On Tuesday, August 23rd, Drew attended the Cross-Ice evaluation skate at the Polar Palace. He is moving on from the "Learn to Play Hockey" lessons that he had been participating in to the next level, which is Cross-Ice. We still don't really know a whole lot about the various levels of hockey, so as you read my posts you can learn with Tara & I. The evaluation skate lasted about an hour, and the kids were put through a variety of skill exercises to test their level of knowledge.

    Unfortunately for Drew, he was wearing brand new skates tonight, so his feet were killing him by the time he got off the ice. You can blame Tara & I for that, though. We had taken him to get sized for skates the prior weekend, and we were told that he was right on the edge of a size 1 skate. Tara was under the belief that we had a size 2 for him, so we didn't get too worried about. On our way to his evaluation skate we stopped in again, this time with his skates in tow. As we walked in we realized that he was indeed wearing a size 1 skate, and he was unable to get his foot into it. Since we needed skates ASAP, we wound up purchasing a brand new pair. Because of our time constraint, we weren't able to get them entirely fitted (or baked, as they called it) to his foot. We wound up getting them sharpened and headed off to the rink. He did skate better, but as I said his feet were sore afterwards. By the time his first lesson rolls around on September 10th we will have had them fitted and he should be good to go!

Cross-Ice Evaluation Skate
	Drew (in the green shirt with white striped socks) getting ready to receive a pass in one of his drills.
	Drew skating with the puck around some cones.
	Drew skating in a crowd during a puck-handling drill.
	Another shot of Drew in the puck-handling drill.