Riverskate

We spent traveled down to Soldotna this weekend for the 14th annual Riverskate competition.

Because our friendly Redoubt volcano had been fairly calm last week they decided to demote it's level from "warning (red)" to "watch (orange)" which never fails to really peeve the volcano and cause it to reassert itself as worthy of the "warning" level with a major erruption. So, needless to say, after being demoted Friday evening, Saturday morning dawned bright and early with a major erruption at 6am. Fortunately, no ash was headed NORTH where we'd be driving from BUT it did head SOUTH to Homer where my Dad and Kate were planning on driving to Soldotna from. They got abotu 1/2 inch of ash accumulation that morning so they weren't able to drive over to Soldotna to visit us while we were there. By the time we left Anchorage to head down the ash advisory had ended and our air filter was safe! God-willing our journey wasn't effected by the erruption, aside from the heinous smell (I likened it to boiled salt water which Lem informed me isn't even a thing) Think hot springs aroma.

The drive down was uneventful and BEAUTIFUL. We enjoyed gorgeous clear, blue skies that afforded us wonderful views of the ocean, mountains, glaciers, recent avalanches and the spectacular image of the volcano and it's huge ash/steam plume rising from the distant horizon. Sycely was totally stoked to finally see this volcano she's become so fond of in the flesh. For about 80 miles all we heard was, "Mommy, is that mountain the volcano?...Mommy when can we see the volcano?" Her and Ella both did marvelously well on the 2 1/2 hour drive and we only stopped for one potty break! We checked in at the rink then headed to Uncle Bill and Aunt Teresa's to get settled before I headed back to the rink to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening judging and coaching.

I had a student competing in two events and I was scheduled to judge many of the events so I decided (despite the fact that it's been 10 years!) to come out of "retirement" to compete in an event myself. I figured it'd be a fun opportunity for the girls to get to see me doing my skating thing. I didn't really have a ton of ice time to prepare something so I decided to do an event called interpretive. For interpretive you don't know what music you'll be skating to until the event starts. Everyone in your competition group gets the same music and you get to hear it twice on the ice and once off the ice before you have to go out and skate a one a half minut program to it. You never know exactly what kind of music you'll get; sometimes it's something you totally know like a Disney song, sometimes it's a popular current radio type song, sometimes it's something more "classic skating music" like Swan Lake. So bright and early Sunday morning I headed off to the rink to compete, 10 years after my last competition. Sycely loved wearing Mommy's medal all day and for the whole drive home. She's also taken up "skating on the floor" trying to replicate much of what she saw performed. Her new fave..."teenage mutant ninja turtles."

I took one of my "special skaters" down to compete. She competed in artisitc and skates against regular skaters and placed second which is a HUGE accomplishment, especially considering her limitations and the short amount of time we had to get her prepared (just about 3 weeks).

Sycely enjoyed playing with all the fun toys at Uncle Bill and Aunt Teresa and her, Daddy and Ella were able to spend the afternoon with our close friends, Matt and Janelle and their kiddos on Sunday while I was judging. Once my judging wrapped up we hit the road to head home and enjoyed about an hour or blissful QUIET as both girls started napping about 15 minutes into our trek home. We made it all the way home in less the 2 1/2 hours without a single stop which may be the biggest accomplishment of the whole weekend considering it was our first MAJOR road trip with two kiddos in tow.