Shall We Skate?

Yesterday I went ice skating for the first time in... oh gosh, at least.... five years?  If not more than that.  It actually may be something more like seven years.  Sister T had been trying to plan out a day where she could take her friend from Ghana out ice skating, as she had never been skating.  Between weather and scheduling and such, it finally worked out that we were able to go yesterday.

Now we've been watching the Olympic Figure Skating pretty religiously for the past week, so despite not having had any contact with ice outside of a parking lot or sidewalk for the past however many years, I was hoping that I'd get out there on the ice and magically look something like this

Or, at the very least, you know... something like this guy here.

Haha, yeah right.  In reality, my figure skating ability turned out to be much closer to this right here:

Okay, so maybe not that bad.  I did get myself to the point where I was able to at least move around the ice (slowly) with minimal wobbling and having to catch myself, and I only fell twice.  And my falling at least was very graceful, so that a mom who was hanging out in the middle of the rink with her daughter and husband said to me "Wow, that was the most graceful fall I've ever seen!"

Sister T and Sister R were the best at getting the hang of skating, though Sister M did pick it up a little more towards the end, and friend from Ghana made it to where she was able to shuffle along on her own and caught herself from falling (once).  I think we all considered ourselves to be accomplished beginners.

We'll have to hit the ice again sometime before another six years passes, and see if we can't get any more graceful in our movements.  In the mean time... Figure skating Short Dance program is on tonight!  Whohoo!