March Madness Continued

 A few days after I returned from LA, my mom flew in to be with me for my birthday. She had planned it before her husband fell and broke his femur, but luckily, he was starting to begin a good place of recovery and his daughter stayed with him to help him navigate with his walker and make sure he stayed safe. 

The day after my mom arrived was my 48th birthday. We went to work and then to lunch with Kade and Victoria at Mezcal, one of Kade's favorites, and in Dearborn, which is a fun place to visit. The tacos are definitely some of the better street tacos in the area. A few doors down from there is a cute little Japanese sweet shop where Kade bought us some mochi donuts that were delicious and so cute! That evening, Jason ordered out Mediterranean food from our favorite Levant Kitchen, so I was spoiled with many different cultural cuisines, just how I like it!

Japanese sweet shop!

Kade's masterful creation!

The next day after work, my mom and I went to see Austin in his orchestra at a festival at Stevenson HS. They performed extremely well; in fact, it was some of the best I had heard the concert orchestra perform in a while. 

When we returned, it was time to pack up the car and take Erik to Cincinnati for his weekend soccer tournament. Jason had other weekend obligations and wasn't able to go, so it worked out that my mom could attend with me. 

The tournament was the Spring Thaw and the first of our games outside for the season. Two of the games were actually in Kentucky. Our hotel was about 4 hours from our house, and it turned out to be pretty good weather and a fun little road trip.

Erik has been playing defensive mid recently. On his rec team, he was a goalie quite a bit and always did well with that, but when he moved over to the club team, he decided he wanted to phase out of being goalie. Well, for some reason, his club team's goalies kept not working out. Since no one on the team is a committed goalie, we were going to use one of the 3 from the team above at various games. I don't think we've seen them, so our coach started doing what the rec team was doing and rotating different players to play goalie at different games. A few games back, some of the parents took note of how good Erik actually is at goalie; his coach probably did too. At a game just before the tournament that I didn't attend, but Jason did, the coach took out the player who was the goalie and put Erik in for the majority of the game, and while they didn't win, they picked it up and made a comeback. 

Two of my birthday gifts came in very handy for this first game. A blanket that holds in heat and a heated vest!

It's hard to get good goalie pics.

Break between games!

Near the 2nd game venue.

Here's a good goalie shot before the game with some individual help from his coach.

Before the 2nd game.

Out in the field in the 3rd game.

Cincinnati!

We had to cross the Ohio River to get to the Kentucky games.

Needless to say, I wasn't surprised when Erik played goalie for most of the games in the tournament. Watching him play goalie is very nerve-racking as his mom, but also fun. He is pretty good at it. I also really love watching him play in the field, though. He plays with no fear. He just gets in and keeps going for the ball. Not a ball hog, either. And he communicates so well on the field!

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we lost the first game by 2 points, and the second game we tied, which was pretty incredible because they were a very good team and they were the ones who actually ended up winning in our age group, and we lost the third game by 2 points. Our team is still on a losing streak, like last year, but they're getting better, and they were sure happy about that tie!

We went to a team dinner Saturday night, which was after the game that we tied. It was fun to see the kids together outside of a game and to get to know the parents better. The last game on Sunday morning was hard to lose, but now we only have one way to go- up!

Team dinner!

They got free ice cream to share at the end of the dinner!