Bummed

Not the best start to the tournament. Lost this morning 2-0 and it set the tone for a very frustrating day. The boys played well but the other team just played harder and were more conditioned. They were from Utah. The weather was warm even in the morning and after the game we went to La Jolla Village which is near the UCSD campus where we played. This is such a nice campus and the school Alex wants to go to for film/video production but did he want to go tour the campus with me? Nope. Oh well, Cassie and I did a fair share of exploring after lunch since we had some time before the second game. Found the two nearest Starbucks to the field so I'm set for tomorrow.

The second game against a SD team, we scored within the first 2 minutes and you could see the difference in the boys. However, the other team responded in the next 5 minutes with a goal......and then another......and then another so by half time we were down 3-1. All told we lost 6-1. Just ugly. One of our players got a red card that was completely unfair but Franklin had been having issues with the referees and I think he gave our player the red just to prove a point to Franklin, who is coaching because our coach did not come. Alex has outgrown his dad as the coach and they just did not see eye to eye today which made for some intense, frustrating moments that just tug at my heart strings. Franklin needs to not come down so hard on Alex and Alex needs to be more respectful on and off the field to his dad. Period. Ugh. The mama bear emerges and does not make things better for either one of them.

This evening the boys had a choice between the mall and the boardwalk. Of course they chose the mall so we went and it's a very nice, upscale mall - Fashion Valley. We couldn't find anywhere that we adults wanted to eat - it was either Cheesecake Factory (ick) or PF Changs and so we left the boys to their own devices and drove a few blocks to a steakhouse that was sorely disappointing. The food wasn't horrible but the service was so damned slooooooooow that it got to the point at the end of the meal, after three parties around us were seated, served and excused AFTER we arrived that we asked to speak to the manager, who gave us our appetizers for freee. Whoopee. Aftere a two hour meal it was something but we wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I'm so wiped out right now that I can't keep my eyes open let along get any studying done. Since we lost two games, we won't advance even to tomorrow afternoon so we can get our money back for tomorrow night if we check out by noon, which we will do. We will do something fun, I wanted to take Cassie to the zoo but now we have teen boys to occupy as well so it may be checking out the boardwalk or maybe the outlets in Carlsbad but if we get on the road by 3 or 4, we can be home around midnight and have missed the Sunday return traffic, which we have done on Thanksgiving weekend before and want to avoid at all costs. This will also give us all day Sunday at home to unpack and maybe, just maybe, I can get in a workout at the gym for myself and some studying time. Again I have tried so hard to study while here and it just ain't sticking. I'm beginning to wonder whatever possessed me to think I could study with two kids and two jobs. What a dufus I am.

Up at 6:00am tomorrow. Sigh.