Conner?

Cooper has been enjoying soccer a lot.  He's learning a lot about the game,

which Derek and I know little about, and has improved quite a bit since starting.

There are quite a few blonde haired boys about his size on his team. Even I get confused if I don't pay enough attention.  I'll look up and think, "Oh, wow, Cooper has the ball and he's headed up the field!".  And then I turn to Derek and say, "Oh, I thought that was Cooper for a second, but that child is much faster and more agile.".    :)

And if I get confused, it's no wonder the coaches do too!  In the mass of children running around on the field, they sometimes call the kids the wrong name.  One game, his coaches kept calling Cooper "Conner" and he wasn't responding to their coaching at all.  When he was on the sideline, I went and told him to tell them his name was Cooper.  He ended up correcting them about six times before the game was over.  Instructions were sent home from the  next practice to please write each child's name on the back of their shirt with a marker.  Ha.

I wanted it to be bold enough to read it, since the note sent home said

it would help parents cheer for all the kids from the sidelines too.  It ended up quite large.

Here's how I did it. (Feel free to just skip the rest of this post if you really don't care! ha)

I went to my handy-dandy-helper: Photoshop.

And just picked a bold font and printed off Cooper's name.

 

Then I cut out the letters to make a stencil that I then taped to his shirt.

 I used a pen and traced the outline of all the letters.

And held the inside pieces of the letters on the shirt to trace around them.

So then I had an outline that looked like this.

Which I just filled in with a permanent marker.

And there it is! I actually think I made it too large, since his shirt is a little big for him,

the "C" and "r" kind of disappear when he puts his arms down.  Oops.

At his next game he had his shirt on and was ready to go!

And his fans had no trouble seeing him.

In he went, ready to play!

And he hasn't been called "Connor" since!