Ice Skating

Monday morning we took the girls to Leddy Park in Burlington so they could go ice skating. They have indoor skating rinks there-a normal sized rink and a smaller rink. The smaller rink is used for Itty Bitty Skating, which is what we went to with some friends. Both Gwen, Grace and Rob got ice skates...oh how excited they were. To help them learn how to skate, they each got a large milk crate (it's actually two milk crates stacked and glued on top of each other to make the crates tall enough for the kids to hang onto) and they pushed the crates around on the ice. The instructor also threw tons of little toys out on the ice, and gave the kids buckets to collect them in. They had to let go of the crate, lean down and balance to pick up the toys (teaching them balance). Oh, and please excuse the quality of the photos...I forgot my camera in the car, so I had to take all the pictures with my cell phone camera.

I was surprised how well the girls did. Gwen got out onto the ice, pushed off with her crate, and that was that. See ya later mom and dad...I'm going off to do my own thing and have fun. I'll check back every now and then...love ya!! Yeah right...like she'd really say anything like that to us. Nope, she just took off by herself, wouldn't let anyone help her, and she did fantastic!! She did fall a bunch, but she didn't cry about it and got right back up and kept on skating. She even let go of the crate every now and then to try and skate to a toy!!

Gracie had to have some help at first. She was having a hard time even walking on the mats outside of the rink in her ice skates without any help (Gwen, obviously, had absolutely no problem with this). So Rob helped her for a while, and after a bit she got the hang of it too and went off on her own as well. Rob would skate back and forth between the two of them, checking up on them and helping them if they needed any help.

And what did Georgia and I do? Well, I let her have her sippy snack before we went out on the ice too. I however did not have skates-as my husband says, I am a big chicken, and I agree. I have not skated since my first year of college, and that was the first and last time I ever ice skated-didn't do too good of a job. I have problems balancing on my bare feet sometimes, and I am known to be pretty clumsy. But the lady who runs the program said that she lets the rules slide in the Itty Bitty Skate and lets people come out on the ice in their normal shoes and even push little ones around in a stroller. So that's what we did...and Georgia hated it. She wanted to get out so bad. I had to keep moving in order to keep her happy. I saw a dad there with a little boy that couldn't have been much older than Georgia, and he was helping his little boy push a crate around and the little boy just had his boots on. So I think next time we might do this with Georgia instead.

We promised the girls we would go back because they had so much fun (they cried when we left) so if we have any skating moments without pushing crates, we'll post them. Glad to find something for them to do for a fee of only $10 for all of us!! Again, I apologize for the quality of the video...it was taken with my cell phone too!!