Living with a young child certainly brings wonder and joy to your life. My three-year-old certainly does that for us. In fact, it is my belief that bringing joy may just be her mission in life, but that will remain to be seen as the years go by.

As a Christmas gift, we took Joellen and some family members to see Disney on Ice at WesBanco Arena in Wheeling. Being a typical young girl, Joellen is enthralled with all things “princess”.

For those of you who don’t exactly know what that means, if it has anything to do with a Disney princess such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Ariel, and the list goes on and on. . . she loves it! You could give her a bag of trash and if it has a princess image printed on the plastic, she’ll think it’s gold.

Needless to say, she was very excited to go see Disney on Ice, or Ice on?Skates as she called it. We arrived early with Joellen dressed in her Snow White dress up clothes, complete with red bow headband. She could barely contain her excitement.

“Is it starting now?” she asked me over and over again.

Finally I explained that she would know when it was about to begin because the lights would go down, that means the arena will get darker.

After that explanation her question changed to a statement, “The lights are going down!” When in fact they were just as bright as ever.

When they finally did dim and the show began, she sat motionless, mouth agape and eyes wide open, taking it all in.

One week later I informed Joellen that we were going to go ice skating the next day. Her Uncle Danny had fixed an ice skating rink on his driveway and we were going to go wear some skates and try it.

Once again her excitement bubbled over.

“And we’re going to wear costumes? Like Ice on Skates?!” she asked.

The thought of wearing anything other than warm winter outerwear had never crossed my mind, but it was indeed a logical question for a three year old.

“Well, I guess you can wear a costume over your snow pants and coat if you want,” I replied.

She ended up forgoing her first choice of Tinkerbell and wearing a pink tutu over her ski bibs and pink flowered headband over her crash helmet. She was definitely the princess of Doolin’s version of Ice on Skates!