Outdoor Hockey, Clinic Day & Upcoming Skate-A-Thon

Sunday morning we had an early morning hockey practice at Erin Woods.  After the practice the entire team decided to go out for breakfast.  It was nice to go out with everyone and enjoy a nice breakfast with the team.  The kids both had a good time with all the players.  After breakfast we went swimming at the Southland Leisure Centre.  It had been a long time since she had been allowed to go out to somewhere like a pool.  She had a great time playing in the waves and going down the slides.

Sunday afternoon Ryley and Dad headed to the Heritage Classic.  For anyone who doesn’t know the Heritage Classic was the outdoor hockey game between the Calgary Flames and the Montreal Canadians in front of 41,000 people at McMahon Stadium.  We had special seats through Hockey Calgary with a limited view on the ice.  We were in row 4 which was too low to be able to see most of the ice surface.  The opening ceremonies with incredible;  Paul Brandt sang the national anthem, the Snowbirds did a flyover and there were lots of fireworks and flames.  The game was very cold and the crowds in the concourse were insane.  You could not move and everyone was pushing and shoving.  The lines for the washroom and food were incredibly long and slow.  We made it through one and a half periods and then decided that we should go home and get warm.  Overall it was a great experience and Ryley enjoyed the atmosphere and the fun; best of all the Flames played a great game, Kipper got a shutout and Montreal lost!

Monday was family day in Alberta and another outdoor game.  We got better tickets to the WHL Outdoor Game.  It was a lot warmer and the game started much earlier so it was warmer.  The seats were on a very cold metal bench, but we had lots of warm stuff to sit on so it wasn’t too bad.  We got to see a friend’s son do the pregame skate with the Hitmen and then enjoyed a couple of periods of hockey.  Once again everyone started to get cold so we all headed home.

Karlee went to preschool both Tuesday and Wednesday and is starting to fall into a routine.  She was at the front door on Tuesday dressed and ready to leave 30 minutes early.  She is having a great time doing crafts and learning music.  Hopefully we don’t have too many clinic days that interfere with her preschool days.

Thursday was clinic day and this time it was Dad’s turn to head up.  Clinic day was really smooth and we left the hospital around 1pm.  Mom didn’t tell Dad how much fun clinic day is now.  The nurses were all having a great time joking around, we played a little DS, did a craft and watched some TV.  Karlee and Dad both had fun and we got all the drugs and fluid into her without issue.  Once again today reminded me of how lucky we are.  There was a little girl just younger than Karlee.  It took about 10 minutes of her yelling and screaming just to get her accessed.  Karlee just sits there and talks to the nurses while they access her.

Thursday night we went to the final Skate-A-Thon meeting.  We went through all the prizes for the bucket draws and got a few things finalized.  We are going to have some great prizes packages.  Now we need to makes sure we get lots of people out to support the event.  If you have any questions about the Skate-A-Thon let me know at ronlewis@telusplanet.net.