Well, a long time ago, there was a girl who had a blog.  She was a fairly faithful blogger, who consistently came into work five evenings a week to beat on her computer keyboard and let the world know what was going on in her life.

And by the world, she really means her mom.

Because her mom is basically the only person who reads the blog she works on.

And her mom already basically knows everything that has happened in her weekly life.

So… yeah.

Whatever.

But then real life happened, which means that she now owns a teenager and a preschooler and a house that never stays clean, and they always want to eat, ALL OF THE TIME, so she’s always at the grocery store or at home, trying to create dinners that are 99% beans and rice, which stick to the ribs and keep sixteen year old boys full for longer than twelve minutes.  Plus, her laundry is always out of control, which probably has everything to do with the fact that she found her laundry fairy dead in the bottom of the hamper.  The coroner ruled the cause of death SUFFOCATION BY AVALANCHE.  She’s tried to get the teenager to wash his own clothes, which he does by spraying a thick layer of Axe Body Spray all over a shirt, so that he can wear it again, which is why she reclaimed that kid’s dirty laundry as her own burden to uphold.

Sometimes the umbilical cord is just too thick to cut.

So basically, there was once a girl who was a fairly faithful blogger, and now she’s lucky if she shows up to work here at Jedi Mama, Inc. once or twice a week.  My apologies.  We’re planning to write her up and put the document in her personal file.

Anyway.

I have Christmas pictures, because OF COURSE I DO, but they’ll have to wait for another day this week.  Today’s post is going to be all about that time Grammy and Papa reserved the ice skating rink for their eight grandkids, who are all crazy-good, die-hard, hockey-playing ice skaters, who only choose to stop skating long enough to eat four or thirteen slices of cheese pizza to refuel.

Grammy decided that, as a Christmas treat, she would reserve the rink for the eight little loves of her life.  They would have the rink entirely to themselves, and the friends she encouraged them to invite.  So, on Christmas Eve Morning, we all met up for some fun skating.

Thing 2 has picked up skating like a champ.  He skates without an ounce of fear, which means he skates LIGHTNING FAST, while the words CONCUSSION, BROKEN FEMUR and CHIPPED TOOTH never cross his mind.  He is an amazing skater, for such a little fellow.

The boy LIKES skating, but he has never fallen in love with skating.  I think it’s because he  can’t play golf on a frozen sheet of water, so skating is not his favorite pastime.  If someone would drill some holes in the ice, so he could swing a golf club and sink a putt, he’d probably dedicate himself to skating a little more than he has in the past.  He’s much happier on a golf course than an ice rink, because the boy is a crazy-good golfer.

The rest of the cousins are all hockey junkies.  They’ve all played for years, they can all skate backwards faster than I can blink, and every single one of them can turn sideways at full speed and spray you with three hundred cups of shaved ice.  It came as no surprise that they all brought their sticks and pucks and helmets to the rink, when Grammy rented it.

Big Cousin H was home from school, so he joined us, too.

It’s very difficult to grasp the fact that H is now twenty-one years old and the owner of a beard, because I still think he should be sprawled out across his living room carpet, building a castle with Legos….

… and NOT needing to shave.

Big Cousin H hung out quite a bit with Thing 2.  They worked on their “hockey stops,” so that Thing 2 could learn to turn sideways at 94 miles per hour and cover someone with enough shaved ice to feed snow cones to an army.

The kids had a ball.

They skated and skated, and then they skated some more.  They smashed one another into the boards for hockey checks, laughed their heads off, and encouraged Thing 2 to grab a stick and join their game.

Thing 2 has the fighting mentality to play hockey, but Hubs and I aren’t really sure he can skate around the rink, with a giant stick in his hands, and not just whap everyone he passes… his own teammates included.

Hubs’ sister, Aunt Pink, even skated with her brothers and nieces and nephews.

  The absolute highlight of Thing 2’s morning at the rink was when his cousins let him flop onto the ice and grab the ends of their hockey sticks.  They then skated ridiculously fast and pulled him around, spinning him wildly all over the ice.

He never wanted to quit.  It was like being on a roller coaster at Disneyland.

I think Cousin W and Cousin B both got to check DAILY CARDIO WORKOUT and DAILY BICEP WORKOUT off their to-do lists.

Afterwards, Cousin W sat on the ice.  He grabbed Thing 2’s hockey stick and said, “Now you get to pull ME across the rink!”

Thing 2 gave it his best shot!  He even recruited some extra cousins for more muscle power.

Thankfully, W traded places with his little cousin and pulled him around and around the ice some more…

… which is why Thing 2 looked exactly like THIS when it was finally time to leave the ice rink on Christmas Eve morning:

His coat was soaked.  His sweatpants were soaked.  His gloves were soaked.  The curls that hung out of his helmet were soaked.  He had ice in his eyelashes, but that kid was so happy, he could hardly stand it.  When we first brought Thing 2 home, I was sad that all of his cousins would be so much older than he was, and that he’d never know the bonds that form when cousins are all basically the same age and grow up together.  Hubs and his two brothers had six kids in nine years.  Big Cousin H was four (Thing 2’s age now) when Cousin W was born, and then we pulled off five kids in five years.  In other words, we’re going to be celebrating high school graduations on a yearly basis, right directly.

But!

Even though these cousins are so much older than Thing 2 is, they all play with him… but in different ways than they would have done, if they were just a year or two older than he was.  They include him in everything they do, and Thing 2 idolizes every single one of them.  They spin him on the ice and teach him how to skate.  They guzzle sodas with him and teach him how to belch.  They take him to movie matinees when cartoons are playing on the big screen.  They chase him down and shoot him with Nerf guns, and stage enormous gun fights with him.  They take him swimming and teach him how to do the water slides.  They eat watermelon with him and teach him how to spit seeds… at girls.  They build rockets with him and show him how to launch them.  They let him tackle them and teach him how to wrestle.

Having a big herd of cousins is seriously THE BEST thing ever.

Especially when it comes to being pulled across the ice!

Happy Wednesday, y’all.