Adventures in Ice Skating

There was a family night ice skating party at a local rink hosted by another troop. For most events I take Katelyn and Clark will stay home with Laura. But I figured since Clark knows how to ice skate that he could go and help with the girls and I and make it a true family experience along with being there with others in our troop. Here are the girls before they got on the ice. I was too shakey in skates so I didn't get any of them actually on the ice. And then I was too shakey after to take any more pictures.

For the record...Laura went out for about 15 minutes with daddy and big sister. Then she fell hard on her butt and decided that was it, no more. Katelyn was off and on the ice all night. She loved it even though she fell a lot. She told me later that she just got right back up and wasn't going to let the ice win. Yeah Katelyn! Clark only ate the ice once........right after he helped me finally get onto the ice. Other than that he skated quite a bit and didn't even need to hug the wall.

And then there's me...the mommy...the writer of this blog. Let's just say I'm kind of glad there are no picture even if they would have provided everyone with a laugh.

I got my skates on, stood up, took two steps and down I went. Yep, before I even got to the ice, before I even left the room where they hand out the skates. Yeah that bad. And then I made it to the doorway and down I went again. I ended up crawling on my knees to a bench and then waited til my family skated a bit. Finally Clark came out (when Laura fell and decided no more) and he and another mom (thank you Stacie!) walked me to the wall of the rink. With Clark's help, I slowly made my way to the ice. Slowly is the key word there.

I got onto the ice, grabbed the wall and hung on for dear life. I started sweating and not just my face. I sweated down to my toes. And I was shaking. I fell twice before getting on the ice, I didn't want to eat the ice...or break it. I slowly pushed myself along. I noticed that I kept getting kids stuck behind me...a regular traffic jam on ice. While laughing, I'd sarcastically say "I'm not letting of the wall. I'll stop, you all can go around me. Feel free to grab onto me as you go around if you need to. But I'm not letting go of the wall!" One, maybe two kids at a time would choose to hold onto me. Braver kids would skate around my big butt before grabbing the wall again and would triumphantly shout, "I did it! I got around you without falling!" Yeah, yeah, smart mouthed kids. haha! Every now and then a girl from our troop would skate past me "Hi miss Kathryn, I'm skating better than you!" I'd say "Cool, now shut up and keep skating you brat." And off they'd go laughing at me. Now I hadn't made it very far compared to most but it was a work out when you are unsteady, scared, and well....fat....and about the time I saw an exit from the ice about 1/4 of the way around I was ready to collapse. I saw some moms and said "open....door....fast...please!" I guess I looked white as a ghost at this point. The door was open and I literally fell to my knees. I was shaking so hard I could barely get up to sit on the bench to take off my skates. One of the moms in our troop ran over to see if I was okay. I had her go get my wallet and buy me a bottled water...fast.

Even now I'm still a bit shakey from it. But the important this is that I didn't let my fears take over. I could have given up and not even gotten on the ice after falling twice before even getting on. But I didn't. I got out there and did. I may have only made it a quarter of the way around but I did it! I did it!

And for the record.....Stacie, your sister is still a witch for making it all the way around. hahahaha!