Roller Madness

So Sunday night we decided to take the girls rollerskating. Now, we've been going once a month to a homeschool skate. It's during the day so there's usually only about 40 kids there. Because of the thin crowd the girls have both become very good on skates.

So Sunday night was "family night" at USA. I thought, ah it's Sunday night, there won't be many people there. W R O N G !! It's funny because when we go with the homeschoolers I just let the girls hop right in and I can sit and read a book or talk with a friend. So Sunday when we got there the girls hopped right on and...vanished. I'm telling you there were at least 200 kids there.

Now, we also let each of the girls bring a friend. Well, neither of them had ever been skating before so Mark and I each had one and were going around with them (basically dangling from our arms). There were long stretches of time when I could not see my kids at all. Turns out that wasn't the scary part. When I did see them I thought I was going to cry. Not so much Emily, she stayed on the safer, outer edge of the crowd closer to the wall. But Grace! Oh no, her little self, which BTW was about a third of the size of everyone else, was right in the thick of it. And she was flying! And totally oblivious to the huge people blazing around her at 30 MPH. Of course they probably didn't seem to be going so fast to her because she was going at least 28 MPH. All I could picture was her falling and a huge pileup of bodies and skates on top of my precious child. Not so. In fact she did fall once and was back up in the blink of an eye.

How can we (Americans) get rollerskating to be considered an Olympic event? Because I've got a gold medalist living under my roof, and holding her blankie...