New Church is the one we went to yesterday. Got it?), it is silly for her to practice with this dance group and then not perform. (Besides that, I was just hoping and praying the girl carries a little more groove and rhythm than her mom and dad.) So I broached the subject tonight. I could tell she was disappointed.

However, there are other possibilities for fun on the horizon. Like a possibility of joining American Heritage Girls and Scouts (for the boys). I know. I'm crazy. I don't need to sign up for anything else. But that's just me. Like I said, it's a possibility. OK, so we'll probably be there by next week even though they meet on Monday nights which are crazy for me because of my crazy Tuesday, but sometimes I just have to take one for the team, right?

Crushed Dream #2

I knew it was coming...the question: When do we start soccer? And the truth came out: We never signed you up for soccer. Honestly, it comes down to this (and maybe this is selfish, I don't know): With 3 kids in soccer, that presents the possibility of 3 different nights of practice and 3 different hours of games on Saturday. That, in my humble (and possibly selfish) opinion is a recipe for Chaos and Stress. How do large families juggle sports and other extracurricular activities?

So I feel like a heel, yet a heel who has some preservation of sanity. On the bright side, we're getting closer to warmer weather which means volleyball. We've committed to spending a little extra time at the courts teaching the children to play. As I've mentioned before, we always said we wanted 4 kids so we'd have a volleyball team!