Last week we got a little tease of “fall” – or at least what fall feels like in Arizona. We had temperatures in the 90s and we all celebrated the idea of making it through summer. And then we had a heat wave return with vengeance. Which worked to our advantage when Hunter wanted to go to the lake for his birthday – but it didn’t work so well when we had 10 soccer games scheduled this weekend. 2 league games for Hunter, 4 tournament games for Bennett, three tournament (different tournament than Bennett) games for Cannon and 1 league game for Briggs. That’s a lot of soccer on a cool weekend but made even worse with the heat. And not just heat – but excessive heat. I kept waiting for a cancellation email because clearly when an excessive heat warning is in place we should not have kids running around outside. Briggs game was the only cancellation.
The other games were moved to heat consideration protocol which included shortening the games, adding a water break each half and allowing unlimited substitutions. Speaking from experience of sitting outside, under an umbrella, it wasn’t enough. It was 113 degrees and so miserable as a spectator and I wasn’t even playing.
We did our best to make it to all that we could, and Hallie was kind enough to drive one of the games. So out of the 9 games, Steve or I made it to 7 of them, Hallie pulled through for one which left just one game we weren’t able to attend because we were already divided. Which was a miracle because I had looked at the schedule several times wondering how we were going to get everyone where they needed to be, when they needed to be there. And we made it work. And even as I melted on the sidelines I was loving the soccer mom life.
And to top off an unusually heavy soccer weekend, it was also Stake Conference for our church which Steve is heavily involved with. Both Steve and Hallie were speaking and they delivered beautiful messages. I think one of my favorite moments of the conference was towards the very end of the meeting as the choir was singing the closing song, “Come Thou Fount”. Briggs had begun to draw restless after sitting for almost two hours but as the song was being sung he sat captivated. And then he leaned into me with his hand on my leg and said, “I think this is one of my new favorite songs.” I couldn’t agree more – it was beautiful – and the perfect closing to a spiritually uplifting session of conference.
