playing ball
For his birthday Zion got a street hockey goal. A week or two ago Elijah was bored and in an effort to get him moving I offered to play handball with him—meaning we could take turns trying to throw a dodgeball past each other into the goal. It was actually super fun, and before long Zion was drawn into the action. I vaguely remembered the game of "team handball" from middle school gym, so we mostly just made up rules, but it seemed to work fine. This we finally had the chance to play a full game, with our school friends, and it was fantastic. We played for about an hour—kids, and the three adults too—and got a great workout while also figuring out tricks and strategies for the game. And I'm proud to say that Harvey and Zion were the only kids able to stick it out for the entire time! (Elijah was there for a lot of it too... he and a few other kids just needed a few timeouts elsewhere.) The rules we came up with are pretty similar to the rules of the real game, only we didn't allow dribbling (nor would the ball we were using even be able to bounce on grass). And we played a half-court version, because we only had one goal and to keep break-aways from getting out of hand. It was a hit, and the boys are excited to play again soon. After we recover from today's game, that is!