I want to give you some background before I tell you about what we did for New Years. Chris' Dad Joe has been in the roller/inline skating industry for many many years. Chris grew up in skating rinks and was the definition of a rink rat. I have heard hundreds of stories about the rink and wanted to experience some of that myself. One of the things Chris has talked about is New Years Eve at the skating rink. They have an all night skate (7pm-7am). He remembers many very fun New Year's Eves with his Dad. I told him years ago that I wanted to go to one and it never worked out. This year Chris was off work for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and we decided this was a great year to go! The main reason we were going to Wichita was to see Joe, Debbie, and the girls and the all night skate was just the icing on the cake. It would be a very busy, quick trip but we knew it would be a lot of fun!
On Thursday morning we loaded up the car and headed out for the six hour drive. I was nervous about how Isaac would take the trip. At just a few weeks being one, I was scared he would scream the whole way wanting out of his seat. He did great, he didn't get cranky until about 20 minutes out of Wichita. We got there right as the afternoon session was ending. Joe had a few classes to teach that evening so we went to the hotel to rest. We met back up with everyone for dinner.
Let me just say, we have lived in Texas for almost 6 years and it took us going to Kansas to eat at Texas Roadhouse. What took us so long! The environment was a Texas at it gets and the food was amazing. We have found a new favorite restaurants. The funny thing is that we have one about 5 miles from the house. We have seen it thousands of times but for some reason never stopped. You better believe we will now.
Friday, New Year's Eve, we such a fun day. We spend the morning resting and then met up with Joe to help with the final rink decorations. He had hung up four huge bags of balloons that would be dropped about 11pm. They were filled with prizes and cash! We still had a few other banners to hang so we headed to the rink. Since there was no one else there we let Jordan put on some skates and Isaac roamed around. This was Isaac's first time out on the rink and he was amazed at the lights and how wide open it was. He smiled and laughed and ran around having a blast chasing big brother.
The only major challenge we had was keeping him from going under the ladder. I had no idea how superstitious Chris was until Isaac went under it the first time!
At 6pm we opened the doors. People had been lining up sine about 5! They had a great system for getting people in. I jumped right in helping. By 10 we had everyone in the door. I think I heard Joe said there were 675 people!!! To say it was packed would be an understatement but Joe has a great staff and everything ran perfect. Isaac and I spend a large amount of our time inside the office. Isaac was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of people, not to mention he was a very tired boy. While trying to get him to take a nap he took some pictures with his Aunt Desi
Then it got to be close to midnight. We walked out to the rink to rink in the New Year!!
The boys did great but about 2am they had had enough. We decided to head back to the hotel to sleep. That was a great decision considering we had to drive home the next day. We spend New Years Day relaxing and watching football! Before we headed out we went back to the rink to tell everyone bye. It was a great weekend and we were all very sad to leave. Jordan is looking forward to spending some time with Grandpa Joe this Summer!!
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