Peninsula Winter Games

Every year, our community puts on a winter games weekend with outdoor games, ice sculptures, and most importantly, hockey! More on hockey later, but it was a great weekend had by all. Jaron and Chloee braved a ride on the ice slide. This was new this year, but pretty cool. Jaron went first, sporting his medal he earned in his hockey tournament. Naturally he loved it and wanted to go all day.

Then it was Chloee's turn. This slide, while well built, was very bumpy with the landing on a icy, gravel strip. Needless to say, with a very little tush, Chloee only lasted two runs.

Here she goes, and there she is trying to put on a brave face.

Notice how her brave face has vanished and is instead, filled with bitter disappointment. Oh well, at least the rest are happy. Check out Maycee's cheesy grin.

As far as indoor activities, there was cookie decorating, face painting, and hockey. Brady took a break between hockey games to help his sisters decorate some cookies. Jolee is still very shy with strangers and crowds, but her siblings help her to be brave.

Finally, there was the hockey. Jaron's team was eliminated early on, mostly because a Mite comp team from Anchorage entered their division and blew everyone away. Sore subject. Jaron did get his first goal though, and it was awesome. I was sitting at the far end of the rink and Jaron scored on the opposite end. As soon as he scored, he looked right where I was sitting and started waving his arms. I was so excited for him.

As for Brady's team, they were entered into the Bantam D division even though they are a PeeWee C team. If this is foreign speech to you, don't worry. Basically, his team of 11/12 year olds played teams of 13/14 year olds. However, Brady is on a C team which is supposed to be better than a D team. Anyway, Brady is the only goalie and he did awesome. His team ended up finishing 2nd in the tournament, but he faced his first ever shoot out in the semi-finals. The game went into overtime, where the score stayed tied. Because there had to be a winner, it went to a shootout. A shootout is where the goalie faces three shooters who try to score and the team with the most successful shots, wins the game. I was a basket case, but Brady did awesome. He blocked 1 out of 3 shots the first round as did the other team's goalie, so it had to go to another 3 shooters. Brady saved 2 of the 3 shots and the other goalie only saved one, so we won! It was amazing and I could hardly drive home after all the adrenaline running through my system.

We live in an awesome small community, where our family has so many opportunities to do things together, plus it makes winter go by faster. On another note, Aaron's high school team ended up finishing 4th in the region which means that season is over. Our boys still have another 2 months, but at least Aaron is around a little more now.