THE OLYMPICS

I love the Olympics! Every 2 years when it is on, my kids and I watch the opening ceremony together and watch the athletes, cheering on the Americans and the under dogs and our nationalities: Italy, Ireland and England...so basically everybody. Looking for the challenging competitors and sucking up every personal story from the Chinese figure skaters to Jack's new favorite: Lindsey Vonn. We even watched the curling today and enjoyed the Simpsons episode on Sunday night where Marge and Homer won the gold for the USA in curling. We also took the trivia test on USA network, we scored a measily 4/10 but they have a new quiz everyday.

It also becomes a mini-history/geography lesson. We talk about the different countries and where they are located, google-earthing (did I just make that a verb?) the cities and different venues. We talked about the tragedy in Munich, which I knew little about so it made me read up on it. We talked about WWII and how the Olympics were cancelled during that time. Did not get to the boycotts of the 80's yet. We talk about Communism and China, which in my day was USSR and East Germany. Now, poor Russia has only one bronze medal.

They asked me what were the first Olympics that I remember. I had to look at a listing of all the years and places and realized I was Kate's age: 1976 the Innsbruck Olympics and Dorothy Hamill.  I had that haircut for a number of years to follow! The best were the 80 Olympics in Lake Placid with the Miracle on Ice. That was mezmerizing and wonderful and a wonderful story of the Underdog coming out on top. I will need to rent that movie. My droning on and on about it, did not do it justice. I remember running home from school because the game against yugoslavia (I think) was for the gold and it was on at 10am so we couldn't watch it. My mom did and told us all about it. There was no Tivo or taping it, no IMing or texting to find out about it in school. WOW 30 years ago. I am old.

The one movie we did rent about 2 years ago, for the 2008 Bejing Olympics was actually called "The First Olympics" It was a great story about some Harvard boys trying to get to Greece in 1896 for the Olympics. It is a great movie and if you haven't seen it, it will be a good one to rent.

Looking forward to the next 10 days and more people, achieving their dreams, over coming the odds, persevering and on these cold snow days, inspiring me to get off the couch!!!!