Game One

Today was game day! Lovey had been looking forward to this all week and was pretty pumped up! The other 2 weren't quite as excited as she was but they did enough cheering to be annoying to the unfortunate souls sitting near us LOL

I'm not sure how much they explained to them in hockey school about the rules but we never went over any with her. I wasn't sure if she'd even know where to skate to when she went on. She floated around the ice for the warm up laps, enthusiastically smiling & waving to us each time she passed our section. Then the buzzer went and the keeners bombed over to the bench and were the first in the line up. Lovey got to their door just as the first shift was hitting the ice and was then part of the last shift. I was a bit nervous for her as I saw the first shift fly onto the ice, smoothly circling around, zipping into their positions!! How could she keep up with THAT??!?!? But Murray reminded me that the fastest ones on our bench would be on with the fastest ones on the blue team bench and as it went down the line, the slower the skaters and should all work out fairly evenly. (and of course it did).

The other team was quite a bit stronger overall but the scorekeepers were very kind and kept the difference in goals at a difference of 3 points at all times LOL. Blue team stayed at 5 goals until red team "tied" it up and then they stopped again at 8 goals. 

I was surprised that there was a girl goalie on each team. There were more boys overall than girls, but there were several girls playing. One day the university women's team came to do the coaching and Murray said they spent a lot of time with Lovey, helping her practice and encouraging her. She thought that was pretty cool!

Today, we ran into another family who had a baby in the NICU while we were there and had a chance to catch up with them which was neat! Their NICU baby was playing on the blue team and is in his 2nd year of hockey.

Lovey's team ended up losing the game but she enjoyed the whole thing regardless and was happy to have us there to watch her. :))) If you count Beanie Boos, she definitely had the biggest fan base!

By the time we got movie night done, she was a tired little player and is sleeping very soundly now!!!

Dreams DO come true!

Murray has waited 8 long years for this moment. He'd given up all hope that it would ever come to pass but alas, it has! He has finally become a hockey dad!

When they were still in the womb, Murray's family grilled me "You're going to put them in hockey, AREN'T YOU?????" Despite all the frills, glitter, makeup and general pink & purpleness around here, one girl finally capitulated and willingly signed up! (I wasn't forcing anybody, at those rates, they better actually want to do this!)

This week hockey school started. Having never played before I wanted her to have a bit of exposure and practice before joining a team. As it got closer she got more excited to start and commented more than once how she was looking forward to having time with her daddy all to herself!

She is the most inexperienced player on the ice but is working very hard and is so tired at the end of the day. She gets up at 6:15 to get ready for school, is on the bus at 7:07 and I've been picking them all up this week to give her a bit of downtime between finishing school & heading to hockey. Today we got home at 3:45, unpacked lunch boxes and got homework books out. She practiced a bit of violin, started some French homework and then I jammed a snack into her and got her hair out of her face and it was time to go off to hockey. She did the rest of her homework en route in the car and got home tonight a little after 7, had her supper, finished violin practice, had a quick shower and went to bed. and so far she couldn't be happier. I think she'll be too tired to stand on those skates for her first game on Saturday but hopefully she'll make it!


and here is our first but very cute hockey player!!!