If there is one thing I've realized about winter here in the Ottawa Valley, it is that conditions are not often ideal for what you want to do, so you need to take advantage of when it arrives. The snow is rarely good for making snowmen/snow forts so once it is, you rush outside to build. Beautiful ice rarely covers individual branches, so when it does you rush out to photograph it:-) And the lake ice is rarely so ideal for skating, so you go as often as you can while it is. That was the thinking behind slipping out early one morning before heading into the city for errands - I wanted to get another day of skating before the snow got too deep. (which was good, because a couple of days later, the snow was much thicker, making it more difficult to skate)
(love that the kids are old enough to do this now!!!!! so much warmer for me.....)
Jamie was a bit stressed about getting into a work meeting on time, and Ry was in a bad mood from the moment he got out of bed. So it was perhaps not ideal to keep pushing the idea, but I LOVE skating outdoors!!!! (Kea was at a sleepover, and Tiegan was happy to skate!)
And to me, it's worth it to get out at different times during the day, and to spend as much time as possible exploring the land around us. My kids may resist on the getting out there part, but once they're there, they inevitably have a great time.
Jamie and Tiegan spent time clearing off the ice, but I quickly realized that it actually was fine to skate over the light skiff of snow, so that's what we ended up doing.
It was gorgeous, and exactly how I wanted to spend my morning....
But you'll notice that there are no photos of Ry - and that would be because he'd worked himself up to a full on temper tantrum, the likes of which I have not seen in years. He was screaming and flailing and crying on the side of the ice. Or following behind us whining. His skates were too loose. Then they were too tight. Those were not the gloves he wanted. His helmet hurt his head. But when we told him to just take it off and skate with his toque, he wailed that he wasn't allowed to skate without a helmet. He was wasting his time, he only had five minutes left until we had to leave. Wailed for 3 minutes about that, then wailed that now he probably only had 2 minutes left and he was totally wasting his skating time. Essentially there was nothing we could do, he needed to release whatever extra energy and angst he had pent up, and we oscillated between remaining calm and centred, and getting upset at him. There's only so much wailing and screaming and kicking I can handle before starting to lose it, oy. ANYWAYS, the jury is still out as to whether it was worth it to go skating in the morning like this - we LOVED the time on the lake, and felt great after skating in the cold, but were left feeling rather fried after so much emotion. Oy.
So, the next day, the kids were home (due to a puking Tiegan overnight) and Ry and I decided to go an adventure to the lake, to try again. We pulled on our skis, I packed a tonne of extra gear into my backpack, and off we went through the trees.
Ry was determined to heal the rift from the day before, so he had a super positive attitude, and complained very little!!!! I laughed a little because we went through all the effort of getting onto the ice, I froze my hands tying up his skates, sat down to FINALLY put mine on, and Ry announced he was too cold and wanted to go back. There was no way I was not getting a skate around the lake in after all that effort, so luckily I'd packed all that extra gear - which I proceeded to pile onto him and he was a much happier camper!!!!
It WAS cold, for sure, so we only skated for about 20 minutes, but it was a lot of fun and we left on much better terms than the day before:-)
And the way home started to feel really long (about 1/2 an hour of skiing at Ry's pace), so I agreed to go off-roading - creating our own trails through the trees, getting stuck in bushes and creating the sense of adventure!!!
We need to do more of these together, the two of us - so much fun:-)
Labels: outdoors, Ryland, Tiegan
