Ice Skating

Ever since Dan started his new job where he doesn't have to work such crazy hours, the kids have been begging to go ice skating. So we decided that yesterday would be the day. The local ice rink has rather limited free skate hours so our only options were Saturday evening from 7-9 or Sunday afternoon from 1-3. The choice was obvious.

Unfortunately I didn't bring the camera. I figured there wasn't really any point since there were four children who didn't know how to skate, one adult who really knows how to skate, and one adult who knows how to skate but can't for the life of her figure out how to stop (without running into a wall). Plus, when I wasn't using it, where was I going to put it? I wasn't about to leave it out in the open for someone to take.

While I was working on getting everyone's skates on, Dan took Natalie out on the ice (she had her skates on first). She was petrified and cried every time Dan tried to put her on the ice. Eventually we found the little walkers made from PVC pipe for kids to use to learn to skate. I pushed her around with that for about ten minutes and then she didn't want my help at all. She wanted to do it on her own. Even when she fell she told me she didn't need my help. Pretty soon she was zipping around the ice rink having an absolute blast. She'd even skate up to Ellie and tell her that she needed to race her.

Darin did pretty well too. All of the kids managed to snag one of the walkers (there aren't nearly enough there and some were being used by kids who obviously didn't need them) for awhile and that really helped. Kara had the hardest time learning to skate which surprised me since she seems to be the most athletic.

But being at the Rec Center just reiterated that homeschooling is a good choice for us. Some girls can be so mean!! Once when Kara stepped off the ice and Dan was holding her walker, Natalie fell so he leaned over to pick her up and this girl snatched Kara's walker almost right out of his hands! And there were other instances of disrespect that I saw. It made me very thankful for the sweetness of my own children. And I'm not saying that all homeschooled children are well-behaved or that all public school children are rotten. There just seems to be a greater incidence of disrespectful and mean children in the public school.

All in all we had a great time and have decided that we need to go back soon. Several times throughout the rest of the day Natalie would tell me how much fun she had ice skating.