While Jordy is busy working out and practicing for her role on the biathlon team for her Cadet Corps (I’m fairly sure I might eventually regret training a teenager how to ski and shoot a gun at the same time, but that’s another story altogether), the boys spend their weekends playing hockey. Lots of hockey. I might have mentioned this before, but it’s something you have to really experience to understand how much time this all takes. The best part of it is that it’s a really fun thing to do, and the boys frigging love it.
This is Quinn’s second year in hockey and he’s doing fantastically well for a kid that learned to skate at the beginning of last year. Really well. So well in fact that the coach recently contacted me to ask if I was interested in Quinn being “affiliated” with a Novice C team. Affiliated in this sense means “we noticed that you aren’t spending enough time at a hockey rink every weekend and are going to fix that”. We are Novice C Development at the moment, and it seems that the reward for doing really well in hockey is: much more hockey. Wow. Needless to say, I’m pretty much bursting with pride over this. We haven’t started the extra practices yet, but stay tuned for further posts about this to come. Still haven’t figured out just how the heck we are going to physically and mentally get to do all of this hockey, but we will figure it out somehow.
As for Cael, well you could say that he is, ah, uniquely positioned to have a fairly bright future in minor hockey if he decides to pursue it. He is in Initiation-level hockey, the age of the kids is in the 5 to 6 range. Cael of course has two things going for him in this situation. First, his birthday places him as one of the oldest kids on the team. As for the second advantage, I will leave it to you to see if you can figure out what it is from this blurry iPhone pic.
Yes. It’s the fact that he has orange skate laces. Never mind the kid beside him with the red laces, those won’t help.
Also, it seems that there might be another advantage in the fact that the entire team EXCEPT for Cael was caught in a gamma ray that has caused them to shrink a little more each week. Very tragic, as you can see Cael is the only normal-sized child on the whole team. He regularly packs the entire team into his hockey bag for fun and carries them out of the dressing room, to everyone’s amusement.
Seriously, what the heck am I going to do with this kid? I can literally see other hockey dads look at him and cringe a little as they mentally imagine what might happen when these kids manage to develop some speed on their skates and they accidentally tangle with the Caelstrom. It’s not going to be pretty.
I love this picture! When he does get things on ice coordinated, he’ll be unstoppable, literally and figuratively! Look out – the Caelstrom is on the ice! Love it!
Laughing out loud here. The absolutely lovely part is that he doesn’t appear to notice his —er—- relative advantage. He’s not the least bit self-conscious about it. He’s just beaming his ol’ Cael grin, happy to be a part of it all. In a way, it reminds me of the Clifford the Big Red Dog stories. Everything always works out great for that big goof, because his heart’s in the right place, and everyone loves a gentle giant.
Now, the kid to Cael’s left, he worries me. You just think he looks sleepy, but trust me, that kid’s going to be a slasher. A two-handed, baseball-swingin’ slasher who goes for the ankles. My spidey senses are tingling on that guy. Just be glad he’s on your team, is what I say.
On a serious note, my hearty congrats to all of the Vallentyne young on their fitness endeavours. Holy smokes! Way to go!
Holy crap i’m the worst wife ever as I am just reading this now. I came on here to get the Dogs at Camp reference for a girl at work and got baited hook line and sinker on this write up of my babies.
The comedy never ends, and the size of Cael on the ice with the other kids, never gets old. He has been invited to practice with Quinn’s team occasionally, and still he remains one of the top 3 tallest kids in that level where the kids are 2 years older. Crazy.
Cael has been practicing his “end of year party act” with the kids by riding a unicycle and juggling them 3 at a time. They are working on the finale right now where Court launches a 4th at him while juggling. It’s awesome.
Pingback: Vallentyne Boys Minding the Nets « Mundane Ramblings