If you're interested, here are the previous years' recaps: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.
Zachary is almost 11 and finishing his last year of elementary school, which we can hardly believe. His gross motor and fine motor skills continue to improve every year, but his cerebral palsy means he will always be a little uncoordinated. We hope that he will one day get to try actual ice skates (his preference) but he doesn't have the muscle strength for that just yet so he gets to ride a sled on ice.
We're all huge hockey and Caps fans and it's Zachary's dream to one day play on an actual hockey team; he repeatedly says he'd like to play at Capital One arena with everyone cheering for him! He attended his first Caps game last April and we all got really caught up in the playoffs as the Caps went on to win the Stanley Cup. That was a very exciting time in our house.
We arrived at the Medstar Iceplex and met Zachary's volunteer Marie. She was great! We taught her a little about hockey and hope she becomes a Caps fan for life!
We got to watch a little of the Colorado Avalanche practice while we waited to go on the ice. We spotted former Cap Philip Grubauer out there. It's always so hard for my boys when a player moves to a new team, so it was great to see him on the ice.
Zachary has gotten much more patient in waiting for his turn, but once he was on the ice, he was ready to go, go, go. As always, he wanted to score some goals!
Towards the end we were able to sneak in some quick photos with Capitals forwards Travis Boyd, Nic Dowd, Lars Eller, and Brett Connolly. I say this every year, but hockey players are the greatest. They take the time to meet every kid, volunteer, and starstruck parent.
Zachary always enjoys looking at these photos of himself and then identifying the players by jersey number when they are playing on TV.
But when I ask him his favorite part of the day, he always says Slapshot!!
Our thanks to both Dreams for Kids DC and the Capitals MSE Foundation for organizing.
All of the photos and videos I took today are in my Google photo album. Please don't republish any photos without attribution.
I'll link to other stories, photos, and videos of the event as they become available. Thanks for reading!
