One Day It Was About To Change And I Didn’t Know It

Some days I wonder where all the time has gone since all of this has started.I never thought when I had three boys I would be a full fledged hockey mom. I figured after my last son Jordan was born, I pictured myself on the sidelines as the football, basketball, or baseball mom sitting in the stands either freezing my butt off or sweating and sticking to my chair or the bleachers. Mainly, because that's how I grew up. I could have never imagined being around a sport I knew little of would bring me so much joy!
Yes, I grew up in Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes, so you would think of course I knew hockey. I grew up in a small town that did not have hockey or a hockey team. I never saw my parents put on a pair of skates, I had never seen a game until college, it was foreign to me. So I had a lot to learn when a two year old boy said, "Mommy I want to do that!" after attending his first NHL Carolina Hurricanes game. Yes, we moved from the State of Hockey to a state that most people probably didn't even know had a hockey team. When I saw his face and the attention it had kept for a two year old boy to sit all game long watching intensely and not once asking is it over yet, which was the case at any other sporting event I knew something was going on in that little brain. That's when it all started. I still have the ticket stub. He got the bug!
I'll never forget taking him to his first lesson he had just turned 3 when they were allowed to sign up for the learn to skate program at the local rink and his older brother Braedyn was 5 and he wanted to try to. He looked like a bobble head out there. I think I had dressed them in three layers of pants because if they fell I wanted them to have a cushioned fall. They both went together and the reactions were quite different. Braedyn would fall and he didn't like it, I could tell. It hurt, he was cold, and he couldn't wait for it to be over but just wanted to be out there with his little brother. They have always have been there for each other. Cooper on the other hand, he'd fall and he'd get right back up....fall again and couldn't get his footing but eventually would get back up and off he went. He picked it up pretty fast. After a couple sessions the teacher kept getting frustrated with him because he didn't want to work on snow plows and picking up cones. He wanted to play hockey like the little boys he would sit and stare at on the other end of the ice. So after those six weeks...older brother hung up his skates and little brother signed up for Rink Rats...Those times I remember so vividly...three years old in his sweaty spider man pjs driving home from hockey his little body so exhausted from skating for 60 minutes. I'd have to get him out of his car seat and carry him into bed and wash him down with a soapy warm wet rag while he's holding onto his teddy bear half awake.
These are the memories I treasure and I will never forget. 
As I sit here going through old photos because one day it just was just sorta gone and hockey wasn’t a part of my life as much as it is his now. I never thought my last road trip with him was my last. I Miss him and I miss the sport that brought me so many great memories and so many more to look forward to.