Saturday Afternoon Skating

The boys in the family have taken a brief trip to Iowa to visit Great Grandparents and our energetic and lovely trio of cousins.  They left Saturday around noon.

The girls in the family decided that it would be a good day to try out Sarah's new ice skates.  I love to ice skate.  I can't skate backward, and I can't do any fancy tricks, but I love swishing across the ice, and I'm fairly stable on my feet.  I've always liked skating, and in particular, ice skating.  When I was growing up I weaved my way around the pillow snowdrifts to skate on the lake next to my parents' farm.  In college I would zip over to the indoor ice skating rink on Sunday evenings with a couple of my friends, and sometimes Greg.  We got in free with our college IDs.  

Since having children, I haven't gotten to skate much, in fact, hardly at all.  I have tried and tried to get my kids interested in ice skating, but kidlet number one hates falling down.  Kidlet number two can't stand being cold.  Ice is cold.  And kidlet number three just isn't coordinated enough at this point.  

Luckily for me, however, we live in hockey land.  Everyone in this city skates.  There are rinks all over. Some people even flood their yards and make their own personal rinks in the winter.  Several of the schools have large ice rinks next to the playground for the winter months.  Sarah's school, in fact, has three rinks outside because it happens to be the neighborhood hockey area for the houses close to her school.  During the months of January, February and March, each class at school actually gets scheduled ice time.  

This has turned out to be a terrific thing.  When she heard that her class would be skating, Sarah was suddenly much more interested in having skates.  Last Thursday when she got home from school on the first scheduled skating day for first graders, she mentioned that only two other kids beside herself did not bring skates.  And she mentioned that she'd like some.  So she and Dr. Peds took a little trip to the used skate store and brought home a pair.  Sometimes peer pressure can be positive.  

We took them out for a try on Saturday afternoon.  We talked about falling down and getting up and leaning forward.  The Banana zipped around in the sled behind me on the ice, and boot skated while the biggest sister scooted around the ice on her sliver blades.  She did great.  And she loved it.  She wants to try again as soon as possible.  

I'm one happy Mama.