This is the first of the quiet weekends.

We've just finished 6 months of 6am Saturday practies and 1 or 2 games a weekend. The goalie gear has been dried cleaned and put away. I don't know if he'll be playing nets again next year. After the teams were picked, the shortage of players in our age group was apparant. We had 12 players and no goalie. There were only 2 goalies between the 4 teams. After some discussion about what we might do, my sweet boy told his dad "Tell Coach Mike I'll play in nets. I'll do that for our team."

My heart melted and at the same time I began to fill with anxiety. You see, my boy started novice as a forward, moved into goalie his second year and fell in love with it. But throughout the second half of his second season in nets, he took every loss personally. If a goal got passed him, his confidence would take a dip. At the end of that year he announced to his coach, in front of his whole team no less, that he wasn't sure he wanted to play hockey again. He most definietly wasn't going to get between the pipes.

Last year was a rebuilding year. Gordon and I did a great deal of minset work with our boy. We built his confidence back up. I found it was easier to watch the games with my boy on defense instead on in the net. It was not nearly as stressful! Being a Goalie Mom is not for the faint of heart! By the end of the season he was loving hockey again and there was not one mention, request or longing to return to the lonely end of the rink.

So you can understand why his eagerness to step up for the team caught me off guard and made my inner mama bear nervous. We had some good chats and he insisted. So I spoke with teh coach. I made it very clear that I would pull him from nets if we thought his self esteem was being negatively impacted and our awesome coach agreed and we came up with a plan to support our goalie.

We started the year strong, but struggled the second half. We had a string of loses, and while Ozzy would get emotional or be disappointed with the loss, he continued to show up strong and confident for his team. Coach counted on him as a leader and he even awarded Ozzy the honour of Assistant
Captain.

It has been an outstanding year in so many respects. Our little team with 12 players earned a spot in the Top division, we beat our two riva teams when it really mattered and earned ourselves a spot in teh semi-finals. That last game was one of their very best of the season! The other team scored one goal, and only because the puck bounced off of his stick and squeeked in over his shoulder. There was no way he could stop it. Our boys fired shot after shot but the other team's goalie was as hot as Oz and we werent able to tie it up.

Which brings us back to this quiet weekend. 

It's still busy, as the team manager I have financial reports to get done, the team party to organize and team gifts to make. One thing I am doing first though is taking a few minutes to say thank you to all the people who helped us have an incredible year. I truly believe that being grateful and expression my appreciation for others is very important. I'm no Emily Post but if someone has gone out of their way to help others, I think that should be recognized. There are so many volunteers behind the scenes that help the players, coaches, managers, families and the community.  Plus I have to say my #hockeymomtribe was the best. At the very least they deserve to be recognized for their contribution. It feels good to fill other people's cup.

As much as I love handwritten thank you notes, I am really struggling with time and I didn't have everyone's mailing address. I don't have any cute papercards on hand and my budget is a little tight so buying the really nice ones wouldn't be a splurge I could do this week. An email seemed plain and too work like. I had an account at www.paperlesspost.com and had recieved some credits to try out the site. I scrolled through until I found just the right designs for each of my notes!  I turned a Christmas card into a perfect Hockey Mom thank you and found a cute New Yorker design for a fun note to a friend. 

Paperlesspost app

I love that I can send a thank you card but save paper and postage! When it comes to mailing things I'm not always on top of that (I have been know to send a birthday card a few weeks late, not on purpose just because getting to the post office to get stamps is not something i think to do) so I KNOW I got my thank yous out much quicker than I would have if I hand wrote them and the cost of each card was less than a paper card as well. The site also has some free designs that are really cute. I will definitely be topping up my account when my credits run out.

I guess I'll finish these thank yous much faster than I thought and can move on to some other to dos that I haven't gotten to in the past 6 months, like cleaning my house lol.

The 7th Player

Last weekend was an incredibly exciting weekend for our family! Austin was picked to play at intermission of the Mooseheads game with some of his hockey teammates from the Sackville Minor Hockey League.

Credit: David Chan

I was over the moon excited! for a few reasons

1. "Um HELLO!!! That's MY boy! -hockey momma proud moment
2. Austin was on cloud 9 and it was just so nice to see him so happy
3. Full circle moment. When G and I were dating forever and a day ago, we would go to Moosehead games all the time. One of my favorite things about going to the games was watching the little timbit hockey players. We were watching them one time and I looked at G all love struck and googly-eyed and said "Can you imagine if one day we had a little Timbit hockey player of our own?" (yup...we were mushy and gushy back then...that probably led to some sort of discussion about how many kids, how far apart, hockey or ballet for the girls....you know...those things you have time to talk about when you are all in love)

So we got tickets and were sitting in the same section as the team. Just before the first period the players were all coming to their seats but Ozzy was no where to be seen. My phone rang and it was G telling me that Ozzy had won the stick draw and was going to be the 7th player of the game! He got to skate our with the team and stand with them for Oh Canada. We still haven't been able to wipe the smile off his face.

The Moosehead players and the team that works behind the scenes at these games were amazing to our little hockey players. All of the players gave the timbits fist bumps when they came off at the end of the first period while the timbits were lined up waiting for their turn on the ice. Bobby Mac of Q104 was great with the kids, joking around with them before and calling the game as they played.

If you know my boy, you know that he wants to be a goalie. He dreams of playing the nets for the Boston Bruins, but he pretty much adores every goalie there is (except Montreal...we did teach the boy to have standards lol).  After being selected to skate out with the Mooseheads, Austin was waiting for the team at the entrance to the ice. Zachary "Zach" Fucale  (the Goalie) came out, looked at Austin and said "Are we ready to do this Austin?" My boy's jaw dropped and he just starred in awe as Fucale got into the zone.

Sorry it took me a week to post but it's been a little busy around our place. Ozzy is still talking about skating with the Mooseheads and tells everyone about it. What a great memory for our little guy!

*Oh the irony- Fucale was selected by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2nd round (36th overall) of the 2013 NHL Entry Draft.- such a nice kid...