All About Sports--Getting Americanized:)

We feel like we have fully immersed back into the American culture by signing the kids up for many sports activities. It's always tough, at first, when you move to figure out where is what and what level of commitment you actually desire for your family. We thought we took things slowly but somehow our life has become quite involved in sports practices and games.

Alex. He is in 6th grade so he is not allowed to play sports through school yet. We signed him up for a season through the YMCA that went from October to December. It is, unfortunately, the most expensive basketball around because we are not members, but it's also the only one that was going on in Cary when we finally decided to sign up. Alex really enjoyed it, although it took him a month or so to love it. That's Alex jumping up to steal the ball (#5).



Mark. After doing a week long tennis camp in August through the Cary Tennis Center, Mark was begging us to sign him up for tennis wanting to play every day. We live five minute drive from the Cary Tennis Center, so it actually wasn't too bad. He got evaluated and got into the Tennis Academy (TAD) and can go four times a week for an hour for instructions. On top of that he had matches on Fridays for about two months. And then once in a while we hire a tennis coach, Polina, to give him private lessons. Those are expensive, so we have to know our limits. Polina is wonderful. She is originally from Uzbekistan and was a junior pro during her younger days. We'll continue evaluate if we are able to do tennis this often and if Mark will be able to participate in the tournaments (lots of them are on Saturday and Sunday).





Katya. She was very fortunate to get into her school's soccer team this year! It was incredible luck with timing and us having all the necessary forms filled out by the doctor back in England. She had practices three times a week and games on Wednesdays. Katya started as a right wing and then became a left back (and realized she really liked to run as little as possible:)) and THEN she had to sub for their goalie when she was sick and loved it. So she was playing goalie for the last few games and now wants to try out to be a goalie in her high school next year.








Of course, we already know about her new of hobby for rowing. Here are just two beautiful shots from a Saturday morning in the fall.





And that was our busy fall season of sports. Mark is continuing to play tennis and Katya is still doing rowing.

Bye for now.
Lyana.