Gold Standard

Whoa Nelly! It has been a busy week. Olivia wrapped up most of her summer classes, Olivia and I had a short vaca in Door County while Chad conferenced and, of course, Olivia threw out the first pitch. However, the most all consuming event at our house has been the Olympics. We are all huge fans of the Olympics and the new tv and satellite television has made this year a non-stop Olympics extravaganza. We are currently recording two different channels and watching a third so we don't miss a minute of the obscure craziness. Here is a perfect example of the craziness: We have been painting all evening, I put the kid to bed, instead of bathing or washing in any way we both run down the stairs strip to underwear and sit on the floor in front of the tv so we don't get paint on the couch. Two hours later we are still here.

I don't know why I love them so much, probably because the majority of the athletes competing are people who work hard and get no love or respect from America. Synchronized diving, girls, you rock! The fact that it is in China has been a huge bonus in our house. Chad has been to China and we have had endless conversations about the art, culture, food, politics in the years since his visit. It also coincides nicely with Olivia being exposed to some Mandarin. However, Chinese is the least of it. Hearing Hungarian, Romanian, Japanese, watching the opening ceremonies and seeing countries that you didn't even realize existed is amazing to me. It is inspiring no end of wanderlust here for sure.

The best part is teaching Olivia about losing. One of her first questions was about what happens to the losers. We got to say in all confidence that were no losers, that just having the opportunity to compete made everyone winners. That most of the people that "lost" only lost by a fractions of a second. And that all of their mommies and daddies were proud of them no matter what.