Tough days are inevitable...I've been working through this with our daughter and some days, it's brutal.

Our daughter has been having some rough days.  When we arrived in San Diego, she was super excited to start volleyball.  We found a club, she tried out a few months later, then began the routine of practices and tournaments.  For the past couple of months, she's lost the joy she once held for volleyball.  She was frustrated, crying, angry...name a negative emotion and she felt it towards her favorite sport.  We got her started on one-on-one practices to work on skills and get her more reps, tried to figure out what was going on.  More frustration, tears and anger.  Pep talks about persevering, the ups and downs of athletic pursuits, and working through the emotions of failing practice after practice were had ad nauseam.  After a recent practice, I turned her around and said, "That's it...let's go talk to coach."  I was at a loss.  He shared some encouraging words with her (and me) that the goal of the club is to build fundamentally sound volleyball players with solid technical skills, she's got some bad habits to break and when we try to break bad habits we should expect to experience a decline in ability while our mind and body figure out how to accomplish this known thing in a new way.  

As an important side note to this story (and I'm so out of practice writing that I am unable to smoothly connect these two things), since we've been in San Diego, E has proved to enjoy an extremely wide array of music.  The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Dion, Rolling Stones, The Chordettes' Mr. Sandman, Ballroom Blitz by Sweet and Elvis Presley are just an inkling of what I get to hear whenever we are in the car together not to mention the new pop songs too.  She's an excellent DJ, an ability she gets from her daddy.  

In the most recent weeks, as I've exhausted my ability to encourage her with words, and have become an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on, I've turned the question back on E.  I've asked her, "in the future, when your daughter or son has this same experience because, face it sister, no one escapes these struggles, what are you going to tell her or him about your experience right now?"  She thought for a minute, then said, "I'll say ' hey sweetie, you know, I went through something just like this when I was 14 years old and it really sucked, but I didn't give up because it was a dream of mine to try to play college volleyball."  A few days after this, we were driving home from a practice, E turns to me and says, "You know what song is really helping me right now, mommy?  Elvis's Follow That Dream."  I hadn't heard that song before, so I asked her "Why is that?"  And she said, "The words really resonate with how I'm feeling towards volleyball, I gotta keep moving along so that I can follow my dream."  Of course I had to listen to it and read the lyrics, you can too right here.  E's journey isn't about finding the love she needs like Elvis's was...at least right now it isn't...it's about "keep a movin', move along."

I think we can all resonate with this song because some days are just tough and our dreams may seem far off, but we gotta keep pressing forward.   

(Here's just a few of our zoo pictures from spring break, I gotta add pictures even if they don't go with the theme!)  Have you met my friend?Shenanigans at the zoo. Sky SafariSan Diego Zoo...impressive from above. San Diego Zoo flamingosI say I love elephants the best, but flamingos win out on beauty.