Bronze, Silver and Golden Opportunities

At the Smith house, were fully immersed in this year's Olympic Games.  We stayed involved by watching on TV, reading articles and results online, playing our own games at home, and even sampling cuisine from other countries.


We took the opportunity to make it a fun learning experience for Emry.  We normally don't watch much TV, but it has been on every night since the opening ceremonies.  Emry has enjoyed watching cycling, swimming, running, tennis, gymnastics and basketball.  Oddly enough, the two events that she cheers for the most are diving and equestrian.  During the diving events, she would clap her hands and say "yeah" after every dive.  During the equestrian events, she would cheer and say "yeah horsey!" or "horsey jump" each time they would clear a gate.

While watching the gymnastics Emry noticed the strange move gymnasts do at the end of every event where they throw their hands in the air, puff out their chest and stick their butt back.  Maren taught Emry to do that move and say "Ta-Da!"  So now E will do somersaults, stand up and say "ta-da!"

We've eaten a lot of different meals the past couple of weeks too.  To honor the origin of the Olympics, we ordered Greek cuisine from Manna the night of the opening ceremonies.  Its one of our favorite take-out places.  We've also made several new ethnic recipes at home including black bean burritos, sweet & sour chicken, Indian chicken curry, and fish & chips.  Emry has actually eaten all of the different meals, even the curry...



FYI - Turmeric stains everything...Faces, hands and even skillets. 
Even after a good scrubbing, we had some very yellow
pancakes for breakfast the next morning.

While watching the games on TV is pretty fun, everyone knows that playing them is a lot more fun.  In a previous post, I mentioned how our kids might think they live in the 1980's.  Well, when the track and field events started for the Olympics, we dusted off the NES and played World Class Track Meet!

Yes, that is a single tear of joy running down my cheek

Anyone who knows my history with Nintendo knows that this was a big deal to introduce it to the girls. This one event combined my 3 favorite things in the world(in no particular order):
1. Time with my family
2. Running
3. The Nintendo Entertainment System. 

We taught Emry all the tricks to get the Nintendo to work, like blowing the dust out of the game cartridge...

And as you can see, not only do we still have a working Nintendo, but we are proud owners of the Power Pad! 

For anyone who doesn't know(and I feel sorry for those of you who don't), the Power Pad was basically the original Wii.  The Power Glove was another attempt Nintendo made as an "interactive controller."  Although these devices weren't wireless, for kids in the 80's this was pretty cool technology...you can see how cool these kids look in this commercial...

Yeah, we were playing with power!  Usain Bolt has nothing on us!

You heard Emry saying "Jump One!" at the end of that clip.  She was referring to the long jump, which she was pretty good at...

One last thought about the Olympics...I posted the lame commercial for the power pad, but how weird were the Fruit of the Loom commercials that played during every single break??  Who goes to the beach in their boxerbriefs to workout on the on rings??

Emry thought those commercials were so funny that we decided to make our own...

 

We hope everyone enjoyed the 2012 Olympics as much as the Smith's did!