Polar Palace

In an effort to teach my children something that I loved to do while I was growing up, albeit it on a pond freezing my touche off in the cold afternoons of winter, and to find something fun to do on this incredibly rainy day, I took the girls ice skating for a couple of hours at the Polar Palace in Lapeer.

(Lars was invited but had zero interest. He went instead to build Legos with Zac).

Now I must admit I was a bit sore after an hour of kickboxing with Meegan kicked my butt yesterday at noon. (For the record, kickboxing is not for sissies. Nor is it for ladies. My sister, however, is neither a lady nor a sissy. She is a lovely woman, and somebody you don't want to anger in a dark alley.) 

So, I strapped on my hockey skates, wiggled the girls into their figure skates, and headed for the ice.  Except for the first 10 minutes, we had the entire rink to ourselves. Elia cried the minute she stood up. Eden tried valiantly to make it around the rink without any ice skating aides. It took all the muscle and energy I had to keep them both from falling, and taking me with them. In the end, Elia mostly skated tightly clung in my arms and Eden was really getting the hang of it, but tired quickly.  We lasted about an hour.

I longed for a stick and puck.

Coincidentally, A hockey practice was going on on the other rink, so we took quick breaks to watch the excitement and sweat pounding adrenaline.  And in the end, we skated off the ice with frost stuck to our butt, cold hands and ankles that ached like no tomorrow. 

But even though Elia cried and mostly clung to me with one hand and sucked fingers with the other while trying to skate, Eden and I had a lot of fun.