Olympic Memories

Last week I blogged three times in one week.

Then the 2010 Winter Olympics started. I'm an admitted Olympic junkie.

One week went by. After staying up way too late and getting sucked into many hours of competition I'd figured I should share a bit of why I love the Olympics....

For me, one of the best things about the Olympics is the seeing the proud parents cheering on their children as they chase after a dream that they all sacrificed countless amounts of time and money and actual blood, sweat and tears in order to achieve. I love it and I watch my children play sports and thank God that He chose not to bless me with a child who shows signs of being a future Olympian. I just couldn't handle the stress!!

In an interview with Evan Lysacek's mom she said that she doesn't watch him skate and for his gold medal performance she was in another building watching in a private room iwth a glass of wine! I can barely watch when Jeff Reed of the Steelers is about to kick a game winning field goal so I totally sympathized with her. In fact I think I'd want the whole bottle! ;)

Speaking of Evan Lysackek, tell me that you watched his electrifying performance Thursday night? I forced myself to stay awake until the very end to see if he won gold!

Growing up the Olympic moment that stands out the most to me was when Dan Jansen finally won a gold medal and skated his victory lap holding his daughter Jane, named for his sister who passed away years prior, for whom Dan dedicated the race. Tell me you've seen the commercial...

I remember that we taped the race and the victory celebration afterwards (tears were shed) and I knew it was a moment that I wanted to remember forever and that I never wanted it to get recorded over. The commercial is great, but it's nothing compared to the real thing and I am hoping my mom reads this and feels inspired to rummage through our old VHS tapes in case it turns up! (Ok, I'll admit that I came close to buying the complete coverage of the 1994 games just so I would be able to have coverage of the Dan Jansen race - a bit obsessive I know!)

So far the event my kids have been most interested in has been the snowboarding. Both girls are big fans of Shaun White and were very excited to see him compete....watching it the next day on DVR, not waking them up in the middle of the night for anything! :) We watched both the guys and the girls and while I love the American girls, I was totally captivated by Torah Bright of Australia. She has this beautiful smile and just radiates charisma and spirit. During the opening ceremonies she was the flag holder and the announcers talked about how her parents weren't going to be at the games, that Torah was engaged to be married later on this year and she really wanted them to be at the wedding (which would be in Canada as well) so they were going to wait and make the trip then.

Of course it totally makes sense. You can't miss your daughter's wedding. But as I watched her win gold in snowboard halfpipe I couldn't get them out of my mind. I said to Matt I can't imagine watching your daughter win a gold medal in the Olympics on TV halfway across the world.

I promise you that it's worth it....go read THIS article.

One of those touching Olympic moments, one that I will never have on tape and never see on a Visa commercial since the networks totally missed it, but in a way that makes it all the more special.

Hope you're enjoying the 2010 games!

Free Collage - Today Only

I just figured I had to post this -it's too good to pass up and it's something you can do quickly tonight because it's only good for today.

Thanks to dealnews, my husband's favorite website in the world, we saw that Walgreens is offering a free 8x10 photo collage for today only. Simply enter "VDAY" at checkout and it's totally free (savings of $4). Can't beat that!!!

Completely unrelated....Anyone out there as excited as me about watching the Winter Olympics? If you have Comcast digital cable, their On Demand programing has a section for Olympics and I spent some time today with the girls watching different segments on the various athletes. Ella is very excited about snowboarding and ice skating! She also says she's a fan of Shaun White. I think there will be daily updates to the On Demand with the daily highlights - should be an easy way to catch up on the big events!

Always On My Mind

I have an issue which involves me constantly thinking. If things are busy, I have so many thoughts and things that come to me that I am afraid I am going to forget that I have a hard time falling asleep at night.

Matt often makes fun of me and tells me to STOP THINKING!


Ella without a doubt takes after me in this sense. Always at nighttime, no matter how tired she is, as soon as the light goes off she is full of questions and wondering all sorts of random things. For awhile I had to put a limit and let her have three questions, but that back fired because she always felt like she had to have three questions and she would stall and hem and haw until she could come up with three and then they were usually things like "how do they make air?" "how do they make boxes" and so on...



The other night she reached a new level of inquisitive non stop thinking. She had had a cough and cold the past couple of days so I went in around midnight to check on her and see how she was doing and double check that she didn't have a fever. I placed my hand on her forehead (nice and normal thankfully!) and straightened the covers. As I did, she rolled over, opened her eyes and the brief conversation went like this

Ella: "Mom, do I have four Webkinz or five?"

Me: "Uh....I don't know"

Ella: "I think I have five, but I'm not sure."

Me: "Uh...Ok, sounds good, goodnight."

Ella: "Goodnight mom"

She rolled over and went back to bed.

So weird and yet it felt scarily familiar!

Super Snowstorm Part 2

(Click HERE for Part 1)
Sunday morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and two coughing girls. Ella's didn't sound good so she had to stay home from church and miss the birthday party of a classmate as well. Catherine is never one to be left out so you whined about going to church with Matt, summoned up some pretty convincing coughs of her own and stayed home with Ella and me.

Ella was ok with staying home for, oh, about 20 minutes, and then she went into a downward spiral of grumpiness based around how un-fun it was to be stuck at home when she could be at church (which just figures because there are some Sundays when she complains about going - she is not too consistent in her likes and dislikes, it all depends on her mood.).

When Matt got home I told him he had to take the girls out for some snow play time. I know, I know, they both were slightly under the weather, but I thought the fresh would help their mental health (and mine) as well get some nice cold air in their lungs (ok, no idea if that's a good thing, it just sounds better than stale house air).

What a difference a day makes. Look, you can see the road and our car. You can also see the fun snow tunnel that Matt and the girls made after a special request from Ella.

I love this shot of Catherine.

Another cute one of her peeking through the tunnel. She was the first one to crawl through, Ella was to scared to go first, she thought it would fall on her!

Tunnel shot....from the other side...

Here Ell goes, crawling through....

Here she comes, safely on the other side...
Another event that the coughs put a damper on was the Super Bowl! We were supposed to get together with a few friends for yummy appetizers and munchies that evening, but the person hosting had a sick baby so Matt and I said we would host. But as of Sunday morning, three out of the four families had kids with fevers, coughs and all that good stuff. We joked that we should get together since our kids all had similar things - wouldn't that stink for our friend who had healthy kids. Sorry, you have to stay home because your kids aren't sick! :)

So our plans to watch the Super Bowl with friends were scrapped, but I was still able to try out the two new appetizers I had planned on making, both ones I found from Tasty Kitchen. Both were yummy and I will post them soon!

I am writing this while I look at the window at the second big storm in less than a week. They have us in a blizzard warning and I am hoping and praying that we do not lose power. If we do, I am planning on moving somewhere quickly....I don't know where, but I might start making a list of nearby hotels to have on speed dial!

Super Snowstorm , Part 1

We had a big snowstorm this past weekend. Big as in 20+ inches of snow big! I know this isn't any news to any of my blogging friends out there, because I believe the vast majority of you are on the East Coast and got hit by the same storm! But it was a weekend worth remembering, so here it goes....

Friday night we went to dinner at our friend's house. We figured that we'd be snowed in on Saturday and it would be good to get out of the house when we could! While we were there it started snowing so we figured that was a sign that we should.....get in the hot tub! We all changed into our bathing suits and ran across their deck in the snow and enjoyed a memorable time with the snow falling on our heads as we relaxed (oh wait, kids don't relax in hot tubs, they bounce from side to side, splishing and splashing everywhere) in the hot water.

When we woke up the morning, this is what we saw...

Here is our street! Can you even tell?

The plow made it down our low priority dead end street a few hours after it stopped snowing, but after the horror stories I've heard from heard from nearby counties and cities and faraway areas I really have no reason to complain. I am actually really impressed with how quickly the snow was removed - good to see my tax dollars at work!

Of course we didn't wait for the snow to stop or the roads to be plowed to go out and play in the snow, in fact, playing in the snow is much more fun when you have the whole street to play in...

That's Matt getting buried in the snow! I am the lucky one taking pictures :)

My cutie Ella enjoying the snow...
My little pink marshmellow Catherine taking a break from eating snow....

After snow time we came in and warmed up with hot chocolate and I made sugar cookie dough.

(As an aside, what is it about snow that makes us want to cook and bake and eat? Because I think I ate more cookies, snacks and carbs than usual over this past weekend.)

I just let the kids go to town decorating them. I really did, I was actually in the other room the entire time.

Catherine may have gone a bit overboard with the green sprinkles!

Ella did a little better...
That was Saturday, we still had a busy Sunday ahead of us....stay tuned for Part 2 to follow.