Ice Skating!

We had the absolute best time ice skating downtown this week! I love that the city does this for us! Right downtown, there's a little ice rink, charging almost nothing for admission or skate rental, and my girls and I decided to go down and try it out. I started out as the photographer on the sidelines, but it looked like so much fun that I ended up getting myself a pair of skates and getting out on the ice too!

My first time around the rink, I clung to the railing on the edge and slowly, cautiously inched my way along. Well, hey, I have not been on skates in like, 600 years! Just getting skates on and learning to stand up in them was progress for me! Walking in them was the next big step, and when I actually got on the ice, I felt like I had accomplished something significant! So inching around the edge was good. The second time around I was a little braver and by the fourth time, I was only using the rail once in awhile. I was actually skating! At a beginner level, but still!

It was so much fun! The fresh air and exercise felt so good. And yes I fell. Of course I fell! I was not expecting to come through unscathed. I bruised my shoulder. And other things. But it's all healing quickly. And it was fun. Afterwards, we went to my friend Josh's coffee house for hot chocolate and chai along with a grilled cheese sandwich. It was a great day! I got pics of the girls, but none of myself. The girls might have pics of me, but I don't have any yet. I put some of what I do have into a video. Hope you enjoy it! And if you live in Our Town, get yourself down to the almost free ice rink for some good fun!

Christmas Day at our house

So I've begun a blog! I've been thinking about it a while.

Christmas here was good. I gathered some of the pictures we took and put them into a video... I never had done this kind of project before and had so much fun that I stayed up til 4:30 am the other night playing with it. Once it was done, I was so happy with the result that I wanted to post it. And so it came to pass that I finally got the blog up and running. So I could post the video.

We began our Christmas morning at a fairly reasonable time (It is good to have the children a bit older and capable of appreciating sleep). We spent the morning together exchanging gifts and grabbing a bowl of cereal whenever one got hungry. We saved the traditional breakfast casseroles for later when the rest of the family came over. It was a good relaxed morning.

When the others got here, we cooked the casseroles which turned out delicious eventually but not until they'd dripped cheesy goo all over the bottom of the oven, smoking up the place and casting the kitchen in a bluish-gray fog that smelled gross. Fun times. No matter, we ate and then began the gift exchange from the whole bunch of us. When we got hungry again, we started fixing nachos in the oven. For reasons yet unknown the cheese would not melt on those chips, so I put the oven on broil. All was well until I glanced over at the kitchen and saw smoke (again)! The nachos were on fire! When they tried to open the oven, big eight-inch flames shot out!

"What do we do?" they asked.

"Shut the door!" we answered.

They did.

We all were laughing so hard!

Husband said that the earlier casserole smoke was not so bad after all. This sort of put it perspective.

Finally when the flames died down and the chips were reduced to something that would not even support a flame, the guys took the baking sheet out of the oven, releasing a huge black cloud into the kitchen, and tossed the whole mess out onto the snow.

The cat sniffed at them. Didn't eat much, though.

Smart cat.

We laughed so hard... it was well worth losing the nachos to have everyone laughing together with such joy.
Good memory-making stuff.

Three babies were here this year... only one of them had been born last Christmas. One son and his precious wife were missing, celebrating with her family out of state. We missed them, but were glad they could celebrate elsewhere. So Christmas was different this year than last year. Different, but good.