Rink is open

The ice is frozen and we can skate! It is super cold so we don't want to skate for long! The former soccer field set-up requires that you sit on the ice cold bleachers and change into your skates outside. My little toes can barely handle that part. Princess loves the cold and it doesn't bother her a bit. Teenager used to competitively skate in the States before we moved to China. So we have lots of videos of her skating. There is a video of another little girl skating during her performance. The little girl is as cute as a button, and blond haired and blue eyed. Princess watched this video for a year before she ever skated, but she believed that little girl was herself. Her sister was in the video so naturally that blond haired cutie must of been Princess. She believed she could do all these fancy tricks because she saw what she thought was herself doing these fancy tricks. Amazingly the first time she ice skated she was really sure fitted and could even spin in circles. The power of the mind! Anyway, that was last year.

First try skating 2009

This year her skates had gotten wet being stored on our balcony that has leaky windows. We put them on the radiator to dry out. I think they shrunk a little.

One skate was a little bit too tight and narrow

Poor princess took to the ice for the first time this year with all her confidence and fell on her butt.

poor baby, just couldn't figure out why she was down

She was so baffled. She tried skating around and kept falling. I felt so bad for her because she loved skating so much last winter and this winter was not having the same experience. We are going to try to stretch her skate so that maybe she is more comfortable.

This little cutie was playing hockey with her Baba

Back at the apartment....poor Little Guy is so sad. He saw us get out skates for everyone in the family. He thinks they look very cool and he would like to try. But he has a had a former (before us) skull fracture and we are too afraid with his lack of balance on land to let him go on the ice. We talked about using our helmet, but it is really not the right size for him. The scariness of the Chinese hospital just doesn't seem worth the risk. On a separate sad, painful note I got coal in my eye. The air is so polluted with coal dust that when I was taking the munchkins to school I felt like I got something gritty in my eye. A few hours later I was in unbearable pain. So I took out my contacts. Well the coal dust was under my contact and scratched my eye as i removed the contact. The pain was much worse. We flushed and flushed my eye. I spent the night in misery and in the next morning we flushed my eye out again and finally a little fleck of coal flushed out. Coal is acidic so it was just the worst pain, grit plus acid burn. Augh!!!! Life in the land of frigid pollution...

Harbin, China