Purple Carrots

When I say "purple carrots", just so you know, I am not talking about the next super food. Nope. Purple carrots is about Peyton's first soccer practice. She is signed up for a 3-4 year-old soccer league at the YMCA--the Purple Team. And if you didn't guess it already from the clue in the most recent post, her daddy is the coach (of all coaches). At home, we call him Coach Dad. Now that I'm here writing, I'm not sure if this post should be about Peyton's first "real" experience of soccer or Blake's first "real" experience of coaching soccer. To begin with, shopping for sporting gear for our child's sport of choice (mom and dad's choice, obviously) made us feel like we had been ushered into The Land of Real Parents, and it was exciting.

Therefore, having recently become a "real parent," Blake prepared a list of "drills" (a.k.a. games) for his Purple Team to play at practice--games called Carrots, Silly Statues, Goal-a-palooza, and Busy Bees. In order to lay a good foundation for their soccer knowledge and skill, Blake started off with Carrots. He told the kids  to pretend to be carrots, and since carrots don't have hands, they are not to use their hands during soccer. Before practice, I tried to better prepare him by pointing out the obvious thing that you're probably thinking....the part about carrots not having feet either.  I was then sweetly admonished that Carrots is a common kids' soccer game and the issue of carrots not having feet doesn't actually matter. Well, I don't get it. It must be a soccer thing. I'm not a soccer mom yet, eh?

Peyton had no trouble letting the issue go, as in disregarding the rule all together. She was seen repeatedly picking up the ball with her hands, carrying it across the field, then putting it back down and kicking it into the goal. She did like to kick it into the goal though, and she looked good doing it, in my opinion. At the end of the night when I asked her what her favorite part of the day was, she said kicking the ball into the net and eating a cookie for dessert. Here are my favorite moments of the purple carrots' practice.