In Which We Have A Fun Family Sort Of Day

This morning we all slept in, which was lovely.  Then after a leisurely breakfast, we headed over to the local skating rink for some quality family time!  The rink in our town offers a Saturday morning skating session where wheelchairs are allowed on the floor, so it's an ideal time for our whole family to be able to do some roller skating together.  

Surprisingly enough, Eden loves roller skating even though it's really, really difficult for her.  Her cerebral palsy affects her balance and gait in a significant way, so moving around on skates is really tough.  But she's pretty fearless and, if given the opportunity, would probably be a speed demon on them-- she wants to go as fast as possible whenever we're pulling her around the floor.  

We've only taken her a couple of times as it's tough for me to both push Connor's wheelchair and offer her a supporting hand, but I suspect that once Jer's home it will become a favorite Saturday activity of ours.  This time she really started to get the hang of moving her feet side to side, and I think it might even be possible for her to skate on her own without support one day!  

Connor really enjoys skating too-- I think he likes the feel of the wind on his face, and all the flashing lights and music.  Luckily his seizures aren't the kind to be triggered by lights, or we'd be in trouble.  He spent a good portion of the time carefully waving to all the people on the side of the rink every time we went by them, which was pretty cute.  I think he really liked having his sister out there, too.  

And I miss skating really, really badly since I can't do roller derby right now with Jer gone.  It was so nice to be able to strap on my skates again, even if I was forced to skate really, really slowly since I was pushing the little guy's chair most of the time.  The rink frowns on running over small children, and Connor's wheelchair doesn't exactly turn on a dime.

So after a couple hours skating, we headed home, made some popcorn, and sat down together to watch the first Star Wars movie (technically Episode IV, but it's the first one that counts, anyway).  Jeremy was appalled to discover that Eden had never seen any of the Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies, and he decided we needed to fix this immediately.  We didn't actually have any of them on DVD (we had a VCR up until we moved into this house), so we had to run out last night and get some so that we could finish up all the movies before Christmas break is over.  

I'm not sure how much Eden followed of the movie, but she dutifully sat through it before declaring that it was "okay," but it "didn't have enough fighting in it."  Poor Jeremy.  He's probably going to make her sit through all the rest of them anyway, though.  Poor Eden.  Oh well; at least Jer and I will enjoy ourselves.

Then we played a few games of Wi Tennis and Bowling, ate dinner, put Connor down for bed and finally played a game of Skipbo before heading that way ourselves.  So it was a fun, relaxing day!

~Jess