{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life...

{Pretty}

Look at all of Katie's curls!  Her hair is crazy and always looks a bit unkempt, but I love it!  It was really humid this past weekend so her hair just curled up into all of these ringlets.  The little girls at the soccer tournament were asking me if I used a curling iron on her hair to get it that curly.  All we need is some high humidity and she's a little curly top!

{Happy}

How do you keep a toddler and a bunch of little six and seven year old girls happy?  Let them play house with a real live baby and allow them to take that real live baby on a walk around a big soccer field while their big sisters get ready for their game.  Katie was happy, the little girls were happy and the moms were happy.  It made for a pleasant start to a Sunday morning.

{Funny}

Katie makes me laugh when she start bouncing on Mystery.  She bounces, falls over and gets right back on her silly little horse.  

{Real}

I was charged with taking pictures of all of the girls for the tournament games this past weekend.  I got a lot of awesome shots of the girls in action.  I had a few favorites of Madeline.  I like how I can see Madeline putting what she has learned into practice.

The team they played on Sunday was a bit rough (Madeline is about to get an elbow to the back in this picture after she sent the ball soaring up the field.), but our girls managed to score a goal against them which is great considering all three of the teams we played this weekend play several divisions above our girls.

Even though our girls lost all three of their games this weekend, we still saw the tournament as a positive experience.  The girls got to see how other girls their age play at a higher level.  And, while they certainly outclassed our girls offensively, our girls were right there with them defensively.  In fact, the team that won the state cup told our coaches that there weren't many teams that held their girls back as well as our girls did.  We took that as a huge compliment to our girls.  The other teams also recognized our defense.  We came into this tournament expecting to get blown away by these teams. There's no mercy rule in these tournaments but they didn't even get scored on enough for a mercy rule to have been enforced (if there had been one).  They lost 4-0 for the first two games and 2-1 for the final game.  Who knows, maybe in another year or two our girls might be playing at their level.  They just need to grow offensively.

Visit Like Mother, Like Daughter for more pictures of contentment.