From Skating Basics to High-Tech Needs

To her pure excitement and joy, Laura got to try her new skates today! I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon looking up arenas with open skate times during the day. It was surprisingly difficult to find Wednesdays open for some reason. But I had promised her yesterday that I would take her today, and far be it from me to not follow through with a promise I made to her.....I would be much too frightened facing her wrath!

After picking up Crispy from the bus stop, and Michael from band at school, we drove out to the Hopkins arena which was about 35 minutes away. I had figured out the timing wrong in my head....but it was to our advantage, so we got to make a lunch stop at Arby's before skating. Such a treat since all we have near Waconia for fast food is McDonald's~gross.

At the ice arena, we pretty much had the whole rink to ourselves. We only had to share the ice with one other boy and his dad. This made it easier for Laura with her skating "walker".....she didn't have to try to contend with a bunch of other skaters whizzing around her, causing her to lose balance. She did great, and after only about 10 minutes of help from me, she was able to move the walker on her own, and to get back up when she would fall. Her little legs made it 30 whole minutes before getting tired enough to need a break.

Crispy and Michael practiced skating the length of the rink, and doing some stick handling with the pucks on the rink. Crispy is now consistently using both legs to skate, and spends most of his time upright instead of flat on his back. I tried playing some pond hockey with Michael, but Thomas was not being very cooperative this afternoon, and he spent most of the time crying like a baby (which I suppose is appropriate since he IS a baby). I did my best to entertain him by pushing him around the rink in his car seat, but there was only so much that my back could take bending over at that funny angle. All in all, it was a successful outing, but perhaps I could get Grandma to meet us there once a week to hold the baby?

When we got home this afternoon, the cable-computer-phone all went out right as all the kids got home from school. My goodness, you would think the world had ended. It was still out when Bob came home from work, and there was no way to contact Mediacom, since their entire system was down. We all had to spend a "torturous" evening without these down-time luxuries, which led to some fights, but eventually good creative play. I would have normally been excited with this lack of technology, but this time, it even made me crabby. Jonny and Alex both had homework due that required online work and I had a project to do involving the Internet. Yes, I must be a glutton for punishment, as I have volunteered to be Melissa's girl scout cookie mom again this year. My presentation to the group is tomorrow night, and the only way I can do things is at the last minute. Everything returned at 9:30pm....too late for any of us to get anything we needed to done. We are going to all be scrambling tomorrow! Sometimes I really miss the good-old days before our dependence on computers. It is really shocking how much we use and need them.....but the advantages~like keeping in touch with those so far away, and online shopping~ are awesome!