soccer kids

on january 9th, 2010 ava and paulo launched their future soccer careers.

now, paulo comes from solid, brazilian, soccer-playing stock, so we were all pretty optimistic about his performance on the field. ava... not so much. although there are many athletic endeavors that john and i enjoy, we both discovered our athletic sides later in lives. also, ball sports... or for that matter... team sports? yeah - we're really not very gifted. in fact, it would be fair to say that i am, in fact, notoriously ungifted. (cue ye old story about cailin sitting down in the grass and picking flowers in left field of a baseball game.)

to try and save ava from a similar fate, many advised getting her started on some sort of ball sport and an impressionable young age. soccer is a popular one in san francisco, so, here we are.

although i had very low expectations for ava's introduction to soccer, i have to say, she far exceeded my wildest dreams. knock me over with a feather ... she just ran out there and ... played soccer. i'm certainly not saying that she looked like the next . but she did it. she kicked when they said kick, kept track of which ball was her ball, stopped when they said stop, and mostly remembered the rules of the game.

i'll be damned .. . maybe she's not exactly like her mommy after all!