Soccer Season: It's a Love/Hate Thing

Last night marked the beginning of another soccer season. Thing 1 is beginning her 4th season as our own little Mia Hamm. And I can't decide if I'm happy or sad.

For a team sport, soccer isn't a bad way to go. Even though her team - the Cheetahs - practices two times a week, we only have one weekly Saturday game. As I understand it, that's not too bad. Thing 1 has friends who are in baseball, and that's a wee bit excessive for us. They have multiple practices, night games during the week, double headers on the weekend. Where's the family time, I ask you?!

Don't get me wrong. I love watching Thing 1 play! Even though she's not the best player on the team, that kid has one heck of a leg. She can shoot from mid-field and make goals! I'm eager to see if she "gets it" a bit more this season too. What's important is that she's having fun. And she is.

The downside to soccer is the frantic evenings we have on practice nights. I work about 40 minutes away from home. Before the 5:45pm practice, I have drive the 40 minutes, pick up Thing 2 from daycare (across town), get Thing 1 from the Y Afterschool program, get her changed, and try to make it to practice without being too unfashionably late.

Not a problem, you say? Ha! is my response. On "normal" days, it's easily 6pm before we even pull into the driveway.

So after the hour-long practice, we still have to get home, pick up/make dinner, eat, do homework, take baths, and get to bed. This is a difficult feat to accomplish, thus our Mondays and Wednesdays tend to last until at least 9:30pm ... if we're lucky.

What I don't understand is how other Mom's do it. How do you feed your family something healthy when there's no time to cook anything?!

The worst part is that there's no hope for this situation improving any time soon. Thing 1 is only 7 and Thing 2 is nearly 5. I don't think for a minute that their schedules will be slowing down as they get older.

So we're back to where we started. Soccer: It's a Love/Hate Thing.