Skating and scootering

Mother Nature threw us a bone yesterday. It was 45 degrees, sunny, and dry. Even though it was a bit windy, we woke up knowing that we would be doing something outside. Thank god. It's been a long winter and it's only mid-January. We've been able to take a handful of walks around the neighborhood, but they've required boots and other snow gear and well, it's just not been nearly enough.

I originally thought, let's take Ashton skiing! But didn't get it together to buy the gear we'd need and plus that's really more of a day trip. Then I thought, sledding! But Saturday had been rainy and warm and the only snow left was in the dirty banks on the side of the road. I knew about the little ice rink in Harvard Square, in front of the Charles Hotel, and had heard it was great for small children because they provided milk crates. The picture on their website was super cute:

So off we went! The rink in real life:

They weren't lying about the milk crates. Perfect :) The little hut behind the rink had skates and helmets to rent and the boys laced up...

Took in the scene...

and hit the ice! Um, literally. As expected, Ashton had no idea how to skate haha. So Jason pushed him around, held his hands, guided the milk crate...you get the idea. It looked a lot like this.

Phew. Break. There were lots of breaks.

Then time for the real milk crate action.

All told, ice time was about 22 minutes total :) But afterwards, we got our picture taken,

Ashton pondered his future at the Winter Olympics,

And we went for some hot chocolate, because that's just what you do after you go ice skating.

But the story does not end there, dear readers. After naptime, we were still in gold-star weather territory so we took Ashton down to the tennis courts to ride his scooter. He is much more adept at this than skating and smiled basically the whole time. 

Here's the last video.

So, to sum up, we basically spent our Sunday exercising our toddler. It worked; he slept til 9 AM this morning ;)

Oh P.S. on Diapergate 2014: a two-day investigation yielded no positive results. As in, the fate of that desiccant packet from Friday night is unknown and probably always will be. I've decided to get on with my life.