Ice skating

Friday:

Today we went ice skating. Australia is not exactly the winter sports capital of the world, but I happened to live near an ice rink and my high school had it as an option for sport (they didn't give us lessons, just let us loose on the ice). I was never particularly good, but I could at least stay up and go forwards and backwards at a reasonable speed and stop when I wanted to. I hadn't been skating for about 25 years. The kids had been wanting to go for a while so we went along this morning to a combined pool and rink ("two kinds of cool!").

They say you never forget how to ride a bicycle, and I think it's about as true that you don't forget how to skate. That is, not true at all. I did both as a child and teenager and suck at both as an adult! I was holding on to the edge most of the time. With two children to support between two adults, I had to manage holding a child's hand and stop them falling over while stopping myself falling over as well. Tim had only been skating a few times but was much more confident than me and took the kids for rather faster spins around the ice. But then there were a couple of falls on his watch.

We were there for about an hour and a half and that was enough for me, with aching freezing feet and sore shoulders from holding up slipping children. But overall it was pretty fun and I'm sure we'll do it again some time. The kids loved it, even with bruised knees.

We are going to spend the weekend visiting family and we've decided to take Thor with us - so that will be interesting!