December Daily 2014 - Day 19 - Ice Skating!

Day 19 was so much fun!  We spent the evening playing downtown.  It was nice to get to have some evening fun and that our kids are mostly old enough that we could do this without them going crazy.  We did hop in the minivan at the stroke of 8pm though. (We're not completely crazy, yet). 

The left hand page has very detailed journaling about all our adventures and the title "Play," which was the tone of the evening.  The photo below is the Myriad Gardens with the Christmas lights inside shining through and lighting the outside beautifully. (Star chipboard is from last year's kit). 

 The right page has glimpses of the rest of the story.  We went to the Myriad Gardens Skating with Santa event.  My kids were not really interested in seeing Santa, even with a very, very short line, which made me glad we chose not to wait in the long one last weekend.  They did absolutely love the gingerbread village.  It is full of local buildings and some imagined one made by local businesses and schools.  Then, we went into the gardens and explored the transformation of Christmas there.  There are 100s of poinsettias, Christmas lilies (maybe amaryllis?), and 1000s of LED lights wrapped around bridges, trees, and on snowflakes twinkling above.   There was also a high school choir singing in the background.  We are in the garden maybe 5 times a year via our membership, but the kids loved it all over again at night in the magic of twinkling lights.

Next up, time for ice skating!  There is a small outdoor rink just next to the gardens.  We got everyone ice skates.  We have pictures of M ice skating at E's age, but he very much was not ready.  I made one loop with M and then rescued Brent who handed E to me over the rails. E and I were then the cheerleaders to preserve me feet and his sanity.  He did love dancing to the tunes playing along the side of the rink.  M seems to have finally "got" it and skated many, many laps not holding on to the side and sometimes without Daddy.  Mostly she and Brent went around together and I collected a kiss from Brent each lap (possibly to our children's chagrin :).  B made a few laps, but had a head ache and wasn't quite as confident about his skating as M.  He is out there not hanging on to the wall, but taking very tiny steps.  The presence of many high schoolers hugging the edges may have helped push our kids out in to the center.  Everyone was happy, silly, and enjoying skating, dancing, or whatever.

It was time to go as E began to run out of dancing steam and ate the entire apple he found in my bag (core and all).  We walked back to the car watching the lights of the holiday shoppes, carousel, and Devon Tower decorations in the background.  We bought hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows from the Katiebug food truck (SO good with the marshmallows) and made our way home through OKC's Christmas lights.

Everyone made it home with no meltdowns and lots of laughs. It was a great time and I think we'll go skating again before the rink closes in February.

Crafting notes - Easy peasy today. The journaling card is half of one of the patterned papers from the kit with washi tape around the edges.  The letter stickers are from Evalicious and I've used them here and there throughout the album.  On the right hand page, I cut a few of the tags (from the office supply store) in half.  To one I added stamping using SC Coral Bay (?) ink and a tiny gray star using the luxe momento gray ink.  The top tag is just glitter thickers for the date.  Somewhat humorously, I originally labeled this the 17th and only realized in the morning that it was wrong. Time is moving quickly and my book is getting thick.  Still very much loving this project.