Soccer Camp

The boys went to soccer camp this week--three hours every morning put on by a group from the UK. The coaches all had accents which the boys found to be a bit interesting and obviously helped with their street cred in knowing soccer. On the first day Trev said something like "I could hardly understand what they were saying at first... I thought they were speaking Spanish!" They put on a great week and the boys had a really good time. 

However, Ryan was very disinterested in taking this picture.

 Trevor ran hard the entire time despite all the heat and activity.

He's really improving on getting in there.

Ryan liked the skill games, but was less impressed by the "World Cup" games they played at the end of each day. They split the kids up into four teams of three--Ryan was on team Spain and Trevor was on team USA. Then they played mini games with no goalies on shortened fields.

During the World Cup games, Ryan seemed to figure out that he could just keep kicking the ball in a direction away from the other players so he didn't have to bother with them getting in the way of his dribbling. So here he is kicking the ball off his field, past the adjoining field...

There was a water fight break on the last day because it was getting to be ridiculously hot. 

They had a closing ceremony for the kids, marking off with cones the area where they pretend to "walk up the steps of Wimberley" and then give each coach a high five before exiting into the ESPN photo area. Trev's team (team USA) won the World Cup this year. The coaches snickered a bit at this notion.

 Here's Trev and Ry going up the steps to get their participation awards. Ryan is stopping to talk to the first coach that he's supposed to be high-fiving.



Here's Ry stopping to talk to the second coach he's supposed to be high-fiving

The ESPN photo op area. 

Camping!

School is out! So we headed up past Kennedy Meadows for some camping with friends. 

This is one of two minivans full of stuff necessary for our one night stay...

The boys gravitated towards the piles of rocks. This was the marmot pile... due to the piles of marmot scat

 Mommy! I found a humongous pine cone!

 Binoculars were quite popular. Quite often used backwards to tell us how tiny we look. 

 Ryan using his bow and arrow to slay the dragon log.

 More humongous pine cones... though less noticed by the pine cone hunter now turned dragon log slayer

 Campfire! Actually, the kids were interested in the bucket behind the fire. Will and Trevor spent a lot of time catching bugs and building a habitat for them in the bucket. Nora thought the bucket was a large cup holder for her sippy and sometimes a Nora holder for one of her legs.

 Nora looking adoringly at her daddy.

 Nora and Ryan antics

She was pretty happy about food on the trip. 

All camped out 

The kids conked out on the drive home 

A mommy and baby black bear we saw crossing the street as we were driving back. It was pretty exciting. The boys woke up and got to see them, though I think Ryan was too groggy to care.