Little Duckie, Soccer Girl

Yesterday, Rebekah started soccer after school. She doesn't entirely enjoy organized sports, but she loves kicking a soccer ball around our yard, so we figured she should give it a try.
 She was all smiles from ear to ear the entire hour of practice, which I now realize is hard to see in many of the pictures unless you click on them.


 Even when she fell in the grass doing a crab walk, her smile stayed bright.


 Her push ups were hilarious. Over and over again, she went right from this position here above,


to this position here:
 There was absolutely no bend in her arms at all. Again and again she counted off her push ups {essentially butt ups} feeling like she was working very hard :-)


 It was amazing how quickly the coach organized the chaos of the children running in all directions at once. As soon as he put his arms up like this (look at the top left of the photo), the kids knew to make a line in front of him. He only needed to explain it once too! I might start implementing this technique with the girls around the house.


She dribbles...
 


She shoots...
 


She scores!
 GOAL!!!


It was her first attempt, and the coach was being pretty easy on them, but a goal is a goal! It's safe to say she loved every minute of her first soccer practice, and she'll be so excited to go back next week.

She's growing up so quickly lately ~ there would have been a time, maybe even as recently as a few months ago, when she would not have wanted anything to do with running up and down a field with kids who seem so much bigger than her. The coach was already lining the kids up when we arrived at practice, and he called out to her in a booming voice, "Well who do we have here?" I thought I might have to answer for her, as I sometimes do when she is approached by someone she doesn't know well. But I was so glad I paused before responding because she belted out an equally huge "Rebekah!"

And now she plays soccer, just like a big kid.