Olympic Junkie

I admit it....I am an Olympic junkie. I have been plopped in front of the TV for the last 2 weeks from 8-11 or 12 pm every night trying to absorb as much Olympic activity as I can. I don't know why I love it so much. I think the reason may be that I have not been blessed with any sort of athletic gene. The genes seemed to have skipped me and passed on double fold to my extremely athletically gifted son. I'm not complaining (I can run at least, well sorta :)), but I think I feel the need to live vicariously through all the talented athletes at the Olympics. I love hearing their stories and seeing their successes. I am mourning the fact that the closing ceremonies will be tomorrow night.

Watching the Olympics on TV was not enough for me this week....I actually had to be there to experience the excitement. My friend, Quinae and I, along with our four children, decided to visit the Olympics after a friend told us of her awesome experience the week before on Sunday at church. We decided to go the next day since the weather was supposed to be excellent. I can be a spontaneous person, but not exactly a next day spontaneous person. I was a little nervous about pulling everything together, but I made it happen. Sunday afternoon was a whirlwind of activity getting together food, passports, car activities, clothes, etc.

We took off at 6:30 am on Monday morning and drove 2 hours to the border. We then caught the train to take into downtown Vancouver. Catching the train....hmmm...sounds so easy...try it with 4 kids( (ages 5, 4, 3, 2), a double stroller, a kid backpack, a regular backpack, oodles of coats, mittens, and hats.

After sitting for over 3 hours, the 3 boys had some serious energy to burn. Luckily, Lindsey was an angel (wow, I don't think I've ever used those two words in a sentence together) and sat happily in the double stroller. The boys were weaving through thousands of people and we were trying our best to keep our eyes on all of them as we made our way through the streets.

The Olympic cauldron.

We signed a digital guest book and then found a place to have lunch and let the kids run some of their energy off.

After lunch, we made our way down the main drag in Vancouver, Granville Street. There were a bunch of things to see, but mostly we were just trying to see our children :) We watched a street performer, checked out the Olympic Superstore, and watched people stand in 3-4 hour lines to get into the Mint and Art Museum. We were not even tempted to join them :)

We made our way to the ice skating rink/concert venue to watch a concert (the kids loved dancing to the music), to watch an ice skating show (way too crowded to see anything :() and try to rent ice skates for the free ice skating session (lame mommies did not have canadian cash- come on- doesn't everyone take credit cards?!?). Jack had a melt down and tried to assault me in public (fun, fun), and we lost Soren for a few minutes (really scary), but we made it out of there in one piece and caught a bus to Granville Island.

Granville Island had a kids market that the kids played at for awhile (Jack amazingly still had energy to run off) and we walked around the island for a bit. By this time, we were so intent on keeping the kids together we did not pull out our cameras. Sometimes I wish my camera was attached to my face. :) Everyone was winding down....we had 3 in the double stroller at this point, so we decided to head back to Vancouver to hit the food court for some dinner. After eating, we jumped back on the train and rode back to the car.

The kids were out by 9 pm and we rolled back into the garage about 11. Long, crazy day, but something we'll always remember. Jack was disappointed that we didn't run into Shaun White, but we were able to see a lot of cool things and I hope he will remember those things for a long time. Excuse me, I have some more Olympics to watch.