Doubting Thomas Blog

Archive for the ‘ice skating’ Category

Last year, we went ice skating a couple times, but our little guy was too little to skate, so I walked around the rink while Jeanine and our oldest son skated a few laps. This year, we put helmets on them both and got out on the ice as a family for the first time. It was hard just to get around the ice rink once, though.

Western New York is a winter wonderland. Our town has an ice rink that has open skate on Sundays from 1:15 to 3:05 pm (odd hours, aren’t they?), so first we went there to skate. The snow was coming down so thick, I could only see the fourth house down the street. And even in this weather, the skating rink was full. As we drove up to the entrance of the ice rink, we could see a big sign in the window that said “OPEN SKATE SOLD OUT”. Just to be sure, Jeanine went in to ask, and the teen-age girls working behind the counter told her that they had actually oversold the ice rink by 70 people (sounds dangerous to me!).

So we drove to the ice rink in South Buffalo, and it was a different world. For one thing, the sun was shining, and there was no snow falling. For another, there was actually a parking spot close to the door, which meant that there was probably still room on the ice for us to skate. And there was, so $6 later, we were in. Jeanine has her own skates, but the boys and I had to rent. The boys skates were too big, I think, so it was hard to really tighten the laces. My skates were a half-size larger than my regular shoe size, but even so, I had a hard time getting them on my feet. And then I had a hard time tightening the laces. The thing about ice skates is that they need to be really tight in order to have any control over your skating.

At the ice rink, they have some skating aids that look like walkers for kids to use for balance while they learn to skate. I don’t think they’re a good idea. First of all, it teaches kids to balance with their center of gravity too high. Secondly, they’re not really skating.

Well, we used them for our kids, because they just couldn’t stand up on skates. And while I know how to skate, I’m no expert, so at first I was afraid that if I were holding one of the kids and they fell, I would fall too. That turned out not to be the case, but when my oldest did fall, my holding him up by his one arm wasn’t too comfortable for him either.

So overall, our ice skating outing wasn’t the biggest success. Not like skiing the day before. But on the other hand, it was nice to do something all together as a family. If we go again, I want to buy my own skates, because the skates I rented, similar to the skate in the picture above, just didn’t fit.

I called my brother after we went ice skating, and he said it sounded like we were having our own Winter Olympics. Yep, everything but the curling.