just a week after amazing us with his newfound skill in standing up unassisted on the ice, odin continued to impress us with his single-minded focus on improving enough to skate with the "big kids".

he’s pretty much the last 3 1/2 year-old who shows up every week for practice; he has noticed that he’s being separated from the older kids while he works on basic skills and while he hasn’t been very vocal about it bothering him, you can tell it’s a big motivator for him to come back every week and continue improving.

so it was a big deal this week when, for the very time, he got to join the big kids while they worked on their practice "drills"!

but the biggest highlight ( as measured by the amoung of excited conversation it generated over post hockey flapjacks ) was getting to skate over to the group of big kids that gathers at the end of practice to listen to the coach speak some words of wisdon – and plopping himself right in the middle of the crowd 🙂