Living and breathing SOCCER

Soccer season has us in its grip.
A tight grip, I might add.
We love it, we're exhausted, and we're ready for a slower pace again.
Every spring and every fall we're out there it seems, and we have been doing it for.... uuhhmm, about 5 years at least, maybe 6. I lost count.

Now I'm the most un-ambitious person when it comes to sports. Mike always had this dream of his wife being blonde, tall and athletic.
Nope, God has very different plans. I'm short, dark haired and so un-athletic it's pathetic. Thank goodness our kids have inherited their Dad's genes in that area, as sports are a huge thing around here.
Soccer is our "Family sport", so to speak. Everybody does it, and they all love it.
Elia and Alex are on the same team, which helps a lot. Alex' physical abilities match those of Elia's age group so much better, so they usually let us do it. It helps that I'm married to the coach... :-)))
Nico has not played for a couple of years, but this year he started again and loves it. He loves to learn all the tricks, and he is an excellent kicker. I'm married to his coach, too *LOL*

Here is part of Alex and Elia's team. Elia is in the middle, Alex on the far right with the glasses. Elia is extremely competitive and very athletic, and he pretty much dominates every game. He keeps a running score of all his goals, but I have lost track. He has so much Adrenaline pumping through his little veines, it's amazing. He hates sitting on the sideline, that's for sure. Do I pray that we are able to direct his energy into the right direction!
Often times we have games back to back. On this day we had a break in between, which was nice. The kids were busy ripping out grass and burying Nico's leg.
Going, going, gone....
This has been a pretty warm soccer season, but when it's cold, Nico takes good care of his shivering little sister
But what she likes the best, is hanging out with the Coach...
Anya is on a travelling team this fall. Now that's a totally different ball game. Oh my! On one hand we are so proud of her achievment, but it's hard to be on the road every weekend, and to juggle all the different games. She is such a good little soccer player, though, and that makes the decision so hard whether we can do this again in the Spring or not (right now it's a definite "no way!!!").
The following pictures are from three different events, but soccer nontheless :-)) . In this first picture you can see Anya on the left.


Nina of course loves to hang out with her big sister after the games, and the girls on Anya's team dote on her!
Nina is a very cooperative soccer sister - she loves to just sit in my lap and play, which is suprising since she is a very active little girl!


What entertains her for a loooong time is playing with the digital camera. Nina has actually prepared her own post about that, but she is not quite ready to publish it. One picture that I'm sharing though is a cute self-portrait that we did just last sunday.
We have just this week left for the boys, and Anya has one more tournament after that. I'm so thankful that our kids like to be active. It's good for all of us, and even though I'm tired right now and I would like to throw a little pity party for myself, I know we will be chasing after that ball again in the spring....