Vancouver Olympics 2010

Brian and I had a wonderful time at the Olympics this week! We watched women's curling and men's aerial freestyle skiing. The city is packed with international guests, all wearing the elusive red gloves that I can't seem to get my hands on! Vancouver pulled off some fairly amazing public transportation projects that made moving literally thousands of people around the city and to and from venues as efficient as possible. We quickly became pros at navigating the new subway system and extensive bus routes to quickly take us wherever we wanted to go.

Curling is a really interesting sport. Imagine a combination of professional pool, bocci ball, shuffle board and horseshoes, played on ice with slippery shoes and little scrubbers that send the "rock" in one direction or another. It's a game of strategy, skill, and back strength. We really got into it. Luckily we sat next to two retired female curlers from Canada who filled us in on the silly lingo and rules.

Men's Aerial Freestyle Skiing was incredible to say the least. Watching this sport on TV absolutely does not do it justice. These guys literally flipped themselves 6 stories straight up into the air performing tight straight turns and flips all the way down to a difficult landing on a very steep hill. Some of them managed perfect landings while other's timing was off just a hair but enough to make the force of their fall slam their bodies backwards into the mountain. I could have sworn one of the men walked away from that with a concussion. Each one seemed to do just a hair better than the one before, making the final results a complete surprise. Happily one of our Americans, Jeret Peterson, kept the gold metal slot for quite a while until a Belarusian, Alexei Grishin, came through with a stunning gold metal jump at the very end. We took silver, and that was super exciting.

Overall, we had an extremely relaxing vacation this week. We slept in every day, ate great meals, hung out with a couple of Brian's cousins, Ali and Katie, and remembered what it was like before we were parents. Abby is happily spending the week with Grandma and Grandpa McFarlane in AZ, an exciting adventure in and of itself. I got to eat my favorite treat - crepes with nutella, banana, and strawberry - delicious!

Check out our pictures on flckr at:
www.flickr.com/photos/bdfamily

We'll have more pictures up soon!