winter

This week we've had the winter I love.  It's warm (around freezing) and the kids are able to play outside as much as they want to without freezing.  They've been having so much fun out there building tunnels and sledding down some big drifts we got a while ago.  Even the little kids are having fun on the sleds and running around.

This last weekend I took our kids skating again too and it was so nice out.  Kason is starting to skate a little bit and it's nice that he's having fun out there.  Anika is slowly improving and is pretty much running on ice now. :) I've been trying to show her to glide her feet but she just keeps walking and running.  But at least she's having fun and is trying.  Kade has gotten a lot better too and we only went skating a couple times this year.  His buddies from church were at the rink with their dad playing hockey and Kade was in heaven having someone to play sports with him.  After a long time Kason and Ani got tired so they got their boots on and were running around and so I joined the boys in hockey and man, was that fun!  Kim (he's a friend of ours that was there) is really good and fast so he gave me a good workout skating back and forth the rink.  And the boys were surprisingly pretty good too, they're getting better at skating.  Then for 2 days after that I felt muscles in my legs I haven't felt for years. :)  I guess hockey is a really good sport for exercise.  It reminded me of the winters growing up when we would go with our friends and parents skating on the ponds close by.  My brothers always played hockey so I joined in once in a while and now I'm so glad I did and can do that with my son.  It's just so good for kids to have fun outside with friends like that.  I wish in our community we had more of that and less of organized sports that are so expensive, competitive and many times very unfair because so many times it is the same kids that get the opportunity to play while the rest sit on the sidelines wishing they could just play the game.  I guess it's up to us to make it happen but it's hard when it's not a priority for many kids and families.