The Ice Rink

For several weeks, our family has seen an odd-looking structure in a neighbor's yard. From the street in our vehicle we wondered if it was preparation for a swimming pool, a special grass-fertilization area, a large small animal habitat...we got really creative with our wondering. In the past few days I've noticed that the structure seems to contain a frozen body of water, and correctly supposed we were witnessing the building of a homemade ice skating rink.

Today, as we turned by that corner on our way home, Johngideon yelled out that there was a kid on the ice. I backed up and parked and we sauntered over to see what was what. So, a neighbor I've never met confirmed that indeed the intended creation was to be an ice-skating rink, and that actually, this was not their yard, but they lived a couple of doors down. Turns out her husband grew up in Minnesota, and his father had made him a homemade rink when he was a kid and he wanted to do the same for his kids, but their yard was not flat enough, so the neighbors whose yard we passed daily had agreed to have the rink built in their yard instead, and the project was born.

The men had had a great time building the rink, and adding layers of water until they ended up with a frozen mass. Unfortunately, however, there had been some miscalculations along the way and the rink was not quite level, thus one side had nearly a couple feet of ice, and the other side had barely an inch. No matter to Montgomery and Johngideon who were delighted to be lifted onto the thick side for a few fun moments of slip-sliding around while the sun beat down and we could practically see the valiant creative attempt melting before our eyes. After weeks of frigidly cold weather, we're in for near 60's this weekend, and our neighbor thinks the poor miscalculated rink will probably not make it through.

What a neat idea! Cheers and more cheers to our clever and creatively adventurous neighbors!

...Our back yard is pretty large and flat...

I've asked Craig to build an ice-skating rink next winter. Can you believe...he's actually considering the idea! More on that in 12 months...

Take care. Much love.