Skate Party

I've got cute kids and I'm not afraid to use them.

The kids wanted to take Venesa roller skating for her birthday, and I thought I had the day timed perfectly: breakfast, Jasmine's basketball game, lunch, roller skate.  We were ready to roll, with the exception of one slight oversight: closing time.  The skating rink was set to close 20 minutes after we got there. The attendant apologized for the mix-up (the hours of operation I found online were inaccurate), and that's when our three musketeers went into full drama mode.  "What are we going to do for mommy's birthday now?" "All we wanted was to skate with her." "It would've been such a gweat sapwise" (I'll let you guess which kid that last one was)... insert long faces, hung heads and batting eyes; and the attendant didn't have a chance.

Twenty minutes of free skate.  Hip hip... hooray.

Funny enough, I think we discovered that about about 15 minutes of skate time was the perfect prescription for 3 young kids and two weary parents.  It was just enough time to enjoy the experience (we had a blast) but a short enough window that we escaped without the hassle of bathroom breaks, hunger complaints, long faces of boredom or skating accidents. In that respect, it was the perfect freebie since actually paying full-price for 20 minutes of skating (really, 15 minutes once you include the time it takes to lace up) would have broken all of laws of daddy frugality.  I would've pushed 'em to get my money's worth... and it would've been disastrous. So three cheers for cute kid freebies. Happy birthday, mommy.

Focus

Justin Alexander, welcome to the world of spectacles. Between my poor vision and Venesa's, it was only a matter of time. It was cool to hear him say that they really help ("the words aren't squiggly anymore!").  Hey, maybe his grades will go up now that he can actually see what he's doing.  I wish I could say they're reading glasses, but he'll need 'em 24-7.  Let's see if the girls dodge the poor vision bullet. I hope they do, because being blind is not a whole lot of fun... but he sure does make it look good.

Freestyle Fred

Justin had been asking for a skateboard for about three years, and I think we dismissed it (ignore might be a better word) for as long as we could. But finally, this past December, he took everything else off his Christmas list and said that a skateboard was the single solitary thing he wanted.  Nothing more, nothing less.  So what do you do with that? After a 3 year wait, he turned the tables and backed us into a corner; and suddenly there was nothing else we could do.  He was 3 years older, 6 inches taller, and drooling from both sides of this mouth at the thought of getting this skateboard. So we did it.  We caved.  We got the boy a skateboard. And knee pads. And elbow pads. And a new helmet.  And we look away.  And cringed.  And doubled our health insurance premiums and started making down payments on a leg cast.

But then a funny thing happened.  Our least coordinated child shocked the world, took the nation's third most dangerous toy (as judged by to the number of emergency room visits per capita, surpassed by only darts and trampolines)...  and actually got good at it.  In just a week.  I looked up the other day and had to do a double take once I realized that, "this boy's got tricks!". Who knew? Well, I guess he did.  Three years ago. Go figure.