Let’s talk about Claire.
And junior high.
Because we’ve been spending a lot of time over there lately.  
And because look at that smile.

We just wrapped up the junior high soccer season.

It was a wing-dinger, I’ll tell you that!

(That’s Claire’s tumbling coach who coaches all these girls on the team who came to support, what a sweetie.)

We braved mostly oven-like temperatures watching from the sidelines, but there was also one cold, windy rainy game.

 Lucy was clearly enamored by that one.

 I love that these older siblings made the effort to come watch some of the games:

…and that they’re such good friends too.
The last game (the play-off game) was a little nutty.
They played a team they had beat quite handily twice during the regular season.
But they were tied with one minute to go and sure enough, a talented girl from the other team kicked a goal right in the last thirty seconds to tie up the game.

 (I must admit it was a pretty sweet shot that tapped the top of the goal and bounced right into the right spot.)

So we went to overtime.

These fans were pretty great with that.

 This one, not so much:

 “come ON already!” is what she was screaming in her mind right at that moment I’m pretty sure.

No score in overtime.

On to another overtime.

Still no score.

So they went to a “penalty shoot out” where each team got five kicks to score.

Even that was neck-and-neck until the last kick when the other team took the game.

It was a sad ending of the season, but I have to admit that I think the parents were secretly celebrating.  No practice on Halloween was kind of nice.  And it was a really great season so we’re all good 😉
Still a lot of chicken on that soccer bone with club soccer, that is still taking over our lives.  
They had a very informal little awards ceremony at the school this week.
Proud of those girls!
In other “Claire news,” the annual “Shadow-Your-Student” came and the junior high and Claire and I were both a little giddy about that.

Nothing like following your child around her own territory for a day.

I think our favorite part was PE volleyball, which I didn’t get a picture of, but here’s her locker which she was pretty excited about 🙂

We totally kicked booty on the ABC’s of the Civil War activity we got to do together.

 Fun between classes:

Junior high years aren’t sometimes the easiest to maneuver, but I love how she does her best to make sure everyone is included, which is tough with so many kids your age!

They come up with some pretty creative ideas sometimes.  Here’s an aerobics class they did one afternoon:

Lu gets quite a lot of attention for her art, but Claire is a mighty fine artist herself.  Here’s what she drew one day at church trying to sketch my very favorite picture of Christ:

Sure love this girl of mine.

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2 Comments

  1. That used to be one of my favorite pictures of Christ too! We have since adopted 2 babies of color, and have tried to seek out more multicultural artwork. A better reflection of our family and the word in general.

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