This past weekend I found myself in 100 Mile House, BC for an Atom Hockey Tournament for my youngest son. I’ll be honest, when this trip was first mentioned to me I wasn’t all that thrilled about driving 5 hours for a tournament. Then to add insult to injury, I found out my husband and other son could not join us for the tournament. There was no way I wanted to drive up there alone so my husband, being so kind, arranged for me to drive up with the coach and his family. I said to my husband “can’t we just say impossible we can’t make it” – noooo we had to go. After all I wanted to stay home and paint my pumpkin room as I mentioned in my “So Inspired” blog. Off I went and put on a big smiley face and pretended I was glad to go as my son was so excited. We left the house at 9:00 am Friday morning and arrived in 100 Mile House around 2:00 pm. We quickly unpacked the truck and grabbed our skates and hockey sticks and headed to the outdoor skating rink for a game of hockey. The coach myself, his son and my son played a game of hockey for an hour and my son laughed his face off the whole time. It was then that I realized how wrong I was, it was going to be a good weekend. Being out of the city I felt like I could breathe and pretty soon my body lost all of that city tension. Back to our chalet we headed to change to our bathing suits and headed to hang out at the hot tub and pool. The next day the boys played two games and then we had a four hour wait for the next game. Everyone was tired and wanted to relax, but all my son could talk about was playing hockey on the outside rink. I found out that there was a natural pond a little ways down the hill through the trees and that’s where my son and I and his friend headed with our skates through the blades of our hockey sticks thrown over our shoulders. Through the trees where we came upon a beautiful ice rink, smooth as glass with a tepee standing to one side of the rink, a place where you could build a fire to stay warm. Luckily for us there was no need for a fire as the sun was shining warm on our faces. The team lost one game, won three games that weekend and my son played the best hockey he’s ever played. He won most sportsmanship award and the smile on his face was priceless. The picture gallery below was taken by my son on his I-pod, sort of a journal of his journey all through the eyes of a child:
A few of my pictures to finish off the weekend!
Let’s just say this is a character rink! 
Look at that smile!
MOMWHEARINGLOSS 