Rollerskating

Emily had her birthday party at a local rollerskating rink over the weekend. The kids had a blast! I didn't get permission from parents to post their kids on my blog, so I'll only be showing you my own kids. I truly thought I was taking a bunch of pictures, but still managed to not end up with pictures of some of the kids (good ones, anyway), and a lot of what I took was blurry (kids moving too fast on their skates, I guess!).

Miss Em, in her new outfit from her favorite store: JUSTICE!! She was THRILLED to finally have a bigger area to skate in, besides the narrow loop through our kitchen, diningroom, hallway, and entryway... LOL


Jared spent the first few laps hanging onto the wall (having never rollerskated before), but got the hang of it quite quickly and charged around as best he could. He made me LAUGH. As fast as he'd fall, he'd be right up back again before you could barely blink. Reminded me of a Jack-in-the-box or something. He's begging for his own skates now!


Connor mostly clung to the wall, but was getting more brave after awhile and making attempts at skating. At this point, he'd fallen down and I was on the other side of the rink from him (he'd refused to let me help him AT ALL, wanting to do it on his own), and couldn't quite get back up again, so started doing the crab walk! He flopped back down by the time I'd dashed over to grab the camera, but you can kind of see how he must have looked. SO FUNNY!


At one point, they called all the kids having their birthday parties to the center of the rink, and then gathered around them to do the Hokey Pokey. Kids were having problems figuring out where to form the circle, so the DJ asked the birthday party kids to raise their hands so everyone knew where to start gathering.


You put your right hip in...


You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself about... (sorry, it made me laugh to see Dan in his tacky Hawaiian shirt out doing the Hokey Pokey on skates...LOL)


I showed up at the grocery store the day before Em's party to figure out ordering a cake. I had no clue what I should get (I figured there wasn't going to be any rollerskating themes, and she's past the Disney Princess stage...), so just started flipping through the sample book and came across this one, and it called out to me (it's girly without being little girl, AND it has butterflies, which is what her research project has been this school year).


Let's just say I earned brownie points with that cake. The girl was jumping up and down screaming in excitement. She LOVED it. It tasted good, too! White cake with FUDGE filling. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!

Make a wish!


Emily, who is normally pretty stone-faced when opening presents (leaving the gift givers to wonder if she even liked what they gave her), was rather animated and lively this year. I don't think there was any confusion this year as to whether she liked her gifts or not!












And I was reminded that it's not always easy capturing decent pictures when paper is flying everywhere, kids are crowding around, and "party consultants" are wanting to discuss the bill... (Do you think I could have at least noticed her face was covered?)




My kids have been begging every since Saturday to go back and rollerskate some more. I think we'll have to make more of a habit of going!!!! It wasn't even very crowded, though it was a GORGEOUS day (first we've had in awhile), so it might have just been that everyone was out enjoying the sun instead. I guess we'll see next time!