marathon day

today was literally and figuratively "marathon day"!  i got up with matt at 5:30am to see him off to the akron marathon and had the intention of taking a picture of him with his bib on, but i forgot.  he was running a leg of the relay portion of the marathon.  his leg was 5.5 miles.  we were a little worried that he wasn't going to be able to get out of there in time to make it to mason's 9:30am soccer game so i was going to have to try and coach with the other three sitting on the sideline.  we didn't want them to be unsupervised so one of my friends answered my plea for help and offered to bring her two kids up to watch the game with them.  just as we were leaving i got a call from matt that he was almost home and would make it for the game.  whew.  a quick text and my friend didn't have to make the trip over to the fields.

mason sitting out with some teammates (2 of 6 kids in their family).

mason saw a little more actin than normal in today's game.  i think he is getting a little more aggressive in that he will go after the ball instead of waiting for it to come to him.

mason and maddux playing a little one on one in an empty goal during madelyn's game.

madelyn got to play goalie again and was able to keep several goals out.  she is showing improvement too.  i think that having a practice each week where they go over rules and strategies for playing has really helped her understand what she should be doing and how to think about the game.

maddux is still a hard core fan of the color orange so we just had to get a picture next to this orange car in the parking lot after the games.  now that he points them out, it is amazing how many orange cars there are!

no rest for matthew.  he was able to take a quick shower though and eat some lunch before his next task!  net on the schedule was filling rice bags/meals at church for haiti.  maddux wasn't old enough so i thought it would be good for daddy to take the two bigs and i would stay home with the littles (i also had to prepare for our evening activity and clean after such a crazy busy week - not a lot of rest for me either).  the kids were super, super excited!  haiti was our mission for vbs over the summer and this was the last event before the medical bus leaves for haiti.

all ready for food packaging

madelyn and mason could not have been happier about their jobs - madelyn got to put in the "vitamins" and mason got to put in the vegetables.  matt said it went pretty well but that it was a little stressful making sure they both did their jobs correctly while keeping up the pace and doing his own job - actually, he didn't tell me what his job was...

and they got to sign the ceiling of the medical bus too.  madelyn has been able to sign it three times now!  and mason has signed it twice.  i thought that it was so sweet (and, yes, i even thought that it was romantic) that matt found my name from vbs and added his own.

when they were done they came home to pick up the rest of us so that we could go over to a local park for our mops family picnic.  the power went off at some point before we left so matt had to manually close the garage.  in fact the power was out most of our way to the park.  we talked about the power being out while we waited for our coordinator's husband to get there with the pizza for our dinner (everyone brought sides or desserts).  and, yet, it never occurred to us that the power was out.  the pizza shop couldn't bake our pizza!  ugh!  so we called places in a wider and wider radius until we found one with power so that we could order some new pizzas.  we were all a little hungrier than was ideal when the pizza finally got there, but we still had a nice time.

for some reason, matt picked this weekend (when we are crazily over-scheduled) to have mulch delivered.  so when we got home from the picnic, he changed his clothes and got to work in the yard!  how 'lucky' for him, he had three 'helpers'.  

i brought the kids in for baths and put them to bed while matt continued to work outside.  and then he finally got to/had to come inside, take another shower and at long last, lay down!

he is amazing.  love.