The Hockey Life: We have it bad

As many parents know, once you get involved in youth sports or any other organized activity, it's quite easy for your life, or substantial slices of it, to be consumed and even dominated by events within the subject of choice. We all know that going in.

We openly admit that hockey is a major part of our life. Always have. Always will.

Colin plays for one, sometimes two teams nearly year-round. We attend NHL games, often when the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres or Western Conference teams are visiting Hockey Bay. From late September to mid June, the NHL Network is my go-to channel, dropping History Channel, Discovery Channel and NatGeo down a rung on the ladder. Every so often, too, a special event, so to speak, makes the calendar.

A 24-hour span, from Friday to Saturday, provides a perfect example. From a Bauer Hockey Day in Brandon, where the company put its latest models of $429 skates and $200 sticks on the Christmas lists of about 100 hockey players, to three games in five hours, as two of his 2013-14 hockey seasons opened, Colin was on the ice for more than six hours.

 Want to know something? He had no complaints. Nor did we. It's our hockey life:

Getting some free ice time, while trying out Bauer Vapor X100 skates and an APX2 stick.

The first of his two games with his Tampa Bay Jr. Lightning Pee Wee A squad.

He joined his Pinellas P.A.L. Stars teammates for his second game of the day about 20 minutes after his first TBJL game.

He's in there -- somewhere -- after the TBJL White won its first game of the season.