SMILE

Winter blahs - not here sister.  Think ICE, ICE BABY!

Saturday night we were settling in.  I was literally at the Redbox searching for our Saturday night flick.  The phone rang (6:00 pm):

Mike:  "Where are you?"
Me: "Redbox"
Mike:  "I have something fun to do tonight" 
[my finger froze]
Me:  "What?"
Mike: "A bunch of friends are going Ice Skating"
Me:  "We're in!"

I rushed home, we all changed and headed out to the rink.  A new adventure for all of our kids.  None of them ever ice skated before.  Mike played ice hockey back in high school with friends just for fun.  I took ice skating as one of my gym classes at Penn State.  Crazy, we had to do a routine as part of our grade.  It's been 20 years since then.

So we get to the ice skating rink, rent and put on our skates.  I step onto the ice --- OMG it is slippery. I thought for sure I would be hanging onto the wall the entire night.  Here's how it played out:

Mike: Rented "hockey skates" and thought he was cool.  Could still do the hockey stop but he fell once (think loud thump)

Me: Slowly got the hang of it and remembered some tricks.  Skating backward, tiny little spins and worked on my forward and backward crossover steps towards the end of the night (did not fall once)

Jack: Complained alot about his skates but overall did good.  He was not intimidated at all by the other middle school & high school hockey players zipping around the ice like mini skating studs.

Matthew: He shuffled his feet the entire time!  He was too funny and just loved it.

Kate: She picked up skating better than anyone.  But she kept falling backwards on her butt.  I thought she was going to break an arm.  But she got up, smiled and kept on going.

Slowly our friends left.  But our family stayed on the ice.  At one point, we all joined hands and did a lap around the rink.  We closed the place --- us and a pile of teens.  

We had smiles on our faces the entire night.

Tracy