Boxing Day Skating Trip

     Yesterday the GBC youth group went on their sixth annual skating trip at Winterfest at the BOK Center. Courtney and Caleb wanted me to tag along, so I ended up going, too. Figured Dylan needed company, or else he'd be surrounded by a bunch of middle-school and freshmen girls and the only other guys would be 12-year-olds. We talked about the upcoming T4G conference with Steven, otherwise just kind of hung out people-watching. Had a bunch of Owl City songs running through my head all day, which was nice. Got to thinking about Liesel the bipolar cat,  she disappeared about four years ago, and we'd bought Mom her Kindle three years ago. (Both marked by events at previous skatings.)

     We got there before anybody else, so we waited for a while until Callie and Marie K. showed up, and laughed as Courtney chased down the van to get her coat. It was straight out of any movie where somebody's chasing the school bus. Pretty funny. Then Dylan and Paige came by, and finally Steven and Jamie with Bennett, Trenton, Allison, Laura, MattieGrace, Wesley DeSpain, Bailey, Libby and Lilya.
     Most of them hadn't been ice-skating before, so we had to give advice on skate size, how to tie the laces, things like that. There were a ton of people out skating; so many that it wasn't much fun. I only went two laps, just didn't feel like crashing into random strangers all the time. So I mostly kept an eye on people from the sideline near the corner wall. There was a bunch of crashing into the boards, but nothing serious. Not for any of the GBC kids, anyway. This older man hit the ice hard in the middle of the rink, got a concussion. They had a medical team come out there and work on him for about fifteen minutes, then it took around twenty-five more minutes longer until an ambulance came; they loaded him up on the stretcher-board and everything. It was pretty bad.
     Texted Sam, " 'Eating' the youth group kids at the skating rink. Not quite the same, lol." (That skating rink is where we met.) She answers back, "Hahahahahahaha you remember that?!" (Inside joke based on her phone's autocorrect. While in Louisville at T4G, I was sitting in the hotel room after the day's session had ended, we were texting back and forth one night. "Watcha doing?" "Watching basketball on TV with Josh and Dylan. What about you?" "Just eating the kids, not much  going on." I can't let this pass without saying something. "Yum!" She replies back very quickly: "Oh my gosh, no! I meant 'watching', not 'eating'!" Thereafter it meant watching or babysitting younger siblings.) Sort of interesting in a "funny how things can from one compartment of our world can blend over into a different part" way, Elizabeth ate lunch yesterday at the restaurant where Sam works.
      So I mostly watched folks skating while Steven hollered encouragement to people, Jamie snapped pictures, trying to get the hang of her Canon Rebel, and we tried to figure out how everyone was going to get to the Steeleys' afterward.

     There was a White Elephant deal going on, I ended up getting a free battered paperback copy of Jane Eyre, which I was very happy with. Not one of my all-time favorites, but it's a good piece of literature, an interesting look at a time period far different than our own. And it has a ton of amazing insults; which are so intelligent they unfortunately can't be used in modern language because no one would be able to decipher what they mean. Courtney got a box of Russell Stover chocolates, and Caleb got a toothbrush, which he said he needed. So it went pretty well for our family.
     Dylan beat me pretty handily three times in a row in ping pong, I need more practice. And then I lost a close one to Courtney. Steven, Dylan and I then played HORSE in the driveway, none of us had played basketball in forever, all our hands were pretty much frozen and half the backboard was still missing, Steven won.
     Courtney had a good time with her friends, Caleb did too, I think, I didn't see where he was most of the time. There was a game of flashlight tag going on, that probably explains it. I kind of drifted from one place to the next, listening to the parents talk about the guy's accident, the Duck Dynasty controversy and the history of boomerangs; petting the Steeleys' beagle Lulu, trying to teach Allison and Cole the right way to play ping pong, that type of thing.

      Headed to Muskogee tonight to Honor Heights to see the Christmas-light display, then tomorrow going to Westville. Probably going to reread a book or two from Bodie Thoene's Zion Covenant series, hopefully get a bit farther on the next BCM SWAT short story or my rankings of Pixar movies.