By dang!

If you know Kelley you know that she's not really that motivated when it comes to challenges...well, depending on the challenge... When she was two she found a puzzle of the United States. She wanted it, but we told her it was too hard for her. So she sat down on the grass (at the yard sale) dumped it out and proceeded to put it together all by herself! On the other end of the spectrum though, let's talk about soccer. I put her in soccer when she was four because I thought she'd do great. I had heard it was a great sport for little kids, but she could also dribble a ball like crazy the summer before. She did have fun doing it, but would get so frustrated because the other kids were faster or better than she was. She had the same problem last summer as well. She would literally flop down in the middle of the field and cry "I can't do it, my legs hurt..." etc etc, after giving the project really only minimal effort. She's in a little tumbling clinic right now and has the same problem. Her teacher says that she acts like she doesn't want to be there and cries that it is too hard. (Although Kell had just told me that she really liked tumbling...go figure).

So last week we spent three days on a houseboat with some friends from the ward. They had a little waterski trainer that some of the kids were going on. I hadn't seen it in action, but told Kelley if she waterskiied she could have a polly pocket, trying to motivate her. But I didn't really think she would ever do it. Seriously...my little girl? You can imagine my SHOCK when she said she would try. So we all hopped in the boat and off we went. I figured it would go something like this: she would try it once, fall over and get frustrated and not try anymore. But defying all my expectations the little darling stayed up! Granted it's kind of a no fail little device they have. They start the kids from the shore and apparently it's very easy to stay upright. You should have seen her. We hadn't really talked to her about what to do if she fell or wanted to stop (besides just let go!) because we didn't want to overtalk it and scare her out of trying. So she was scared of letting go and she skiied for 10-15 minutes straight! We didn't want to turn the boat around and cross our own wake, afraid it would scare her, but she was NOT letting go, so we turned around and she made it over the waves. When we were nearly back to the shore we cut the engines and she was done. She went again the next day too and this time had learned the signs (slow down, just right and cut). She's a little pro! She even tried turning back and forth inside in the wake.

It makes me laugh. I was NEVER good at sports. I always thought it was because I didn't have the chance to do sports when I was younger. But now I wonder if it's just genetic and neither I nor my daughter are destined to be great athletes. But by dang I learned to waterski and was good at it. Maybe that will be Kelley's niche too ;)

Here's a picture as proof. Joey's working on the video and hopefully we'll get it up later tonight.