Morgan kind of surprised us a couple of weeks ago when she told us that she wanted to go ice skating for one of her Christmas presents. I think she had seen ice skating on tv in a couple Christmas tv specials and we took her last Christmas to see the Charlie Brown Christmas on Ice special at Knott’s Berry Farm which she still remembers. Anyway, she wanted to do it and the local mall has put up a little skating rink so we decided to do it.
With little kids, rarely does a big event that you plan for actually go well, let alone perfect. Someone either gets sick, throws up, gets hurt, or the whole thing just is disappointing and doesn’t quite live up to what you thought it would be. Vacations with little kids and all-day trips to Disneyland come to my mind and I’m sure you have several things coming to your mind right now. But last Friday our family went ice skating and I would say it was as close to perfection as you can experience.
A lot of it was watching my daughter tenaciously trying to learn how to skate. She can be seriously tenacious and as parents, it was emotional for us when we consider the whole of her journey. I posted some of Morgan’s journey last month here about her journey with a mild form of cerebral palsy. Seeing her persevere on the ice and then actually get the hang of it and enjoy herself was unbelievable and the picture below gives a bit of a taste of what it was like to watch her.
And we hadn’t anticipated letting our 2-year-old out on the ice, but he has severe high inclusion syndrome and is fearless himself. The place had little toddler, double-bladed skates which we put on him and he was out there too. They had a moment where they skated around together holding hands and it was the cutest thing ever. It was an amazing night from just the atmosphere and winter music, the skating, Morgan on the ice, Colin on the ice, and the fake snow blowing over the rink giving the illusion of winter even though it was 80 degrees (so awesome to be in SoCal). It was the perfect evening.
Had to share the following pic too. Morgan had the idea to give herself some extra padding in her backside since she knew she would fall at points. She was classic. She wore her extra “cushion” the whole time and it paid off. I loved how she was anticipating some falls, but she was fully determined to learn how to skate anyway.
It was a Christmas present to Morgan, but it ended up being a Christmas present to all of us!
Merry Christmas!!
That is a great story. Thanks for sharing. Merry Christmas from the Cole family in NORCAL!
thanks man, fun to hear from you. Merry Christmas to you guys too! And fun to see you crank up this blog this week too after some dormant time 🙂 Keep it up man!