ice skating and some recipe ideas at the bottom

So in all the craziness the past two weeks, I realized that I'd never posted about our family ice skating night. So. Much. Fun. The kids literally cried when we said it was time to go.



Abigail told me earlier on in the day that she didn't want to go--apparently one of her friends had told her that you fall down a lot and it hurts. So we talked about how usually you're not very good at things when you first try them, and it just takes practice. We talked about how she fell down a lot when she learned to ride a bike. I told her about how I fell down the mountain the entire day when I was learning to ski. And then we watched some Olympic pairs skating online, and she decided that she did want to try ice skating after all. And she did fall. And she got right back up again, explaining, "Falling is just part of learning." I was SO proud of her!! She was fantastic and such a good sport; by the time we'd been skating for about ten minutes she was skating on her own.


Poor little Jules didn't have quite so much fun--her skates wouldn't stay on! She was determined to be out on that ice, and by the end she would let out a frustrated wail whenever the buckles slipped off her teeny little foot. She was a little small to get the hang of skating on her own, but she loved zooming around the rink with one of us holding her up.

And Isaac mostly hung out in his stroller--he was inside for the majority of the time, but we ended up going outside at the very end because crazy Abigail kept making a break for the ice whenever it was supposed to be Juliet's turn to skate and Abigail's turn to wait for the available parent. Seriously, she was SO in love with skating! At one point she started doing all these crazy moves and when I asked her what she was doing, she said, "Just a little bit of ice dancing, like those Olympic people." Awesome!



And I was there too! Please note that my legs look twice as large as they really are because there's someone standing right behind me. (Am I vain? Yes.) Something else that was kind of amusing: most of the people there were grad students from China or India, and the Indian grad students were not so sure about the ice, since it was totally unfamiliar. One guy told me as he watched Abigail skate back, "Your tiny child is so much better than me" (imagine this in an Indian accent). I love the grad student association here--so many fun activities.



And last but not least, a photo of one of the best dinners I've had in quite some time...roasted portabello mushrooms (from Veganomicon), homemade rosemary foccacia (stuffed with sliced avocado), and a spinach-walnut-oranges-dried cranberries-avocado salad topped with homemade dijon poppyseed dressing. Seriously amazing--if you've never had roasted portabellos, you're really missing out. I marinated these for twenty minutes and then roasted them; Neil took one bite, closed his eyes, and said, "This is SO much better than ground beef burgers!" And I would have to agree. Completely amazing. A feast for the tastebuds!