a trip to kalamazoo-as documented by hayden michael skiver

hayden, talan, myself and tina all traveled to see fireflight play for the second time this week on sunday. for all of the details read the blog on bloggersatemybabies.
when the show started hayden asked if he could take pictures. so i took out the smaller camera and let him go nuts. he took pictures of everything from the band, to us, to himself, to the seats. here are some of the best ones:















this is where he started getting artsy and tried getting fireflight in the picture with him. he's totally ready for his myspace profile picture:





just to show what section we sat in. vip baby:

soccer banquet

saturday morning was hayden's last soccer game. after the game all of the teams then went over to the pavilion area for their soccer banquet where they had pizza, fruit, chips, dessert and drinks. as they were eating, the coaches from each team went around to each table and passed out a team photo and a trophy.
hayden really enjoyed the soccer season and is bummed that it's over. he was so excited to get yet another trophy and he went right home and added it to his collection. this week at school is the first week for show and tell and the kids are supposed to bring in something that starts with "s." so of course hayden has already decided he will be bringing in his soccer trophy.
he never did score any more goals after his two goals in the very first game, but he did stop throwing fits when he didn't score. he realized that it's just as much fun to get out there and run around...well, maybe scoring a goal is a little more fun, but he's still cool with just running around.
we will probably sign him up for the same league in the spring and then we might possibly think of getting him into a more intense program. although, we all have talked of putting him into flag football. so we'll see what he decides on next.





talan was there too:


he was this excited for snack time:
the banquet:





getting his team picture and trophy:

we'll see how long the mask stays on

this year hayden decided he wants to be spiderman for halloween. i really have no idea how he even knows about spiderman because i sure never taught him about him.
when he was looking at the costumes i kept trying to make him realize this costume comes with a mask. a mask that goes over your face that you wear while you're trick-or-treating. he was concerned for a second that he wouldn't be able to see, but when i assured him he would be able to, he assured me that's still what he wanted to be.
so i bought the majority of the costume last weekend and we had him try it on. he wore it for a bit but seemed quite glad to finally take the mask off. i've asked several times if this is really what he wants to be and if he is going to leave the mask on for trick-or-treating. he says he does and he will, so we'll see. spiderman just may come unmasked this year and have his true identity revealed.

i told him to pose and this is what i got. hmmmm:
much better pose:
it took him awhile to get this down:
then it just turned into "rock on, i'm spiderman!":

ice cream social

hayden's school had an ice cream social on friday evening so we packed the family up and headed over.
besides the ice cream they also had a clown that made balloon animals for the kids and they had a raffle for a dog webkinz and a tiger webkinz. i decided we would get hayden 5 tickets which would make the webkinz half off if he actually won. when you purchased the tickets you got to pick if you wanted to try to win the dog or the tiger. i asked hayden if he wanted to split them up but he insisted he ONLY wanted the dog. so he put all 5 tickets into the bucket next to the dog.
we waited in line for our ice cream where we saw hayden's friend zachary from his preschool class 2 years ago. his mom actually works at the cake shop that did the cake for jessica's wedding. we also ended up seeing hayden's friend julianna from 2 years ago as well.
surprisingly, hayden moved pretty slow with eating his ice cream. even talan had only a few bites as he was VERY interested in watching the clown make the balloon animals.
at around 7:25 the announced that they were doing the webkinz drawing. hayden started pumping himself up telling us that he was going to win and how badly he wanted to win. i had to let him know that he might not win because there were a lot of people trying to win but only 1 person could get the dog. then they called his name. great for him, but not so great for future raffles when he thinks he always will be the winner!
he started jumping up and down, spinning in circles yelling "i won! woooohooo! i won the webkinz dog!"
on the way out to the car we asked what he was going to name this dog. he has two others and named them fetch and rayden (because it rhymes with hayden). he came up with them all on his own which we were quite impressed with since he doesn't have the greatest imagination with things like this. he told us he was going to name this one "little brown dog." dave had to explain to him that that was a description, not a name. so we went through several options and he eventually decided to name the dog percy, after percy the train.
i have been informed that the next webkinz he gets will be named thomas.

julianna, hayden and brendan:
balloon animals:


the dudes:
the winning ticket:


hayden shared his new dog with talan for a bit so he could go run:

the new david beckham

this morning hayden played in his very first soccer game through the daca in livonia.
i was told about this soccer "league" by a mom from hayden's bowling league last year. when i called to sign him up in the spring they were already booked for his age group. i called around to try to find another soccer league and found one through redford. i ended up not signing him up because it was a little more intense than i was planning on getting this early on. it was pretty much a true league and the kids had 2 one hour practices each week and then the games on saturday. we weren't even sure if soccer was something he'd like so i wasn't about to make that big of a commitment just yet. and just thinking about having to drive back and forth 3 days a week for 5 year old soccer was a little more than i could handle. and at the time i didn't even have my minivan so that just wouldn't have worked.
i called the other month to check on the daca fall league and found that they were just starting to register. there are 3 different age groups. hayden is in the 4 and 5 year olds. they split each age group up into two teams and they just play against each other each week. it's every saturday for just over a month and it's 1/2 hour practice that morning and then a 1/2 hour game. perfect!
we went out yesterday in search for some shoes as hayden has pretty much outgrown most of his shoes anyway. i figured i'd get something that i liked so he could wear them outside of soccer since this he'd just be playing this time around for a month.
it was quite the frustrating venture as we couldn't find any shoes and ended up having to go to the mall and pay $50 for a pair. ridiculous what they charge you for a pair of kids shoes these days. but at least we got some. and they're cute and something i'd have him wear anyway. dave wondered if we really needed to get any but i don't think the coaches would have liked him showing up in sandals or converse.
we headed over to devon aire park in livonia this morning and picked up hayden's green team shirt. a little bit later, dave joined us after his football game and mom, dad, jessica and justin (who just got home from jamaica last nite) came to watch as well.
it was shocking to see how well hayden actually listened to the coaches and how he did everything they told him to do during warm up.
when the game started, hayden was the first group on the sideline. he sat pretty patiently and even cheered for his team. then it was his turn out on the field.
now, you have to understand that we've never really explained anything about soccer to him. we have told him he can't ever touch the ball with his hands, but other than that, we haven't said too much.
so that explains why he got all excited and did a goal dance the two times he kicked the ball PAST the net. after explaining it, he eventually understood that it's only a goal when it goes IN the net. but he did that twice too!
hayden's team ended up winning (which i don't think they really made a big deal of or even pointed out) with a score of 3 to 1...hayden scoring 2 of those 3 goals!!! he did GREAT and LOVED it out there! when the one goal was scored on his team he put his hand on his forehead and just shook his head. we're all about the competition in this family.
so we're now 2 in 2 with sports that he's just picked up and done well at immediately. he told mom yesterday on the phone that after soccer he's going to play basketball and after basketball he will play football. i knew about the football thing as we found a place that had little kid flag football but i had no idea about the basketball. i'm just trying to find some good tennis lessons for him.
he's gonna make us some money somehow. right now we're just trying to figure out what our best bet is.




stretchin' it out:



watching from the sideline:


game on:




you can't see it very well, but this was one of hayden's goals:
i have a feeling he's going to be a bit of a ball hog: