Olympic Party

After months (read: years) of waiting, the magical time has finally arrived!  As I compose this, I'm also watching women's gymnastics on TV.


Confession, Part I: I'm a Michael Phelps fan.  Well, maybe not him personally so much as his accomplishments.  He's two medals (of any color) away from being the most decorated Olympian in modern Olympic history.  You have to admit that that's pretty epic.


Confession, Part II: If Phelps misses his target and doesn't beat the record, that's okay with me, because I'm kind of enjoying his flop.  That might make me a bit of terrible person, but I'm okay with that.  But in the last two weeks, I've seen some interviews that painted him with a less than humble brush.  He has admitted to not working as hard as he should have, skipping practices, and other such related poor choices.  Bad decisions certainly have their consequences and he may be realizing that more than ever right now.


On Friday, we hosted two couples for a small Opening Ceremony Party.  I'd LOVE to be able to have invited more but our living room is small and I've recently realized that us and 2 more couples is about all we can accommodate comfortably.  So my brother and sister came up from Albuquerque and our friends Chris and Sarah rolled in from Santa Fe to enjoy this event with us.


For dinner, we had some Shepherd's Pie in honor of the hosting nation.  For dessert, a cake decorated with the Olympic rings in fruit:

In addition to themed food, we had some games of our own.  First was a little croquet:

Of course, there had to be a podium for the winners:

Sarah, Chris & Claire

I'm sure you didn't notice the beers they were holding.  In a stroke of brilliance, Chris and Sarah brought beer that was themed towards Olympic medals.  As pictured below, we've got a beer with the word "GOLDen" in the title, Coors (the SILVER bullet) and a Dos Equis Amber, whose label was quite BRONZE if you ask me :).

In addition to the croquet action, Claire and Nick had brought some hula hoops to play with.  It needs to be pointed out that these were not regulation hula hoops.  They were made out of irrigation tubing and INCREDIBLY heavy.  Quite the ab workout, even painful at times when more than one hoop was used at the same time.

Look out into it Leni got!

Enjoy this video of some of our hula hoop games:

Without a doubt, my favorite activity was our very own torch relay!  It was planned to include everyone but be a surprise to Chris and Sarah upon their arrival:

Oh yeah and we watched the Opening Ceremony, long as it was.  I was impressed with the entire orchestration.  The amount of times that the staging and props on the floor changed right in front of our eyes was amazing.  It was a great blend of history, dramatics and humor.  Favorite moments included the live performance of "Chariots of Fire" with a cameo from Mr. Bean, the Queen "parachuting" in from above, and the part with the five huge rings coming together overhead.  I wasn't overly impressed with the actually lighting of the torch but the torch apparatus itself was pretty cool.  Great Britain should be very proud of the show they put on.

Hope everyone enjoys the next two weeks of events.  I know I will!

Keep It Real!