Happy Birthday, Skate Diva!

My niece Kristy was surprised on February 28, with a birthday party (whispers...a 30th birthday party) at our local roller skating rink! It was BIG fun and brought back sixth grade memories!!

The morning of the event, we asked the girls if they wanted to skate later and they cheered, "YES!" But, when we asked them if they even KNEW what roller, not ice, skating was, they looked puzzled and answered, "No!" So Tony dug up our old fashioned research guide...YouTube...and showed the girls what skating was all about. Boy, were they pumped! All day they kept asking when we were going to surprise Kristy and go skating! The anticipation was killing them!

We arrived at the rink at our scheduled time and Kristy rolled in a few minutes later. Mind you, we weren't all in place because the decoy forgot to call and warn us they were almost there! It didn't matter...Kristy nearly died when she pulled in the parking lot! Whoo hoo!

We filed inside laughing the whole time. Talk about a blast from the past. The rink hadn't changed ONE bit since we were kids. Ok, I lied. The PacMan arcade game was replaced with one of those durn stuffed animal cranes. (What's up with that anyway?) The smells, the skate counter, the trippy colors and disco ball. Even the kiddie rink and the bearded umpire skate dude was still there!

Tony took our tickets up to get the girls each a pair of skates. (NO skates for us, thank you!) They were so cute...see below.

Sorry for the crummy pic of the girls together. I was playing with different settings on my camera. Note to self: this setting didn't work!

Well, we headed to the kiddie rink where bearded umpire dude instructed us to work on getting the girls to just WALK in their skates...that the skating will come later. Well, Laney got the walking thing down right away, while Abby thought, "Why walk when you can roll?"

Tony is doing such a good job! I abandoned them to snap a picture, like any good Mama would!

Kristy (and her aunt Jill) were too sweet when Abby announced she was done with the kiddie rink after two minutes and wanted to "Go out there"...to the abyss of skaters on the big rink. They rolled her out there, and took the time to go around the rink with her. She looked like such big stuff! It was painstakingly slow...but they were troopers! Abby even got a taste of skating with the black light on!

Soon after this picture, Jill rolled up to save Kristy and help them move a little faster!

Finally, Laney was brave enough to try it and Jill and Kristy took her out to do the Hokey Pokey. Oh my word...she LOVED it! Such a big girl! (Warning! Another dark picture alert!!! But if you focus really hard on the middle, you'll see they're down in the low Hokey Pokey position!)

One of the funniest moments was when Abby decided she was ready to go back out and wanted my nephew (and Kristy's brother) Jeremy to take her. Here's this tall handsome adult who is shy as can be (unless he's around family) and this little tiny girl skating together. The best part was when he was like five feet from us and turned around and asked, "Now, which one do I have?" Um, Abby, Jeremy!



The girls had a great time and didn't want to leave. They were such good girls, and they had only napped about 20 minutes or so!


I think Kristy had fun too...it was a neat way to celebrate such a milestone birthday.

Happy Birthday, Kristy. You've been such a close friend over the years. I'm glad we were close enough in age that we grew up together. I treasure you so much! I hope you had fun!!!!