Skate Date

For Valentine's, we decided to take Alex ice skating for the first time. He was very excited to go. We went to Anaheim Ice (formerly Disney Ice, which built the facility back when they owned the Mighty Ducks hockey team) as there aren't that many ice skating rinks left in Orange County. Besides, we like the architecture by Frank Gehry. Aside from being a great architect, Gehry is Canadian and thus a hockey fan. When Disney commissioned him to design an ice rink/training facility, he came up with a Quonset hut-inspired building, that former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said in the film Sketches of Frank Gehry resembled part of the female anatomy. Maybe that's why I like the building. Judge for yourself:


via hockeynut10 at Flickr

Enough with the building. We got our skates on and Alex felt very nervous trying to walk on them. We finally got on the ice and Alex was clutching on to us as he was trying to figure out why his feet kept sliding. Well, we were on the ice for a minute and then they announced that everyone had to get off because the Zamboni needed to groom the rink. That allowed Armilyn to grab a snack and gain some energy.

After the 15 minute break (where my feet were already starting to hurt), we got back on the ice. It had been 10 years since Armilyn and I skated, so we weren't that stable either. We all stuck to hugging the wall, with one of us taking turns holding Alex's left hand while he held the wall with his right. He loved the experience, even falling down, because the ground-up ice looked like snow.

We skated for a little over an hour until the session ended. By that time, I could barely hold myself up in the skates.


Alex and me taking a break halfway around the rink.




Panorama of the other rink where a girls figure skating competition was going on.

Earlier that morning, Alex helped make Valentine pancakes for breakfast


Back on Thursday, Alex decorated our Valentine Twig Tree with heart ornaments.

post by David