In this blog I will tell you how we survived the harsh canadian winter! ;-) What we did on one day a week for one hour every week. The girls started Irish dancing. Jeremiah and I (this is Jonathan) played hockey in the local christian hockey league.
This is what Rebecca had to say about dancing:
``I enjoy dancing very much and am glad I learn quickly. You use different combinations of steps for different dances. Once you know the basics, you can pretty much dance every irish dance.´´
Elena also loved it and said some of the dances were harder to learn and also difficult. Rebecca and Elena both started out with soft, tight, leather shoes. But at the beginning of January (time flies, eh?) Rebecca excelled so much that she switched to the next level: hardshoe. Those shoes are the typical Irish ones with metal toe and heel. It makes the tapping or clicking sound which is, when properly done, a fine sound. Since every step is heard, timing and footwork are very important. The dance class also had a few performances. The first one was at the Santa Clause parade in November. We didn´t do a blog on that, maybe next year. It wasn´t what we expected. There were firetrucks, police cars, cars with advertisements, people dressed up like Santa Clause on a trailer, and mailmen giving out candies. The girls' dance class danced on a trailer in their costumes in the snowy evening to Irish Christmas music. They also had one at a school for parents, friends and family. Their biggest performance of the year will be at the hockey rink where Jeremiah and I played. They will be on stage with good music while hundreds of people are watching and eating exotic food. This is Brockville's ``local multicultura-festival.´´ We can tell you about that in another blog. There will also be a video coming with that.
Hockey started in September. The first time there was hockey I was running around in shorts and a
t-shirt. This was my first year playing hockey and my second real year skating. Jeremiah was very shaky on skates at the end of last year but now he is one of the better ones. The only thing we did related to hockey before this was playing with a tennis ball in the driveway. So our stickhandling and shooting was good with a ball. A puck is a lot different though, because it is heavier, it doesn´t bounce as nicely and isn´t round. My biggest problem wasn´t the stickhandling or aiming, it was shooting hard and high. I can shoot high, just not hard. My other biggest problem was skating all ways, even backwards and sideways, quickly and well. I would just trip and fall. Especially when I got tired at the end. I wasnt´t too bad though because I can skate quickly and keep the puck away from people. I did turn the puck over to others as well, especially against the boards when the puck just likes to slip and bounce away past a skate or stick, but all in all I think I did pretty well for my first year. Especially with faceoffs. I would do one every once in a while. One day I lost the faceoff and the guy doing it, he was also the coach, told me, half jokingly, a few minutes later ``Win it this time. Okay?´´
Jeremiah and I both are very good with stickhandling, deking, pulling it away and passing well. Jeremiah´s favourite thing to do is skate up at moderate speed and just pull it back and forth, not too quickly, and either shoot or pass. My favourite thing to do was to either stop all of a sudden and then continue or go the other way, depending on what the other player did, or get up close, pull it to one side and skate past.
The disappointing thing in my age category was the goalies. They were fine, they just never showed up together. The one guy would be there five out six times. The other goalie only seemed to be there when the other one wasn´t. Sometimes we were goalie-less. When we only had one goalie we had to try and hit the posts or the traffic cone that was put on the goal line. Some people said it was harder than shooting on real goalies, because you can´t make them move or fool them and they are small and skinny, compared to the goalie where there are a few big areas to shoot on. Luckily, somebody else volunteered for the tournament at the very end of the season. Otherwise we would have had only one goalie again!
Jeremiah also tried goalie for his age category. He did pretty well and liked it. He didn´t let in a single goal the first time he tried it. Eventually he wanted to try being a player and he scored three goals the first time he played offense again. He was put in defense a lot aswell, which was fine, but most kids his age prefer offence. Now he wants to be goalie next year again. We´ll see what happens. I thought of trying goalie for a few weeks, but after I saw how hard the one persons shot was I decided not this year. He hardly ever used his hard shot, but when he did you couldn´t see the puck. And he didn´t even wind back far!!!
At the end of our season there was an awards night where we all got a small trophy. I even won a puck signed by a former NHL player who is also a Christian: Chris Neil.
We had a lot of fun and are looking forward to playing again next year.
I was allowed to film on ice with our GoPro and the video below is from that.
I hope you enjoy it.
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| Jonathan in yellow |
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| Jeremiah in black |
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| Jeremiah shoots |
