Skate-a-Rama

We had a fun weekend despite the once-again nasty weather! We took our junior high youth group for a skating party. I personally love to skate--we went skating for 4-H parties regularly when I was growing up.

Last year I decided after the emergance of Cami, that I would have the opportunity to go skating for at least the next 18 years or so. So I searched out some roller blades on ebay and it cost me more to ship them than to buy them there. . . and still cheaper than a new pair. The kids LOVED it--all of them. We have been taking the boys since T was in kindergarten or so, and they are getting better every time. D absolutely cracks me up. . . He gets out there like he has been skating a million times and gets down to business. We debated on whether to take Cami or leave her with granny. We decided to take her along. She was good for lots of laughing. We got her some skates that fit right over her shoes. She wasn't scared or even the least bit intimidated by them. She just started shuffling her feet right away. I held her hand for the first round and she did great. Then she looked up at me and shook my hand off hers and said "my do it myself!". . . and she did! The rink had these cute little "skating walkers" for little guys. They were made out of PVC pipes with wheels. She saw one little guy

using those and decided she needed one too. We enjoyed watching her manuever that walker around enjoying the fun!!

Even J will skate and enjoys it. He's the tall guy with the cap in the picture! We got to laughing because he wasn't going to go with us, just stay home with C. His excuse was that he was "too old to fall." My retort was that he really doesn't fall--he's a pretty good skater. So of course, he took about 3 shuffles on the rink and hit his backside on the floor! The bright side of that was that our friend Monika got the courage to skate after watching him fall immediately!! Many of the parents that went skated that night. I think the kids enjoy watching their parents do something that we shouldn't be able to do because we are OLD!! However, I was hoping to see Danny's hot pink roller blades!! Hope he can find them before we go the next time.

We skated the limbo, the stretch and the hokey pokey. Because I had planned this outing, God said "let there be some bad weather or some other problem for her to contend with" and it was. My friend Susan called me at noon to see whether I thought we should leave earlier so we didn't miss skating because of the storm rolling in. In my defense, I waited until TUESDAY to make the final plans for the party to avoid any conflict with weather (the kids are still disappointed about the conference that we missed several weeks ago because of the snow). I also have to admit that this was our SECOND attempt at the skating party--the first one was right after school started at the end of September. I didn't call the rink and used my information from last year. We drove up there the weekend BEFORE it opened--so we played kick the can in the dark at the park before freezing in the parking lot of Sonic to eat good snacks before heading home. So my kids asked a dozen times whether I had called ahead this time. . . And being the OCD girl that I am, I had called TWICE and listened to their schedule and then called BACK on Saturday and spoke to them personally! Anyway, we had a great time!! I wish I would have taken pictures of the blisters and bruises--they may have been more fun to look at than the actual skating pictures, which by the way, were awfully hard to get in the dark and as fast as people moved! We enjoyed supper at Taco Bell and got home just as the rain and sleet started!

We had beautiful snow Sunday and the kids got to sleep in yesterday. Track practice starts indoors this week. I am hoping to get our garden seeds started this week so they will be big and mighty in time to put in the garden. Every day I pine for the warm weather and beautiful flowers. Our family is settling into the routine of having mom home regularly and it is all good. I am about to get caught up with the things put off for months and years. Yesterday while C napped, I sorted all of my photos for the last year and then put a few scrapbook pages together last night. I am not an elaborate scrapbooker, but I enjoy some cool paper, stickers, and designs on my pages. I will work hard over the next several weeks to get that caught up. My blood pressure continues to drop by the day!! We head to my folks this weekend to meet our new little guy, so will have pictures to brag about next week. Be blessed!