semi-circles

You know the cliche about coming full circle?  That's what I am thinking about, but I can't bring myself to title my blog post that.  I figure my kids are too young to have gone full circle already, right?  Maybe more like halves of a figure eight?  or a curve in a circle?  little tiny partial circles?  Anyways enough cheesy, deep thinking for now.

Here's a picture from Labor Day weekend.  The first UGA football game of the season.  We hosted a viewing party/ hanging out/ do-NOT-call-it-a-playdate-whatever-you-do/ gathering at our house and let Ryan invite whoever he wanted.  Being Labor Day, we figured over-invite so no feelings are hurt since surely not everyone will come anyways.  He invited eight.  We had ten.  Hmmm.  Oh well, luckily they are an AWESOME group of boys.  If they weren't, they wouldn't have made the invite list :)

I LOVED having all that red and black in my yard! -and added bonus some of it was Atlanta United who also happened to be playing that night.  We had two TVs going because we are that awesome and that soccer crazy.

So that good-looking crew is Spence, Grady, Tripp, Cooper A, Lucas, Matthew, Cooper, Clark, Ryan, and Jake.

I could go on and on and on about how much I love our small-town, tight-knit community.  The friends and neighbors who will do anything for you at any time.  Like helping with kids when your kid breaks an arm.  Twice.  Or a hubby breaks a shoulder.  The ones who show up unannounced with wine when you think your dad has had a heart-attack.  The ones who help with your cats and your dog and your mail.  The ones you coordinate calendars with and carpool children to and from and back again - we've decided calendar-keeping, esp with middle schoolers in the picture, is a full time job.  Oh and then there's the trips to Kroger on a Sunday afternoon that take an hour to pick up two things because EVERYONE in Macedonia is returning from fall break and stocking up on groceries.  I love this life.

Anyways, still not the original point of this post.

Circles.  Circling back to the circles.  Ha.  Three of the boys in that picture up above are new Avery friends.  And yet, they are not new at all.  I am still super amused by this.  I love sociology and connections and back-stories and putting it all together.

*So Grady.  He and Spence have been good friends since preschool, ironically the same preschool my kids all went to, yet Ryan didn't cross paths with them then.  But Abby did.  Grady is Virgil's big brother.  Abby and Virgil were in all three classes together and were quite the little buddies.  Oh and Grady & Virgil's mom went to Walton, and while I didn't know her then Alyson did.  And actually thus possibly Auntie Sarah - they're all the same class.  Grady also played one season of CYB at Macedonia when he signed up late and the Avery teams were full.  Ryan, Spence, Clark, Grady- to name a few- all played together in third grade.  And now Ryan and Grady are in home-room together and legit friends all on their very own.

Here are Abby and Virgil at five years old.  OHHHH, and if we didn't have enough connections yet to Grady and Virgil, Abby's bff Taylor and Virgil are in class together at Avery.  Perhaps I've missed a few connections here, but I think that's pretty impressive.

*The next new Avery friend is Tripp.  Ryan and Tripp were little buddies in Kindergarten when Ryan went to Avery!  Here they are at the Kindergarten Christmas party ::

And ironically, when I went to find and upload the picture of Tripp and Ryan, right next to it was a picture of Virgil and Abby at their Christmas program that same year!

We've seen Tripp over the years as Macedonia and Avery compete in everything, namely basketball for this group of boys.  We've also seen them at the Brandon Seniors's Halloween parties.  Levi and Larsen's [who were also good friends with Virgil] parents went to college with Tripp's parents.  I remember Ryan and Tripp hitting if off at one of the yearly Halloween parties two or three years ago.  We haven't been intentional about keeping up with him, but we were happy to see them again at Creekland.  And then to find out that Tripp and Ryan have the exact same schedule!  From what I can tell, Ryan and Spence and Grady and Tripp are really good school friends - from home room to sitting together in the lunchroom, etc.

*The third Avery kiddo that Ryan is friends with - and who made the cut for both the football party and Ryan's upcoming birthday party - is Cooper A.  I'm not entirely sure the first time that we met Cooper's family.  They have a young one that is Chloe's age.  Chloe and Landen were really good preschool buddies - playdates, birthday parties, all that fun stuff.  And then at some point Cooper A was on a baseball team with Ryan and Cooper E.  Hence Cooper A is still Cooper A to us.  And that season is where the Esterlings became the Es to us and that has completely stuck.

Here are Landen and Chloe swimming way back when.

And just because we're walking down memory lane, here's another.

Landen, Chloe, Couper, and Alice celebrating Chloe's 4th birthday at Waffle House :)

That was fun!  This is the part I miss about blogging.  I love keeping up with my pictures, and I feel like I've done a really good job of that.  And by captioning my pictures on google photos, I can remember a lot of the things that I no longer expand upon on my blog.  But I do enjoy finding some quiet time and typing like this.  Remembering all these moments and friendships and memories.  And as an added bonus I like to think that my kids will appreciate these posts one day.  It's cool and special and enjoyable and fulfilling to see them snuggle in on the couch with a blog book or a shutterfly book or even an old school photo album sometimes.  The years sure do fly by, and I know I'm guilty of trying to hang on too tightly sometimes.  But there are also so many, many perks to watching them grow up too.  I love watching them do what they love and find themselves and their passions.  I love their friends.  I love watching Abby play soccer and Ryan play basketball.  I love seeing Ryan thrive in middle school despite our [well mostly mine!] worries and fears of the unknown.  I love Ryan's friends and his flag football team and that he made the school Academic Team.  I love my sweet Chlo-Chlo.  And watching her swim, oh she's a fish!  And the love she has her whole family is BIG.  I love Abbys and her love and joy and energy for life.  Her obsession with soccer and ninja and anything physically competitive.  I love watching her reading in a quiet corner and then two minutes later she's singing her favorite songs at full volume.  I am truly so very blessed, and I wouldn't change any of it!!     

atl utd 2

We LOVE LOVE LOVE us some soccer!  The credit for this goes entirely to our Abs.  She got us all hooked.  Well, maybe not all, Ryan still hasn't fully embraced the beautiful game, but we're working on him :)

So last year we decided we should take Abby down to an Atlanta United game.  To say I knew nothing about them would be a gross understatement.  I'm not entirely convinced I even knew Atlanta had a soccer team.  We started looking into the games and quickly realized that a multi-game pack was the way to go.  We bought five tickets to four different games in the 2018 season for less then double what one game would have been.  All it takes is walking into one soccer game at Mercedes Benz.  Atlanta United routinely sets attendance records at 73,000+ rowdy and proud fans.  It's not like any other sporting event I've been to.  So this season we bought the multi-game pack again, but this time six tickets to six games.  We've taken turns bringing a friend, and one game we even went as three couples - adults only!!  Thanks to Nana for watching the kiddos that evening and shout-out to the Khodabakhshs and Esterlings for a great time.  And along with our tickets, we get lots of vouchers for "free" Atlanta United 2 games.

Abby started soccer at i9 just like Ryan and Chloe.  Ryan didn't last long in soccer, and Chloe is actually playing there again this fall.  She has tried other sports including gymnastics and t-ball along the way, but has come back to soccer a few times.  Abby has consistently played soccer for years and years.  Her early i9 teams were so much fun - always Coach Daddy.  and great friends like Jackson Allen, Levi and Larsen, Lyla for awhile, Sawyer once or twice.  In second grade, we moved Abby and Jackson up since they continued to dominate.  However, they still dominated even playing boys Ryan's age.  The time came to move on from i9, and unfortunately we had to part ways with Jackson as teams are no long co-ed.  He plays on a team with all the other MES boys including Sawyer and all our neighbors :)  We went to one of their games in the spring, and Abby had a blast cheering on all her boys.  Abby started playing Impact rec in 3rd grade.  Daddy still coached, and we got placed with such a fun and great group of girls - the Dazzlers!!  Coach Daddy and Coach Keith were a great pair and went on to request each other for the spring.  And we met Taylor!!  She and Abby had this almost instant bond.  I love watching their friendship, both on and off the field.  They have a great chemistry and were passing beautiful crosses on the rec field at age 8.  It didn't take long at all before Abby started getting recruited for the Academy team.  In fact, we were first approached after her very first practice.  She was so young and so new to Impact, and we loved her rec team so we didn't follow up with any of it.  Finally in November 2018 she played as a guest in an Academy tournament, but even so decided to stay with Coach Daddy and Taylor and the Dazzlers for spring.  This year though, she and Taylor are both playing Academy - and at the Elite level too.  It is so fun to watch the love and passion Abby has for the game.  I keep asking her if she's still having fun and still loving it, but there is no doubt.  Smiles like these make all the time and money worth it!!....

So that's Abby.  Our soccer-crazy girlie!


Back to the Atlanta United and a few memorable games for the Chase family ....

- Abby's 8th birthday at the Creekview Game - getting the VIP treatment - the team sang happy birthday to her, gave her flowers and a scarf,  posed for pictures.  And she got to go down to the sidelines for a few mins.  amazing.

- our first Atl Utd 2 game in April 2018 with Cooper, Lucas, and Aaron
the Gwinnett Strippers?!?!
how many times can we get on the video scoreboard?!

- Mother's Day 2019 at the Atl Utd game - a big win and anybody who is anybody was there, sooo much fun!

- Abby's 9th birthday at the Atl Utd 2 game - they announced her name and birthday at halftime!

- But for now, here's last night's Atlanta United 2 game.  Seeing as Abby proclaimed it the best night of her life, I thought I should commemorate it with a blog post.

As part of our multi-game pack, we get lots of vouchers and the season is almost over and we were trying to figure out how to use them all.  We ended with four tickets left and last night as the only remaining night we could make it.  I told Abby I'd take her and two friends [Taylor and Olivia, duhhhh].  We had the bestest time!!  and on a school night at that, eekkk!  We went to Dairy Queen on the way down for dinner and ice cream.  We had taken Olivia there once after a game, so I'm pretty convinced she thinks soccer, the Chases, and ice cream are a package deal.   Being a Wednesday night, the crowd was very light, and we had front row seats.  The girls had sooo much fun, and I had a ton of fun watching them have fun.  Olivia is an extrovert and Abby can get going sometimes, so there was a lot of loud and wild cheering.  Taylor alternated between participating and looking mortified at how loud they were - I love another introvert!  Mikey Ambrose has quickly become a family favorite.  We've seen him at most all of our Atl Utd 2 games this seasons - and as a starter at an Atlanta United game at Mercedes!  These players are so nice and kind and amazing.  So the girls were cheering extra loud for him.  And he waved to them as he was taking a corner kick right in front of us!!  So cool!  I actually went back and saw it on the espn+ coverage of the game.

Also fun is that Daddy and Chloe were watching on TV [Ryan has RevStudents on Wednesday nights].  The TV was about 40 seconds behind, so we were talking on the phone when Fernando scored at 9:02.  We told them to watch for the goal, and we were waving to them, pretty cool!

After the game, we stick around for player autographs and pictures.  Abby and I came prepared with printed out pictures from previous games.  She got six signed pictures.  The players all commented on signing the pictures, how fun, I'm so glad we did that!  Abby's actually got them at school today to show off.  Hopefully she won't get into too much trouble with them, and hopefully they'll make it home so I can frame some!  But as the players were coming over to the fans, I promise you Mikey Ambrose walked right to us.  I thanked him for waving to us before his corner, and he twice thanked the girls for cheering so loudly for him :)  He signed everything - including Taylor and Olivia's tshirts and Abby's printed picture - and posed for pictures.  Have I mentioned how much I love these guys and the personal atmosphere of these games?!?

And then as we were wrapping up pictures, Olivia asked if they could go on the field [having an extremely outgoing extrovert in the group certainly has benefits!].  I originally told them no way, but fine you can go ask.  Surprisingly, the staff guy told them sure why not.  Huh, I had no idea!!  So they opened a gate and out we went.  I'm sure everyone thought we were super special and important, hehe.  The girls had so much fun racing around the pitch, and Olivia was doing cartwheels.  They eventually worked their way over to the far side where the goal was still out and a few people were mingling.  They used a game ball to take turns shooting on the goal!  In fact Abby's probably would have made it in, but just to be sure, #15 José Hernández chipped it in for her :)  Leave it to our extrovert Olivia to say something to a professional soccer player [she was the goalie trying to block the shot!].  And some sort of coach/ trainer was out there too, and he was totally supporting the girls and you can even hear him on the video encouraging them and as the lights are going off he's telling them to go ahead and take another shot.  I'm sooo glad I was videoing!!

It truly was a pretty much perfect night.  I didn't think anything could top her birthday game, but I think this one might just have done it.  I woke up this morning still happy and smiling think about it.  Hopefully Abby and Olivia [who are in the same class] aren't either A] fast asleep and/or ridiculously grumpy or B] so wired that they can't focus and stay out of trouble!  Wonder which extreme it will be?!  Abbys will be home in about an hour....

 Still trying to win the #atlutd2 17th minute selfie contest.  

I must be doing something wrong, I mean aren't we just awesome and adorable?!?

How does this not win?! :)

 We love Mikey!!

 Captain Jack and Andrew Carleton.  

Both great guys, Andrew scored a goal tonight.

I just think Jack Metcalf is the coolest guy.  He has captained this team both years we've been going to games and always has the best attitude and is so happy and grateful to see his fans.  I'm not sure if there's a reason he's "stuck" here and doesn't ever play with the big club, but I'm super impressed with his love for the game and his fans!

 Three insanely happy girls on the pitch after the game!

The only picture I have of them shooting on the goal.

But the video I got is priceless :)

Cats by Chloe

The kids, but especially the girls, really enjoy making power points just for fun.  And their knowledge and skill with technology is always impressive.  Here's a power point that Chloe made all by herself, just about a month after turning seven years old.  I think I probably made my first one in college 😊