ice skating

La Princesita and I went ice skating tonight. I had not been in a few years; La Princesita had only been once when she was really, really young and she has no recollection of that. For me, I felt better on skates than I had ever felt on ice...I could spin easily and had never had the confidence to skate on ice so much backwards as duty so required tonight. Some comments were funny; I had a lot of people ask me where I learned to skate so well. I had always thought my skating abilities to be akin to my downhill skiing abilities: all speed, no grace.

La Princesita proved herself even more her mother's daughter than I previously thought. She was frustrated and even afraid at first, but by the end of the 2 hour session she would not even let me touch her, she was skating backwards and doing turns. She found some boys in her class who are friends of hers and I talked to their parents out on the ice while they play-skated together. Then she even went around the entire rink with a little first-grader she had met before on the playground but could not remember her name; I told her father that I had them spotted and followed them as they went, hand in hand, around the rink.

At our little Buckies hot chocolate date with which we topped off the evening, she told me she had a "fabulous" evening with me. Her words. The most surprising thing was, though, when she said that next time we need to invite her little brother...she doesn't want him missing out on all of this fun, and now that she doesn't need me to help her, I can dedicate myself to him while she does her own thing.

Independent...just like her mother.

It was a lovely night, and I did meet some new people (which was good for me) and as I'm the recycling program chair, I had an active vote in the decision to keep this Skate Night in, as someone was injured, I guess, in last year's Skate Night and some wanted to cancel this PTA fundraiser. So a few of us, including our incredibly down-to-earth PTA president, had a chat about that and the positive changes that we made taking into consideration some comments and suggestions in the voting process. So it was overall a good night. There were some tears shed, but no broken bones and I am thankful I made La Princesita wear her flannel-lined pants along with a pair of tights...she would have had a much colder tushie had it been otherwise covered!