Yesterday

Holy Cow!
OK. So we went to the Seattle Center and ended up ice skating. It was fun. The kids went around and around and August was pretty confident considering he'd never been on the ice. We went with Jonah and Aunt Kat.
Jonah is about Hazel's age and his been a friend of the family for years. My sister used to nanny for him and now she does yoga with him. Hazel and Jonah have a very special connection and they try to spend as much time as they can together but with Hazel in school now that time has been limited. So we made sure that the kids could get together during the break.
About 20 minutes into our skate date a woman approached Kat and requested that she remove Jonah from the ice as it was not OK to have a stroller or wheelchair on the rink. Kat was obviously upset and began to argue with the attendant. Hazel was hanging onto the stroller at this point and when she heard what the woman was saying she immediately began to cry uncontrollably. Hazel has a great ability to cry on cue. It really amped up the frustration factor...and drew a bunch of attention. At one point Kat yelled something like, "well, I guess we've got to get off the rink because they won't let handicapped people skate here!!!" At that moment I was attending to my emotional daughter and trying to calm my also emotional sister. I looked up and saw the principal of the kids school walking up with his family. He had no idea what he was walking into. I tried to explain the situation without emotion so as not to get anyone else upset. He offered to get involved, he offered to carry Jonah around the rink, he offered to leave the establishment. All of which I thanked him for but asked him to enjoy his afternoon with his family while we got our money back and went to the fountain.
Hazel recovered nicely once she was given the opportunity to run off her nervous energy.
Kat recovered when she brought Jonah home and told his parents about the afternoon. Jonah's parents recovered when they called the ice rink and set up a meeting to change the rules.