Olympics--Family Style

Uh-oh, I've let many wagon loads of day and weeks go by without a post.  But I'm back to posting regularly, I hope.  And just in time to comment on the Olympics.  

I have always loved the Olympics--Summer or Winter.  I could spend hours watching the competitions--those I kinda know the rules for and those that I have no idea what is going on.  Same goes with the Opening Ceremony.  Loved it!  Mostly.  This year it was a little long at first, I thought, but worth watching to see the Queen parachute into the arena, and to see the lighting of the torch and hearing Sir Paul! 

But the NBC broadcast held nothing over our own rendition of the opening ceremony.  This year my daughter, son-in-law and grandbaby came over to watch it with us.  But we did more than just watch.  We had decorations--the Olympic rings glowed on the front porch railing comparable to the ones hanging from the Tower Bridge.  Our guest were greeted with silly string!  (And they still came inside!)  We ate BBQ and red, white, and blue strawberries made by my daughter.  (Couldn't have been more patriotic!)  

Then, we had our own Opening Ceremony while watching the other one on TV.   But our games began right then.   Why wait?  And why wait on the confetti.  It came early in the evening much to our surprise.

The baby was especially taken with the confetti.  He would gather up the confetti on the floor (yes, this was all over the living room floor along with the silly string which was very fun to clean up the next morning), and then he would count to three and throw the confetti over and over.  1st place accomplishment, indeed.

Grandbaby absolutely loved all our other the games as well.  Somehow he got first place in every event.  (We did have medals!)  He executed the paddle ball competition quite well for never having seen or held a paddle ball.  He, in fact, had an innovative approach at playing.  He held the ball and dribbled the paddle.  (He is very smart and athletic already at 18 months.)  He was superb in the stick horse dressage competition. 

Soccer was no problem with a basket full of at least 50 balls.  Many goals were made.  And that led to the basketball competition for which I must admit he was quite gifted at getting a lot of the balls back in the basket, even himself.  Since Grambo poured them all out, he did help the shortest player on the team in getting them all back in the basket.  (By the way, "Grambo" is grandbaby's version of "Grandfather Jones" which the silly man actually thought would be his name.)

The fencing with glow torches might have been our favorite.  We all had to compete in this event.  Grandbaby was simply amazing with his talents of finding other ways to use the glow torch swords.  In fact, he wouldn't let go of his and ended up falling asleep on his mama's shoulder still holding his glow stick sword.

By the end of "Hey, Jude," we were all ready for sleep.  But it was a quite memorable evening, to say the least and a grand way to celebrate the Olympics, family style.

Now we have a few wagon loads of day to plan the closing ceremony.  The opening ceremony was planned by my husband, Grambo, going to the dollar store and spending 10 minutes and $11.00 on the decorations and the equipment for some of the competitions.  

What can I expect with 2 weeks of planning???  Oh, dear!