gooooooooooaaaaaaaallllllllll!

amazingly enough, the bean's third soccer season has come to an end.  my little delicate flower, who's really not aggressive at all and will go out of her way to give you the shirt off her back, has turned into quite the little defender who loves to get after it out on the field.

the last game for the peppermint pink piranhas fell on a gorgeous day.  they did a little warm-up and practice like usual, and then huddled pre-game one final time.

surprisingly enough, she'd volunteered to play goalie for the first quarter.  she really loves being on defense, i suppose this was a good spot for her to be in.

she managed to get a couple of good saves in there.

after she took off that goalie uniform, she slid right back into defense mode and found herself playing alongside (and against) one of her oldest friends from dance class.

as usual, she kicked ass.

and then she found herself mixing it up a little with her friend.  when she's playing opposite one of her friends, the hub and i both find ourselves cheering for both teams at some point during the game.

for the final quarter, she put that goalie uniform back on and did some work to close out the game.

group picture!

and then she happily accepted her participation trophy at the team party the next evening.  i know, i know, trophies belong to first place winners, blah blah blah.  but you know what?  these girls busted their asses and played their hearts out all season long - through the heat of the summer and then towards the end, practiced weekly in the dark.  they deserve these trophies and i don't care what anyone else says.

next year, she's going to move up a level to U10 - and i hear it's a whole different ballgame then.  more competitive, scores are kept track of, it's more serious.  i'm curious as to how this will go.

we've got a whole year to wait.  we'll just have to see what happens...

the saturday experience

saturday was one of our busiest days ever.  first up, the bean's saturday math/science class, to which we were welcomed by one of the household mascots:

from there, we got a quick breather at home before heading out to her soccer game.  this one was particularly awesome not just because our team won, but because the bean somehow managed to get some field time playing in all sorts of positions.  she was goalie, offense, and defense all in one game:

at halftime, she got a little bit of personalized coaching.

the hub stood proudly along the sidelines, cheering and encouraging the girls the whole time.

when we got home, it was a mad dash to get cleaned up and ready to head out for the next item on the agenda.  i'd seen my friend nanette post about her daughter going to see something interesting here:

and when i checked online, it turned out that it was the final weekend for this:

the first thing we saw when we walked inside was this:

the second floor was full of all things t-swizzle.  childhood mementos:

costumes from her elaborate tour productions:

one of her bedazzled guitars:

handwritten lyrics to one of her earlier songs:

an entire wall dedicated to magazine covers she's graced:

of course, there was a grammy.

like my shirt?

we stepped inside this booth to do a little karaoke.  while the old lady and her special friend looked on in silent amusement, the girls and i happily belted out all the words to a recent taylor song.

those two had mixed reactions to this exhibit.  one was a little undercover excited, the other was a bit eye-rolly over it all.

but the rest of us had a blast with a dance party on the light board to "shake it off," which was on continuous loop.  while i adore that song, i'm sure the employees who work that floor are probably a little tired of it.

we all managed to escape the gift store without spending a dime on any taylor merchandise.  although i confess, that was solely due to the lack of sizes smaller than L.  being the last weekend, all of the stuff was pretty much picked over.

then we finally, reluctantly left the second floor to check out the other areas of the museum.

there was a whole display celebrating the music of tupac shakur.

r.i.p., whitney and michael.

when we discovered this area, playtime began in earnest.

the girls had fun in one of the interactive "mixing booths."

 there was a bit of boredom for some in the group.

so we made our way outta there.  after dropping our little friend off at home, we stopped at ours just long enough to grab the hub and our pre-packed bags and then headed off to the next destination:  the knott's berry farm hotel, where we all got a little face time with snoopy in our rooms.

 we went out one last time to grab some dinner somewhere super fun - farrell's ice cream parlor.

the old lady and i happily shared a plate of "ice cream nachos" - waffle chips, three kinds of ice cream, marshmallow, caramel and hot fudge sauces, and whipped cream.  oh, so delicious.

and we got serenaded by some of the talented employees before we left.

phew.  long day.  and the weekend still wasn't over yet!