Holiday Miracle

Now that the holidays are over and we can reflect back on that special time of year, I'd like to share with you a little holiday miracle that we experienced over here, and it involved hockey, of all things. As you may have gathered, we are a skating family, and one of the things we love to do up in Quebec is skate on the outdoor rinks, of which there are many, and they are all free. Of course, we all have hockey skates, which we started off on from the get go, with the exception of R. She grew up on figure skates and is an awesome skater.

As I was gathering equipment for the kids and myself, I got R a pair of hockey skates to skate around on, either playing the game, on the pond, or at the arena. I got them at Listen so they were fine but not brand new, which suited us just fine. Being the OCD person that I am, I managed to obtain a slew of gear, and at some point R said enough. Time to clear the house, so I donated all of the excess stuff to the hockey program, which included several pairs of extra skates.

Well, being the scatter brained type that I am, as well, I donated R's pair of skates. What exacerbated this problem was that we didn't realize this until about 2-3 days before our departure to Quebec. Talk about a disaster, R was livid, and I was sentenced to purgatory until the situation was resolved. I didn't realize she was so attached to the skates. I had a few options, but one thing that would have guaranteed me a life sentence in the gulag was if I went out and bought her a new pair. I basically had to find her a pair of skates either for free or at the Listen in two days. Needless to say, I was under the gun.

My first thought was to go to the arena and look through their collection, which is extensive. At the arena I also saw our friends the Gs, and JG is about R's height so I figured they probably had similar shoe sizes. I asked and she was completely cool about lending out her skates to R, in her words (jokingly, but not completely jokingly), to help save my marriage. I now had a backup plan, but finding a pair of skates to keep was our best option. I contacted JS who is in charge of the extra gear and asked if I could look at the collection, and he said fine. I went over to his house and his daughter led me to the stockpile, and if you can believe this (I still can't), the first pair of skates I came across were R's old skates. I was in shock. I felt like George Bailey when he realizes that it really is a wonderful life. I could barely hold back the tears in my eyes.

I called home and informed R that I had found her skates, at which point she said I didn't have to sleep in the barn, after all. I had them sharpened and she took them over to the arena to get a warmup skate in before our trip, and just like that, order was restored to our universe. I love when that happens.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Ze Papa for the pic.