As of today I get two new official titles. I am now a “soccer mom” and a “soccer coach”. (It was suggested to me that this post could qualify for the Wednesday funny, but I digress…).

Yes, we signed up our eight oldest kids for our town soccer program. I enjoy soccer and have coached before, so I volunteered to coach one of the teams, and I was assigned a team of 18 kids between the ages of 8-10, three of which are mine. I have Nate, Ryan and Des all on my team, and they think it is fantastic that “Mom” is their “Coach”.

Ryan thinks he is getting away with something big by calling me Coach instead of Mom…he’ll walk by and say, “Thanks for breakfast…COACH” and then giggle. Funny boy.

Mercy is on an older team, Shane and Ben are on a “5-7” year old team and Maggie and Amanda are on the “baby team”, where there is always a kid sitting down picking the grass, a kid running in the wrong direction and a kid crying. (Notice I did not volunteer to coach this age group. Been there, done that. They are lots of fun, but I wanted to play with some kids who could really play). Marcus will just follow along, and I have a feeling he is going to love every minute of it.

The kids are so excited this morning. Eight pairs of shin-guards, eight new pairs of soccer shorts, eight new soccer t-shirts and eight giant pairs of soccer socks are anxiously awaiting to be put on. Ben is beside himself…he played soccer at least 50% of the time we were in Ethiopia and just loves it. He thinks having a real uniform and getting to be on a real team is about as lucky as life can get.

It will be a busy six weeks…we have eight kids on four different teams, with games and practices to get to. At least they are all at the same place and all the games are on the same afternoon.

I think it will be a lot of fun (and I think I will probably be really glad when it is all said and done, too).