Speaking of Hockey....

.... last Sunday was the first hockey of the year for Quinn and Shannon.

This is Quinn's third year of instructional hockey, and the kid has got it down.  He went out skating like he never took a break over the summer, and was zipping around skating forwards and backwards.  He's informed us that he wants to skate in the competitive division, which means an extra night a week.  We'll see how that goes!

Here is Quinn ready to go on the ice and zooming around.  He was skating so fast I didn't get many shots of him!

Now for Miss Shannon, this was her first time playing hockey.  She skated on our backyard rink last winter, but it's a whole different ball of wax when you put all the hockey gear on.

She especially loved the fact that she got to wear a pink 'skull cap' to keep her hair out of her face:

 After looking forward to playing hockey for MONTHS now, it was a little un-nerving to have this little boy come in the change room, take one look at Shannon in her hockey gear and exclaim: "What's that girl doing?  Girls don't play hockey!"

Seriously buddy?

I waited expectantly for his mom to say something, but she didn't.  Then he said it again:  "Girls DON'T play hockey!!!!"

Let's just say that it took all my self control not to toss this kid out of the dressing room.

Seeing as how his mom was doing absolutely nothing about what her kid was saying, I piped up: "you bet girls play hockey buddy."  and grabbed Shannon and took her out of the room.

Here are the two kids ready to go - Shannon had a hard time figuring out how to hold her stick with her gloves on:

 Unfortunately, it was not smooth sailing for Shannon.  Even with Chris going out on the ice with her, there were A LOT of tears.  I think she was frustrated by all the equipment, and tired from working so hard.  She came off the ice a couple times but she powered through and stayed till the end.

We got her back in the dressing room and as I was getting her equipment off that same little boy came in, took one look at Shannon and said: "see.... she can't even skate!"

Oh..... My.... GOSH!

I have never wanted to clobber a kid more .  Ever.

Finally his mom said something: "Actually, she skated better than you did.  She didn't spend half her time with her back on the ice."

Well Hallelujah, it was about time she said something!

As we were sitting at Tim's eating our donuts (you bet we bribed her!!) Shannon informed us: "I'll do better next week Mummy - no crying."

That's my girl!