Sunday, February 7, 2010

Skating at the Park

We were en route to the Post Office recently, when some of my children decided to take a short-cut through the park. They got very excited, got down on hands and knees, and started brushing away the snow. They had found a huge puddle that had frozen, and then been covered with snow!



We know the puddle well, it is fantastic fun to wade through in the spring, it comes up alarmingly high on the rubber boots, but never over the top. And we have had fun in winter thaws jumping on it and breaking through the ice, but it had never occured to us to skate on it in cold weather! The next day we were back with shovels and ice skates!



The shovelling was warm work, but after a while we exchanged boots for skates and put our coats back on. The rink is small (smaller than the arena we usually go to!) but remarkably smooth. It is also reassuring to know that should the ice crack, we will drop down about 15 cm to the grass underneath, which in spots can be seem clearly through the ice. It was a lot of fun! The next day we were back, made the rink a little larger and enjoyed another skate! We'll have to see how the weather holds, because I think we may be back again this week!