Soccer Class

A few months ago during a lesson in Relief Society, there was a lesson about a mother's role in the family. I felt a prick in my heart about things that I needed to be careful of and to literally be a guard for my children and family time. Benjamin had been asking to play soccer, and I just didn't feel good about it. The school schedule here is much later than other places. Benjamin's bus drops him off at 4p.m., which is so late in my opinion yet I don't have much say in it. Because of his later arrival home, our evenings are taken up with sitting as a family for dinner, cleaning up dinner, a few minutes to play, cleaning up the house, and then scriptures and family prayer before the littlest one goes to bed. The soccer options here were two practices during the week sometime between 6 and 7:30 and then a game every Saturday morning. The other hiccup was that Stephen is usually gone one night a week for church meetings and that would necessitate me going alone to practice with the other two kiddos in tow. I just had a sick feeling when I thought about that kind of commitment.

I felt really prompted to pray about what to do for my family, and as Stephen and I seriously discussed it, we felt like the answer was not to enroll him in the soccer season. I felt sad because I don't want him to miss out on something he wants to do but ultimately felt it was the right decision. A few weeks later, Benjamin asked me about soccer again, and I felt like I should check again to see if there was anything else that I missed and was still available. This time I found out that a program called "Kidz Love Soccer" does a soccer class once a week at the neighboring town's rec center. It is an eight week class once a week on Saturday mornings and even though it was double what I would have paid for the city's soccer league, I felt strongly that it was exactly what I was looking for. Perfect!

Today was the first class and here are the quotations from the event. "I loved it. I had a blast. I wish it were Friday tomorrow so I can go again soon!" I am so happy to have found about this little class and feel it to be a tender mercy. The class is so perfect for Benjamin and is developmentally appropriate which goes with my early childhood training (the focus is on building skills, having fun, and team building with no competitive games until children are older). I know that other families have different views about what is reasonable for their own family for evening activities, but I just feel blessed to be able to expose him to a new skill and also guard my family's evenings together. Three cheers for Kidz Love Soccer class!

Here is the little class cheerleader. She kept yelling "Go kids~ Go Benjamin~" in between eating her crackers and raisins.