Cross Country Skiing

I am proud to say that Lydia is now a capable cross-country skier, hurray.  My mom gave her a set of very nice boots and poles this Christmas, and I found a second-hand pair of skis that work for her. Amy took Lydia for a ski lesson over at the Weston cross-country ski center, and then today Ethan, Lydia, Rustin, Michele, and I went for a ski tour at Minuteman National Historic Park, which has lovely trails. We spent two hours skiing, and Lydia covered around three miles, which was impressive for a kid her age. Photo (from my cell phone, so a little on the grainy / blurry side):

Ethan had a good time zooming way ahead with his uncle Rustin, which was fun for him too (he also has nice new equipment courtesy of his grandmother).

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, alas, but we had some good skiing while the snow lasted.

Sports

I am afraid that I fell down on the job this fall with respect to taking photos of the kids sports activities. I only made it to one of Ethan's meets, and with Lydia I was too busy coaching to take pictures. Here are a few odds and ends. This is Lydia just before one of her games-- you can't really tell from the photo, but the weather was brutal (intermittent rain, wind, very cold):

This fall the format was 8-v-8 for Lydia's age group. We did the travel league, since there isn't an in-town option for girls at this point. It was fun, although the division we were placed into was very tough -- we only won 2 games. Lydia was a defensive specialist; she was usually the fastest player on the field, too.

Team photo, minus yours truly.

Here's the start of the JV race for the one home cross-country meet that I was able to get to. Ethan is in there if you look for him:

This is about the half-way point. I took lots of other photos but the focus was horrendous (I miss not having my VR telephoto lens, arg).

As with the situation at Diamond middle school, the boys teams are good, but the girls teams are incredibly good. The depth and the level of participation is amazing.