St. Avold Scout Campout

 

This weekend Zach took Tyler, Ryan and Bryce (our friend's son) on a father/son campout in St. Avold, France. The purpose of this was to help a scout earn his Eagle by cleaning the head stones at the American cemetery. It was a great opportunity that I just couldn't let pass the boys by! The Friday night pictures didn't come out too good, but the cleaning ones did. The boys had a great time and told me that it was really cool to make all the headstones smooth and clean again. Cody and I had a nice quiet weekend and I didn't realize how much I enjoyed my one on one time with him until the big boys came home! I really miss having the day time with Cody, but me working at the school has been good for both of us. I think I will have Zach start doing more father/son things so I can get one on one time with each of the boys more often! Oh there is a Havel burried in this cemetery as well so Zach took more pictures of it.

Saturday Soccer Game

Cody and I have had a nice quiet weekend so far with Zach and the older boys being gone. He rode his bike up to the soccer field for his game and this time I remembered the camera! He was so cute out there and had a good time. He scored 11 goals this game and that was with some serious competition! Another boy his size was really good and he and Cody battled the whole game. I was very impressed by the moves both of them were making. Cody did a spin move to go around the kid, then the other kid kicked the ball between Cody's legs to take it down and score. It was a fierce battle! In the end I have no idea what the final scoare was, but Cody was definately keeping track of his goals! He has one more game and then the season is over. I sure hope we find out where we are moving soon so I can make sure he gets into soccer again!

Day trip to Verdun

 

Verdun Pictures

 

Verdun France

For Memorial Day this year we decided to do something a little different....we visited a French/German battle area in France. The battle of Verdun was one of the bloodiest armed clashes in history! Zach printed off a ton of history that we read on the way. The two main forts were Douaumount and Vaux. The area of the battle was about 20 miles. It lasted From February until December of 1916 so we are talking WWI. Exact numbers are not certain, but it is estimated that 500,000 french and 430,000 germans were killed, wounded or missing.

I don't have time to cover all the history, but if you get a chance to look it up (and you like history) then I reccomend it. In the end all of this fighting was for absolutely nothing! The germans didn't want the land, they just wanted to kill the french! The french were protecting something not that important. Absolutely insane if you ask me! Hundreds of thouseands lost thier lives! The ground is still bumpy and wavy from the constant shellings and it is said that nothing will grow except the pine forest. It covers the whole battle area. They think it's because the ground is so polluted from decaying bodies and chemical warefare agents they used at the time. We went in the first fortm but the second one was at the end and everyone was pretty tired! We hiked a lot and really had a good time.

The Yellow Fire Trucks

One of the other parents took this photo at the game and I think it was pretty good. Our 6th player wouldn't be in the photo so it just has the other 5, but still a cute team.

Cody is the man!

So tonight Cody's soccer team had a "game". Remember we are talking 3-5 year olds. The first step was to point each team in the right direction. It was yellow against orange. Cody's team is yellow, the Yellow Firetrucks, and the orange team I think was the orange tigers. Cody has been playing soccer since the fall of 2007 so this was his 4th season. Not all the kids have that experience. So there were lots of tears and injuries and one little girl just stopped and yelled at her mom "I just can't do this!" So lots of drama too. Cody's team started out with 6 and somehow worked down to 4 then 2! It was Cody and another kid. Inspite of it all I have to brag. My little man got 7 goals!!! I said SEVEN! That was even two players against 8!

He never cried or got mad when another kid tackled him. He said "Mom that guy in the orange shirt pushed me so I pushed another orange guy." So I can't say my kid plays the cleanest game of soccer, but for the most part he would get the ball, dribble, shoot and score! Now the funniest part was when the whole crowd of kids took off after the ball, bipassed several parents and bleachers then ended up in the middle of the 5-6 year old game! It was priceless! Another time an unkowing mom was watching her 5-6 year old play and before she knew it the ball stopped right between her legs and a split second later there were ten kids on top of her!

I sure wish I had my camera, but honestly I would have been laughing too hard to take pictures or video! It was a great night and I hope next weeks game is that entertaining! And........of couse that Cody gets 10 goals!