Today is a sad day. The Olympics are over. After three weeks of jaw-dropping athletic feats in search of shiny gold medals, we are now left in a "sporting void" since baseball probably won't be a thing this year. However, even though the Olympics are over, that doesn't mean that we can't engage in our own pursuit of Olympics-inspired fun. That's exactly what we did on Friday as Ellie, Ethan, and I went ice skating for the very first time.
I know that it seems a little hard to believe but I've never actually been ice skating once in my entire life. In fact, I've probably only been on roller skates two or three times. Therefore, I had two goals when it came to ice skating. Goal number 1 was to do my best Kamila Valieva impression (without the doping) and successfully nail a quad rotation. Goal number 2 (which was slightly more realistic) was to not break anything.
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| I'm going to look so majestic doing my quad. |
Our biggest reason for checking out ice skating was that one of our local rinks, the Line Creek Community Center, has "home school" prices in effect each Friday. Therefore, the price for the kids and I with skate rental came out to $8 for an hour and a half of skating. Actually, it ended up being just an hour of skating due to a clothing-induced meltdown from Ellie. We won't talk about that right now though.
Once we arrived at the Community Center and we all had our skates on, it was time to hit the ice. Well, hopefully we wouldn't be hitting the ice but you get my drift. The kids started out cautiously enough with each selecting a kid-sized walker to aid them in their acclimation to ice skating. As for myself, surely my natural athletic ability would be enough to allow me to quickly adapt to the ice. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. I quickly left the rink, clinging to the walls the entire way, and grabbed an adult-sized walker to aid in my quest. Seriously, it had wheels and everything.
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| Me and my walker. I named it Judy. Actually I didn't do that but now wish I would have. |
Obviously, I wasn't going to be much help to the kids in teaching them to ice skate. Lucky for them, our friends, the Loschs, happened to be at the rink that day too. Nathan, who grew up in Canada, took it upon himself to start coaching up Ellie. After about 15 minutes on the ice, Ellie parked her walker and began skating around the ice all by herself. Now, there were plenty of falls on Ellie's part (and one painful looking face plant) but she honestly did an awesome job!
As for Ethan and I, the results weren't nearly as amazing as Ellie's. Ethan never actually graduated from his walker to skating unaided. However, he had a good time clumsily wandering around the ice. As for me, I also never strayed far from my walker. I did reach a point though where I was comfortable not putting all of my weight on the walker and instead relying on it only if I started to fall. I even found the courage to take all of my weight off the walker and snap pictures of the kids as they embarked on the first steps of an extremely likely brother-sister Olympic figure skating medal run.
Even though no one got hurt or anything, I do have one regret from the day. I never was able to nail my quad rotation. That being said, once I complete my rigorous doping regiment, there will be nothing to stop me from doing so! #DaddyWrite
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