Sleds were first-day purchases, now we went for the ice skates. The school’s little rink is pretty darn nice and the kids are picking up their skating skills quickly. And they love it!
Next time we will take some pictures in the daylight. It’s just that we don’t have a lot of that for long after school! We were out at about 5pm here (although it’s dark around 4:00). It’s great that they have lights on so that the rink can be used in the late afternoon and evening.
The helmets are great for winter sports. They have warm padding that totally covers their ears as well as their heads, so they don’t have to fit an extra hat under it. The kids can skate at recess at school, and Nora’s class is doing skating as a phy ed activity on Friday. The school does have skates to borrow, but we realized that we would get plenty of use out of them and they aren’t very expensive now, both the skates and helmets were on sale. We can just donate the skates to the school when we leave.
Anders also got a hockey stick and puck and is loving it. His friends will go out to play hockey at school sometimes and they will also play after school or on the weekends, so he will get a lot of use out of them, along with social time and exercise!
We took an epic trip to downtown to buy the skates then walked all over to several different sports shops to get them sharpened. Apparently there is a skate-sharpening convention out of town this week, or there is only one person who sharpens skates for every store and s/he is out sick. Luckily they were sharp enough out of the box for a first outing.
We also found one more grocery store that is actually closest to us, just on the other side of our little housing area along a wooded foot path. It’s a Bunnpris (Bottom Price). It’s smaller than the others but seems to carry more “ethnic” foods. It is the first place that I found beans and lentils! The only dried beans were garbanzos (super high top shelf) and the rest are in tetrapak containers, and were kind of expensive. Bizzaro world! Now I will know what to look for at other stores too, instead of dried beans.
