The Schoolyard Ice Rink

As for our middle, he just doesn't like skating in general which is understandable. Having Down syndrome and low muscle tone the feeling of feet sliding willy-nilly underfoot is not for him. We will keep trying but for now if going on the ice with boots makes him comfortable that's OK. He enjoyed smacking a puck around either way.

Today was a beautiful sunny day and not too cold to be outside. We went to our school's ice rink and while I bit bumpy, it was great. The ice rink volunteers have been doing an awesome job of making and flooding the rink.

We were the first ones out which gave us much freedom in racing around and shooting some pucks. Our youngest is learning hockey, and lets just a hockey career is not in
his future. Turns out he doesn't really like skating/hockey as much as he thought he would but none the less he actually enjoyed himself and even asked to come back tomorrow. I think he just liked that he could just do whatever he wanted and not do drills.

Our daughter is the one that always loves doing things and find almost anything fun, so she naturally she enjoyed herself and was the last one to say lets go home.

My big kid, hubby, enjoyed it lots too. He plays hockey with a bunch of guys once a week. The type of playing that you give it all and don't hold back. However today the ice won. He caught his skate on the ice on a turn and fell hard to the ice, land in the boards. I missed seeing but two of the other kids saw and thought it was great. Hubby's elbow didn't find it all that great. We debated if he should go get an x-ray but after icing it for a while he said it was feeling better and could lift it higher than before. A bit swollen on the funny bone area, which probably was the reason for the tingling running up and down his elbow.

I read that some Montreal scientist predict that there will be fewer and fewer ice rinks in the future based on weather data in the past. (http://rinkwatch.org/about/) Considering that last year a rink couldn't even be built and this year, and this year the ice building couldn't even start until the end of December, there could be something to this. The volunteers had battled plus degrees temperatures and basically had to start over again once already. Recently we had a good cold spill, but plus temperatures are expected again this coming week. Guess we better get the skating in while we can.