This week Little Miss turned 10 and that’s pretty surreal for me.

It truly does seem like this time with her has gone by so incredibly fast.

It seems like just yesterday – or at least only a year ago – she was pulling herself up to a standing position on her little chair at 9 months old, ready to walk so she could follow her older brother.

She didn’t crawl.

She only rolled over once.

She didn’t even Army crawl.

All she wanted to do was walk and she did – very early and very fast.

She was very short, like her mom, so there were many people who couldn’t believe what they were seeing. How could she already be walking?

I don’t know either but Little Miss has always been a very determined little girl who knows what she wants and how to get it.

We celebrated her on her actual birthday with a trip to an area restaurant because she likes to go to restaurants. The food at the place is very good but The Husband and I had only visited there as a couple and hadn’t taken the kids yet. This was their first experience and they really enjoyed themselves. It was a rainy, misty, chilly day and most of the businesses in the small town we drove to were closed so we stopped by a free little library and then kept going home.

Thursday we all had dinner at my parents’ where we also played charades because Little Miss loves to do that.

Yesterday Little Miss had a sleepover with a friend. Remember when I said we weren’t doing any more sleepovers? Well, it was the only thing she’d asked for for her birthday and it was only with one friend.

We also took them roller skating, which my parents paid for as her gift because she likes to go skating, but we just don’t get around to take her to the roller rinks near us like we should. That is probably because there are three roller rinks in our area and they are all an hour away in one direction or the other. I am glad that my mom prompted us to do this because it really was a lot of fun for the kids.

I haven’t visited the rink we ended up going to for more than 25 years, so I wasn’t sure what to expect but the place really looked great. It is located along a lakeside campground, and it has been there for years and year and years. I don’t know how many because it didn’t say on their site, but I know it’s been a very long time because I was probably about Little Miss’s age when I first visited it.

I would definitely say that they have renovated over the years based on how great the skating rink floor looks, but some of it feels the same – the big round table-like seats where you sit to put your skates on, the booths where you can sit to eat, the garbage food they served (microwaved pizza, microwaved nachos and cheese, candy and sodas).

The music they were playing was from the 90s and early 2000s so it felt even more like my teen years.

My friend – the mom of Little Miss’s friend — was there as well (she brought another one of her kids with her), and we were both chuckling at some of the music and our memories wrapped around them.

When I was a kid, we visited a different skating rink (now closed) with our church a couple of times, and my dad remembers how one night one of the ladies from the church sprained her ankle, my brother broke his thumb, and someone else was injured too, but we can’t remember how. What Dad can remember is that a lot of people came into church the next morning limping and groaning.

There was a roller rink in the town we used to live in that was over 100 years old. It is still going and still owned by the same family. I think we might try to visit that one again sometime this year, but the kids who visit that rink are a little rougher around the edges – shall we say. I visited it for one of the night skates with my nieces one year many years ago and there were these little cliques and gangs in various corners of the rink. It was like the social hub for the area teenagers in many ways. There was the cool kids group and the not-so-cool kids and then the kids who didn’t care about any of that – they just wanted to skate.

My nieces wanted snacks and I think they were flirting with some of the boys and I didn’t know what was going to go down so I finally pulled them away and took them home. It was all a bit overwhelming but it was the main place for kids to hang out in the town and the owners are good people who would keep them safe.

I love that we still have these old roller rinks around here. They are just good, clean fun for kids and gets them out of the house and doing activity that isn’t too strenuous but isn’t too boring either.

These two roller rinks near us still host the skating games they used to do back in the old days – limbo, four corners, and other games. Little Miss won the game of limbo and earned a free pass for another night of skating, so we hope to visit the rink again sometime in the future. They offer daytime skates in the winter so we plan to do that since this rink is located in the middle of nowhere where there are plenty of deer to it at night.

When we first left to drive there – at 6  I laughed and said, “I usually have my pajamas on at this time and am cozying up for the night.”

The Husband and I have always been homebodies and rarely go to events after 5 pm. Part of the reason I prefer not to drive at night is because I have horrible night vision. I can’t see well and our car’s headlights aren’t great. It makes me very nervous. Another reason I don’t like to go out after 5 or really socialize much at all is I had my fill when I worked 50-70 hours a week at small town newspapers covering every event imaginable.

As a natural introvert I had to force myself to be social to get the story and I forced myself so often I think I broke something in me. Now that I’ve been gone from newspapers for so long, even going to a store and having to talk to the clerk stresses me out.

The Husband doesn’t like to go out on his days off because he socializes constantly all week long in his job as a small town newspaper editor and reporter.

When we got back to the house after skating, I thought the girls might just fall right to sleep. They had spent the entire day playing outside (the trampoline, riding scooters, jumping in leaves, and then two hours of skating). They lasted a little longer and then fell asleep so hard that Little Miss’s friend didn’t even change positions for five hours.

We all slept downstairs – them on an air mattress and me on the couch. In our area there are a few ways to tell it is getting cold. One is that you start to see people around town wearing light, but still warm, jackets. Two, you’ll start to smell woodsmoke as people begin to light their fires. And three, family cats start to cuddle more.

Our cats are fairly aloof all summer but around anywhere from mid-September to the middle of October they will gradually begin to come inside earlier after being outside hunting, lurking, or harassing other neighborhood cats, all day. Once they are inside they will stare at one of the humans for a few second or minutes – usually me – and then pounce – running up onto the body of said human and laying on their stomach or chest, expecting the chosen one to be honored and in awe that they have been chosen.

They will then kneed, curl up, purr, rub their faces and body all over the chosen one and attempt to make the chosen one their bed for the next few hours, whether the chosen one wants it or not.

Our youngest cat (Scout) is the one who curls up on me the most but last night she picked The Husband as the chosen one before bed. About 5 a.m. Scout woke me up by crawling onto my chest and anytime I get woke up my brain tells me I have to go to the bathroom so I did that and came back to the couch which is when Scout made my hip her bed. Two hours later I was up again and had to move her for another bathroom break. At this point the older cat, Pixel, who normally hates to be anywhere near Scout and hisses at her for even existing, decided she’d put with Scout simply so she could now use my body as her bed.

At this point Scout was curled up on the couch by my knees and Pixel was using my hip as the bed. The couch isn’t very wide so this was a very uncomfortable position to be in but it is also a very rare occurrence for them to be so close to each other without Pixel smacking Scout repeatedly in the head, so I did my best not to move and upset the experience.

My hips, back, neck, and – well – my entire body paid for that the rest of the day but I think it was worth it.

Little Miss’s friend has gone home now and we will all be in our own beds tonight. I am truly looking forward to that because if the cats do curl up on or next to me, at least I’ll have more room – in theory anyhow.

How was your week last week? Do anything exciting or interesting? Let me know in the comments.