Happy New Year!

Look at me go, so many posts so close together!  I’ll really count myself successful if I can get Audrey’s weekly post done tomorrow… I should have time, but “life” (aka, 2 adorable daughters) tends to alter my plans occasionally! :)

Anyway, on to the subject of this post… New Year’s Eve!  As we have in several recent years (although not last year, because we were at Stacey’s wedding) we had a party with the youth group and went roller skating!  Our church always celebrates the New Year by having a Lord’s Supper Service at 11:30 that spans into the new year.  What a cool way to start the year off!  Anyway, we usually have a youth party beforehand, and this year we decided to go for it!  There is a local place, Empire Roller Rink, that does a New Year’s party, but since we leave before the “main event,” they give us a discount- just $5 to skate for a couple of hours.  Admittedly, roller skating is not my thing (kinda like coordination is not my thing… or maybe because coordination is not really my thing!), but I was excited to take Laney, and see how she’d do (although coordination is not really her thing either).

The rink had these cute fisher price-ish kid skates that just went on over her shoes.  At first, it was NOT a hit… she made it about 10 feet before she started crying and tried to turn around and go back.  We had to explain to her that she couldn’t go backwards, she had to go all the way around, and she was not real happy, but she did eventually make it all the way around the rink.  Partway through she figured out that if she stuck her skates forward and locked her knees, she could just slide instead of actually skate.  Unfortunately, that was a little hard on Mommy & Daddy!  But, after one trip around, definitely NOT a fan!

(yes, that’s Ariel hanging by her hair… she did that a lot that night)

So, after that first trip around, Laney spent a lot of time doing this:

Standing on the bench, talking to whoever stopped, and never failing to wave and yell “HI, DADDY!” every time Josh zipped by.  Every time we asked her if she wanted to go again, she flat refused.  Finally, we must have worn her down, because she said “Fine, I don’t care, whatever!” and put her skates back on. 

This time she headed out with Daddy & Uncle Charlie:

The result was, well, much the same.  She was fine if she just locked her knees and let them propel her along, but did a lot of stumbling and wasn’t very happy about it if they tried to actually make her skate.  I was definitely thinking that skating was not going to happen often! 

Then, the workers at Empire came to the rescue… she brought us this little contraption:

I was a little skeptical at first, because how big a difference could it really make?  But, wow, Laney was in heaven!  She loved it… she grabbed ahold of it, set off, and absolutely would not stop skating the rest of the night.  We had some serious trouble getting her off when it was time for them to play games! 

So skating turned out to be a big success for Miss Laney, thanks to the observant workers at Empire! 

On to some of the other events from the night…

Yes, we brought Audrey… she spent a lot of time hanging out with Grandma Price, who doesn’t really skate… wonder where I got it from?! :)

The rink did Minute to Win It games as part of the New Year’s party, and we were still there for the first one- sit on a skate and use your arms to do two laps around some cones in 1 minute.  Of course, the guys had to try it…

Corey almost made it around twice… he was seriously hampered by the fact that he had inline skates- the brakes are on the back!

James made it with like 20 seconds to spare…

Josh would probably have really liked to give it a try, but he thought that might be a bit much for his shoulder… the whole roller skating itself was probably not the best idea (but since they didn’t have to do any repair work to the tendon, he couldn’t really reinjure it, he would just hurt REALLY BAD if he fell… which he didn’t, thankfully). 

And, who doesn’t love a roller skating action shot?!  Corey & Andrea…

So, anyway, that was our New Year’s Eve… Josh and the rest of the crew went on to church after we were done skating, but the girls and I headed home, since if we went to church I’d just have to sit in the nursery with them anyway… I was hoping they’d fall asleep in the car, then I could just carry them in and lay them down asleep, and still do the Lord’s Supper.  No dice, though, so we headed home, I put them to bed, and watched the ball drop on TV…

We did celebrate the next morning with a yummy breakfast: toad-in-the-hole (or egg-in-toast, depending on your upbringing), bacon, and some sparkling grape juice, which Laney thought was awesome.  We gave her a fancy cup, poured some for her, and told her it was grape juice.  She took a drink, and then said “IT HAS SODIE IN IT!!”  It was pretty cute! 

So a fun, relaxing New Year’s for us… we are enjoying our time together before Josh’s big move on the 22nd.  We will sure miss our Daddy!  But 2011 is definitely going to bring some big adventures to the Looten family, and we can’t wait!