Extracurricular Activities

In our family we typically like to keep things pretty simple and do as much together as a family as we can. So, we often avoid a lot of extracurricular activities. This year though we decided to go ahead and sign Julia and Ethan up for two activities.

For Ethan, his friends at school and church all do soccer together. In this league they do not keep score at the games, but it still seems to be somewhat competitive. We tried to get on a team that all the other kids in our neighboring streets are on, but ended up getting placed on another team instead. It has turned out well because Ethan knows most of the kids on this team too and the coach is very kind with the boys and doesn't really care too much about winning. The coach also has a daughter that Julia  is friends with a school so it has provided them with a regular opportunity to play together too. Anyway, Ethan has one or two games per week on Saturdays. And then he has two practices a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. So this is definitely taking up a lot of time. But Ethan is always happy when he gets to go and so maybe it is worth it.











We offered soccer to Julia too, but she declined. Ethan's practices are at the exact same time as a girls team with all of Julia's friends on it, so she sees them there a couple times every week. Seeing that, I was thinking she was going to be bummed that she didn't do soccer, but she hasn't said a word about it. I think it is just less interesting for her. Instead of soccer, we signed her up for horse riding lessons. Her lessons are once per month, two hours per time. We agreed that she could go through December. This last Tuesday was her first time. She loved it! When we got there we found out that it is not really lessons, but open riding time for beginners. So the ranch workers provided Julia with about 10 minutes of direction and then they were just there to help out if she needed it (there were about 10 people there for the open ride, all their first time, and 7 horses and maybe 5 ranch helpers). Julia did great. She started off on a easy horse that pretty much new what to do on its own. But then they put Julia on the stubborn horse. Another girl had been riding the horse prior to Julia and it would just go stand against the wall until a worker came and told it to walk around. It would do that until the worker left to help someone else and then it would go back to standing against the wall. Anyway, when Julia got on him, he tried to do the same thing. But Julia wouldn't allow it at all. She used all the right commands and signals and made sure that horse was doing what she wanted it to do. Her last horse was a faster one and one that didn't like the other horses (it would bite at them if they got too near) and Julia did a great job on that one as well. All of the workers kept on saying how natural Julia was and they had never seen someone (adult or child) pick it up so quickly. At the end they made a special effort to find Julia before she left and tell her that she has a real talent and that she should make sure to come back again and again. Julia was all smiles the whole time. She did say it was hard to walk after, but she is still counting down the days until she gets to go again next month.