DC United WINS!

Last night was probably one of the best nights I've had in my life! It was completely orchestrated by God! If you're interested in just reading the short version, here it is: I went to see the DC United vs. LA Galaxy game last night in Washington. DC United won. David Beckham and Carlos Pavon played! The end.

Here are the details and how this trip was completely set up by God!

#1: Do you recall the dream I had about this game? If not, scroll down to the post called "Soccer Crazy" and you'll find out about it there. So I had this dream about the game and when I told this kid named Wilson about it, he went crazy because he's never been to a MLS game and the boy LIVES FOR SOCCER. There's a player for Galaxy named Carlos Pavon who is from Honduras and Wilson is also from Honduras so he desperately wanted to see Pavon play, and of course he equally desperately wanted to see Beckham play. So I decided to get tickets and take Wilson to the game.

#2: Four of us ended up going, me, Wilson, another soccer kid named Marcie, and a friend who works at my school named Samantha. When we got in my car (which does not have air conditioning), it was about 100 degrees outside. We were dying before we even left C'ville. I said out loud, "If only it was 5 degrees cooler." Samantha said, "If only it was 10 degrees cooler." Then I said, "Hey, how about 15 degrees cooler!" Within one minute, the sky clouded over, a cool breeze started blowing and the temperature dropped. And guess what the temperature ended up being for the rest of the night. 85 degrees. (Go back up and look at what it started as!) Don't believe me? Go on dcunited.com and check the game details. It says the weather conditions.

#3: I was worried about our seats because our tickets were for the very top section, almost the very top row. I thought maybe it would be too far away for us to see the game well. In fact though, they ended up being the most perfect seats because we could see the whole field (we had mid-field seats), we could watch David Beckham when he started warming up right in front of us, and it wasn't even that high. Just look at the pictures! It wasn't bad at all! And the other great thing was that it started raining in the second half and our top rows were the only rows that were covered! We didn't get wet at all! Hahahahaha God is so great!

#4: The night before the game, I checked the injured list for LA Galaxy so I could check on David Beckham's status. I was a little disappointed because it said there was only a "slight possibility" he would get to play, and I was very sad for Wilson because the Honduras player, Carlos Pavon, was also on the injured list. Wilson was very disappointed to find this out. But then Beckham started warming up on the sidelines and we started getting our hopes up! Then in the 72nd minute he went in to play the final 20 minutes of the game! And as if that wasn't enough, guess who went in at the 77th minute! CARLOS PAVON!!! Wilson was jumping up and down, he was so excited! And Carlos Pavon and Beckham both almost scored!

#5: Wilson and Marcie have to be the most fun kids to travel with ever. They loved every minute of the trip, from riding the Metro in Washington to using the binoculars to see the players so close they could even see which players had earrings! When the Metro went underground, Wilson was convinced we were under water and Marcie kept pointing out invisible sea turtles, which Wilson pretended to be terrified of. He would hide under the seat every time Marcie called out, "WATCH OUT! There's a sea turtle!" And when the train doors opened at the stops, the boys would hold their breath so the "water" wouldn't drown them.

On the way home, Marcie fell right to sleep, but Wilson was wired. He stayed awake, making us laugh all the way until we got home at 1:30 AM. He was so excited about the game. Here were some of his hilarious comments:

"I'm probably going to fall out of my bed tonight because I got to see David Beckham and Carlos Pavon!"

"Miss Tice, you need to pinch yourself right now! You might be dreaming because YOU JUST GOT TO SEE DAVID BECKHAM!!!"

"I'm going to call my grandma right now and tell her I got to see Carlos Pavon! Wait I don't have a cellphone. Well I'll call her when I get home. Wait she might be asleep. I don't care - I'm going to wake her up to tell her I SAW CARLOS PAVON!"

"We should make David Beckham our pet."

"Nobody's going to believe me that I saw David Beckham and Carlos Pavon! I'm going to write about it on the first day of school. Here's what I'll write: This summer I went to a soccer game and I saw David Beckham and Carlos Pavon. And I wanted David Beckham to sign my chicken nugget."

And this one, of course, was the one that made all the cost worth it: "This is the very best day of my whole life right now! I got to see David Beckham!"

I GOT TO SEE BECKHAM!!!!

Here are pictures of David Beckham playing in his first ever MLS regular season game! Because of his hurt ankle, he's been unable to play until now. Everyone's been guessing, "When will Beckham get to play?" and "Who will see Beckham play in his first MLS game?" Answer: ME!!! It was cool to see how supportive the DC United fans were in honoring his debut, even though they can be intense! Even the DC United players said they had to take a moment to just say WOW, and then they got back to the game. What an awesome game!

Here's David Beckham warming up and waiting to go in the game.

New Driver - beware!

Guess what everybody! I paid off my car! It officially belongs to me now! But now Mouse King has a new car payment because he just got his driver's license. He test drove two new cars last night and although the off-road 4x4 to the left showed a lot of promise, he finally decided on the green Nitro Speeder above.

Summertime

Here are two songs that sort of explain why summer, for teachers AND kids, is a gift from God!

"I've been working real hard
For just one reason
I've been waiting all year
For just one season
The season that reminds me of palm trees
The smell, the ocean breeze
And the sense of bein' free

Take in the scenery
The mood is fine
Nobody's wearin their watches
Nobody's checkin the time
There is only one thing that's on everybody's mind
Thats the summer, the summer, the SUMMERTIME"
-from "Summertime"

"Reason one that summer rules
We don't have to go to school
From the beach to the pool
Looking hot and keeping cool
Open toes t's and vans
Working on the perfect tan

Volleyball and catching rays
Now it's time to hit the waves
At the mall window shopping
Dreaming up a look that's poppin
Summertime jams droppin
Summertime is never stopping"
-from "No Sleep Till Summertime"

Championship Party

So remember how I told you that my baseball team won the city league championship? Well we had our team party to celebrate it last night! Pretty much our whole team was there and we played basketball, walked down to a beautiful lake where lots of beavers live, and ate cake and tons of cheeseburgers and hot dogs on the grill! It was awesome because we probably won't see each other again until next spring when the season starts again. I got to play basketball with this really great kid named Joel who's going in to 9th grade this year. He's probably the nicest high school kid on the planet! When I eventually have a kid, I hope he's just like Joel when he gets to be a teenager!

Castle Legos

Last summer I bought a bunch of Lego sets on sale at the Lego store. They've been just sitting in my house waiting to be built. I finally had time to build them, so I put together all the castle Legos that I had. I filled up the empty display case that is in my dining room! I also built that bright green car on the bottom shelf of the display case last night. Man I love Legos!

World Cup Camp Highlights

At the end of a great week of soccer at the World Cup Camp, here are some pictures that highlight the great fun and exciting moments the kids had!

Soccer Crazy

So to all of you soccer fans out there (a.k.a. Niklas and Katie), I am really sorry to say this, but I'm just not really in to soccer. Or at least I wasn't until about a week ago. Now, however, it's a completely different story. I started reading about Beckham last week and that got me interested. Then on Friday night I had a creepy dream. Keep in mind that as of a week ago, I could not even name one major league soccer team in America. Sad, I know, but true. So Friday night I had this dream that DC United was playing LA Galaxy on August 9th at 7:00 PM. I woke up thinking, "Okay that was weird..." and then the thought crossed my mind to check the DC United schedule. So I did and I'm sure you can figure out the rest. DC United does, in fact, have a game against LA Galaxy at 7 PM on August 9th. So now I'm trying to get tickets to it.

Meanwhile the local soccer organization, SOCA, is hosting their annual World Cup Soccer Camp this week. I signed up three of my kids to do it. The kids are so excited because they LOVE soccer. Two of them have never played organized soccer ever. We signed them up to play in the fall too. So each night I pick the kids up and take them to camp. The kids absolutely love every minute of it! Watching the kids play makes me want to play! So now I'm going soccer crazy!

Mouse King's geared up for school!

I can't believe I have to be back at school in 2 weeks. Where has the summer gone??? Well I know one thing...Mouse King's ready for school. He's been sleeping for most of the summer trying to catch up on all the sleep he missed from last school year. He's ready now though. He's been wide awake for the past two days, running in his ball, running in his wheel, exploring the exciting world known as my kitchen counter. Here's a really cute picture I took of him this morning, climbing in to a ceramic candle holder. Isn't he the cutest little hamster in the world? What a good little Mouse King!

Out of Peaches??? How is that possible???

Have you ever been peach picking? A couple years ago, my family went to pick peaches at Carter Mountain and it was a lot of fun. My sister really wanted to do it again, especially because she's about to go back to Georgia on Wednesday. So we decided to go up yesterday and spend the afternoon picking peaches. We had big plans for those peaches, plans that involved a delicious peach cobbler (my sister's favorite dessert). I brought Chaos the good dog so he could experience firsthand the delight of picking peaches on a hot summer day! So we drove up Carter Mountain, the excitement building with every turn. Except when we got out, the Carter Mtn. people told us that there were no peaches. They never made it through the late frost we had back in April. So there went that plan. Chaos and I went for a walk through the orchard anyway. Here's a funny picture of him being hot and not amused at the absence of peaches. He was really looking forward to them peaches.

We won the championship!

In the midst of a very sad week, good things have happened too. On Thursday night, my team, the X Rays, played in the playoffs for the city league championship. We were in third place entering the playoffs. The first game - the semi-finals - was ironically against my sister's team, the second place team. This was the team that led me to join the X Rays back in the spring when I went to watch my sister's game and saw that the Rays needed another player. Although I betrayed my sister, I ended up staying with the Rays for the rest of the season. So it was weird that we played them in the semi-finals. We crushed them and almost won by slaughter rule. They gave a good attempt to come back though. It was 17-3 in the 4th inning when they went on a hitting spree. We finally won like 21-15 or something.

Then we played the first place team in the finals. We were definitely on our game and we won 10-6! I played second base for both games and hit 3 singles and walked once. Our team got a trophy at the end of the game. Well, it's really a plaque in the shape of home plate that says that we won. It's really cool! Go X Rays!

More Cody Coolness

Here are some more cool things about Cody:

9. He was the best fake horse ever. Kathryn used to make him run around and jump over broomsticks that she had set up to 3'6" and he could clear them every time.

10. He received his own mail at our house. What other dog gets their own mail? One day we got junk mail in our mailbox addressed to Cody Merk. From that day on, Cody received mail regularly.

11. Cody is a walking GPS system. In Maine, my stepmom Diane just loves Cody and Tucker. The feeling is quite mutual. Well one day Diane took the boys out walking in the woods along trails far away from the house and Cody ran off and never came back. Of course Diane was crushed and searched for him everywhere. He still hadn't been found by the next morning. Well Diane teaches high school and as she pulled up at her school, distraught and worried about Cody, she looked toward the front doors of the building and saw Cody! Somehow he had found his way to the school where she worked and was waiting for her there! We still have no idea how he found the school or how he knew the school was where she worked and would be the next morning.

Good ol Cody. I won my ball games tonight in honor of you, Cody Merk!

Goodbye Cody :'(

Today was a very sad day. Today my dog Cody, one of the greatest dogs ever, died. I've been dreading this day for years now. We got Cody about 13 years ago, back in 1994. I adopted him, but he was really attached to my dad right away. After my dad died, my stepmom Diane took Cody to live with her in Maine. Cody was so close to my dad that having him around was like having part of my dad around too. My dad died almost 8 years ago and from the moment he died, we could say, "At least we've got Cody," whenever the now-familiar crushing sadness overtook our hearts. And from the moment my dad died I've been fearing this day.

The day Cody would be gone just like my dad.

Here's what made Cody so great:

1. He was brilliant. He knew so many tricks and commands, like all the normal ones of course, but also he knew the difference between "speak" and "sing". He would get the newspaper for us and was always so proud to do it. In fact, after he learned how to get the newspaper, he thought he could make us extra proud of him if he got EVERYBODY's newspaper on the whole street. So we'd open the door and there would be a pile of papers on the front porch and Cody would be standing over them just wagging his tail, showing off his newfound skill.


2. He had great word recognition and he could even spell! He loved cookies and my grandmother used to bake cookies just for him. He, of course, learned the word "cookie" very quickly and would go nuts whenever someone said it. So we had to start spelling the word "cookie" just so he wouldn't know what we were talking about. That led him to realize that "c-o-o-k-i-e" meant the same thing. He also learned the word "hamster"!


3. He had very strange obsessions. For example he had an intense dislike for UPS trucks. Mail trucks, Fedex trucks, dump trucks, and any other kind of truck were just fine with him, but not UPS trucks. He could spot one from a mile away, I think he even could tell by the sound in fact, and would start barking and carrying on, growling and letting that UPS truck know how he felt about it. He was also very obsessed with the word "shark" for some unknown reason. Whenever we would say "shark" he would go crazy, barking, whining, jumping in circles. We never did figure out why.

4. Cody could play basketball like a pro. He was even better at soccer. When my dad and I would play basketball, Cody would come out and take us on.

5. He knew how to be a good friend. His best friend was his brother Tucker. He was very loyal, like most dogs, to the people he loved. I remember one day when I was 16, my dad, Cody, and I went outside at night to go to the mall. It was dark and on the way to the car, Cody froze, staring in to the darkness with his fur standing up, growling viciously. He was not ever known to do that, since he was a very friendly dog (except to UPS trucks), and we looked around but didn't see anything. Suddenly this creepy guy started walking up our driveway and asked to use our phone. Cody was having none of it. I'd never seen a dog do that before in real life and it was the first time I realized that Cody would have died to protect us.

6. He could jump high enough to clear an invisible fence. When he was a puppy, my sister wanted to train him to be in agility dog shows, so she started working with him on his jumping. He became a very high jumper, which he used to his advantage to escape the invisible fence in our yard. He figured out that if he started at the other end of the yard and sprinted toward the edge as fast as he could, he could leap over the fence and he would be too high for the shock to affect him. I told you he was brilliant.

7. He always had a bone to chew on. He was very protective of his bones.

7. He crossed his legs when he would lay down.

It feels dumb trying to explain the significance of Cody in a numbered list. It feels just like all the pain of losing my dad all over again. Stupid sin. Stupid earth. I hate this place where death has to tear us apart from the people and the animals that we love. I can't wait to be in heaven where I'll be able to see my dad and Cody again and they can never be taken away. At least Cody and my dad can be together again.

This morning, on Cody's last morning on Earth, guess what he did. He went to get the newspaper.
Goodbye, good Cody Bear. See you soon.

Perfect Day for a Shower

We went to my sister's baby shower this weekend too. It was in this beautiful park (that had an awesome skatepark that everyone neglected to tell me about!). My sister, Cameron, is having a baby boy in about 3 weeks! His name is either going to be Caden or Leland...they haven't decided yet. Cameron's boyfriend and the dad-to-be, Aaron, came of course and we were able to see their new apartment after the shower was over. Cameron is taking classes in the fall and wants to go in to criminal justice. Aaron does not have a job yet, but he's looking for one. Please pray for all three of them, for Cameron, Aaron, and the new perfect baby who is already part of our family!

We love you, Cameron, Aaron, and Caden/Leland!

All-Star Baseball

This weekend was a beautiful one for baseball. The Cove Creek All-Star team had a tournament so I went to watch it. They played hard, making it all the way to the semi-finals before losing. A bunch of kids who were on the 10 and under team are going in to fifth grade now, but they were in my class when they were in second grade. It was really cool watching them play, seeing how much they've grown in their playing ability.