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Fire and Ice

One of my growing up friends, Stephanie, was in town yesterday. I have called Stephanie “Zeb” for years. So many years in fact that I have forgotten why I started calling her Zeb in the first place. I think it had to do with her having a relative named Zebedee and then in Sunday School we heard about Zebedee in the Bible and after that I never really called her Stephanie again. But I could be wrong because facts often elude me.

Zeb and her family recently moved from Arkansas to College Station, TX. Her husband is working at Texas A and M. I loved it that she was wearing her WHOO PIG SOOIE Arkansas Razorback t-shirt. ‘Cuz you can take the girl out of Arkansas, but you can’t take the Arkansas out of the girl.

Or something like that.

I’m so sorry that I didn’t take a picture of us all together. This may have had something to do with the fact that it took three separate tables to find a place for the eight of us to sit. Anyway, she brought her girls over to Houston to do some school shopping and we met them at the Galleria yesterday for lunch (Chick Fil A people, where else?).

After lunch their shopping extravaganza continued but my people (well two of my people) REALLY, REALLY wanted to go ice skating. And since the thermometer on my car read 104 degrees outside AND Jacob and Savannah have been asking all summer to go AND there are only 7 weekdays of summer left … I thought now was as good a time as any.

So we laced up the skates (only they don’t lace anymore which is a HUGE improvement in ice skate technology in my opinion) and these two headed out on the ice.


The only problem was that this skater is pretty good:


And this skater is what you might call a wall-hugger:


But Savannah makes a good instructor:


And before long Jacob was gaining a lot more confidence.


And one of my friends asked me why I wasn’t out there with them. And let me answer that question … Last Christmas I did go ice skating. Only Jacob wasn’t holding onto the wall, he was holding on to me. FOR DEAR LIFE. I honestly thought I was going to spend the next month in the care of a chiropractor. So I told him … “you want to skate….you go out there and skate.”

Tough love you might call it. Or tough luck … however you want to look at it.

And he took a tumble or two:


But he got the hang of it pretty good towards the end (just look at that hand letting go!):


And was quite proud of his accomplishment:


Brittany, on the other hand, was just bored. She had a bum foot from a gymnastics tumble the night before so she and Caroline just watched the show.


And after cooling off at the ICE rink, we decided to go to the Rainforest Cafe and huddle around some FIRE for dessert:


People, this is called a volcano. And this is what it looked like before:


And this is what it looked like after:


It was like a natural disaster or something.

Someone asked me what we were celebrating and I said … “just summer and a fun day”. Although Jacob did ask me over and over to tell them it was his birthday. Boy likes a party I guess!

Anyway… we all enjoyed it:

Some more than others:


And since these two missed out on getting their pictures taken with the elephants at the circus…they posed for one here.


And as Zeb and I used to say back in the day …. “a good time was had by all”.