Our Ice Skater

Now that we live a little further north, we have learned that hockey is a bit of a big deal around here. With two NHL teams within 2 1/2 hours of Peoria (The St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks), it's a bit more relevant for hockey fans. Plus the St. Louis Blues have an AHL team here in Peoria, the Peoria Rivermen. We have already been to two Rivermen games and Jaxon continues to ask when we're going again. So we called the local parks and rec and discovered that age 3 (and potty-trained) was the magical year that ice skating lessons begin. Since the season is ending in a few weeks, we decided not to sign Jaxon up this year, but instead we took him ice skating for an hour to see what he thought. He was so excited to skate and thought it was really cool to wear the skates (until 30 minutes in they started to pinch his feet). When we got home that day, he was really upset that we left the skates at the rink. Luckily he understood that we left them there so they're ready for him the next time we go.

Admiring the tiny skates on his feet. Daddy has his own hockey skates (from when he played while we lived in Kansas City) and Jaxon keeps asking why he doesn't have his own pair. The fact that they are not cheap and he would outgrown them within a year was not a good enough explanation I guess.



We started the first few laps skating like this.



And this. It was rather difficult and Jaxon was becoming a little flustered. His body kept moving faster than his feet, so his feet would get tangled up behind him.




One of the guys who work there saw him struggling and brought out this cool plastic trainer for him to use:

There he goes....
Once he had the support of this trainer, he wanted to skate lap after lap after lap (until he stopped and realized how bad those darn skates hurt your feet).