Family Member Feature Friday

Not long ago I posted some digital scrapbook pages of my family with my cousin from Holland.  As you might imagine, it is rare to see our Aunt and 3 cousins from Holland.{$1,700 round trip ticket doesn’t encourage many visits to the US}  So when they make a point to come, whatever the reason, it is very special.  Jennifer is the youngest of my 3 Dutch cousins.  The main reason she came was to attend a Roller Derby Conference currently being held in Las Vegas now called RollerCon.  She is a member of  the Amsterdam Derby Dames roller derby team.

Hold up…some of you might be wondering,

“What is roller derby?”

All I know about Roller Derby I learned by watching the movie Whip It.  Wikipedia summarizes the movie well here:

Whip It is a 2009 comedy-drama film written by Shauna Cross, based on Cross’s novel Derby Girl. The film is directed by Drew Barrymore [who also stars in the movie] in her directorial debut. It stars Ellen Page as a teenager from a small town [in Texas] who joins a roller derby team.

Being that I am a family gal and all…lol…this is a PG-13 movie for sexual content including crude dialogue, language and drug material.  In other words, children 13 and under should not watch it.  But for you parents, if you want to see what the roller derby world is like THIS is the movie.  Whip It was released in September of 2009.  I remember seeing the movie and being surprised about this roller derby thing.  I really didn’t realize it existed outside of the movie world until my cousin began talking about it.  {Hmmm…maybe because I am raising 3 kids}

You can also learn more about my cousin, also known as Furrrocious, on her blog: On My Way to Play (Roller Derby) For a girl whose first language is Dutch, she does a wonderful job writing in English!  It would mean a lot to me if you could stop by her blog (click on her blog name above) and wish her well.  She will be very surprised. 😉

While spending time with Jennifer in Texas we, of course, had to go skating.  Oh. my.  I had not been skating in a very long time!  We had fun, though.  {Definitely brought back memories of all the Fridays I spent at the roller rink growing up ;}  The above video was taken by my oldest. {I was BRAVE to let her take my iPhone skating, yes I know}  It is pretty funny because she falls at the end of the video and you can hear me screaming because I’m worried it will break my phone.  By the way, you can see me skating backwards in the video. {I have skills}  My youngest daughter had a rough go at learning to skate.  Our skating rink where we live is not in the best condition.  It has cracks in the floor so we have only been there once…little on the dangerous side for this Mama.  Finally, before we left she could very slowly skate on her own.  Yay for her! 🙂

Rolling On,