Defensive MVP of the Game

I keep reminding myself that no one said it would be easy being a soccer mom.

We've been struggling this year to get Brianna's exercise induced asthma under control. She was just diagnosed with it last year. Last year, the abuterol helped. This year it doesn't at all. It is breaking my heart to see a kid that loves soccer struggling for breath. I don't have asthma. No one in our families has asthma. None of our friends's kids have asthma. A couple girls on the team have asthma, but albuterol works for them.

So we were in uncharted territory. 3 appointments at the U Medical Center. It is confirmed that she indeed has a mild case of exercise induced asthma. Mild? Doesn't seem mild when the child is gasping for breath and has bloody noses. We are trying Flovent in the morning.

It is torture to watch her have such a hard time with this. This kid has always loved soccer. Up until 3 years ago....she would have this humougous grin on her face whenever she got out on the field to play. She even played rec this year just for the love of the game.

So tonight was good. [WARNING: Bragging Mom alert] Brianna played awesome tonight. She didn't let anyone get past her. On them like glue. The game winning goal was scored on her shift. She blocked the opposing them and sent it up to the offensive player to score.

But that wasn't the most impressive thing. The ball was either kicked or thrown in over her head and she had to run to get ball away from a player on the other team. She got it and they are still running toward our goal end. The player pushed her. All the parents gasped. The ref didn't call it. The player pushed her again. The parents gasped again. The ref didn't call it. Brianna turns the ball back toward the other end, dribbles past the pushy girl, and kicks it up in front of the other net. Totally awesome![80's much]

It was so great to see her do well tonight. I am really hoping that Flovent is the answer. She said she didn't need to use her albuterol inhaler tonight. That is great. It deserved the Venti Starbucks....her fav. So that's what she got. She deserved it!

Library of Memories and caught up

I am one of the lucky 375 enrolled in Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class. We are in our second week now. In week 1, we chrono organized our pictures. I had all mine pretty much organized except 2005 and 2006. So that didn't take too long...but I'm breaking from her class and not putting them into working albums. I spent too much time in the 90's removing them from the harmful affects of the dreaded magnetic album and putting them into photo boxes. I'm not moving them back to albums....too much work. Besides, I've scrapped a lot of those photos anyway.

Something has been bugging me about the current popular view of "caught up." That caught up is boring and bad. That all my current albums arranged neatly on the shelf in chronological order are nice, but boring. It's almost like a waste of scrapbooking time. Somehow, scrapbooking the events are not quite up to par with the moments. In the making of all those books and books of events, there was no joy or fun or creativity. There was just too much pressure.

Well, I guess that all depends upon what your view of caught up is and what your rules are. For me caught up is working within 6 months of the event. It doesn't mean completely finished. That's just wrong and if you have that view of caught up, you'll never make it. Life keeps happening until you're dead.

Let's just suppose that you are actually caught up - every event you want to capture is scrapbooked. How is that boring. Maybe boring in that you won't have anything left to scrapbook, but you have another gift. Completed albums to look through. Precious memories recorded. If I never scrapbook another thing, I have 8 chronological albums with many memories recorded in them. I feel good about that.

There has got to be a happy medium somewhere. So, I am taking Stacy's class. Because I feel like I am missing some of those moment pages. But in doing my page tallies this week, I have found that I have done more than I have thought. I am hanging in there. I'm going to see where she's going with this and how I can adapt it. Stay tuned.

This page is an assignment that we were to make about a page type that we did least. Mine is in the people we love category. It's a page about my sister and I supporting each other through our skating seasons this winter. Yeah, Stacy! This is what I wanted to get from you. Thanks for the inspiration to do this page.