A Sad Farewell to the Olympics

I think I have felt the same way every Olympic year for as long as I have been old enough to appreciate the Olympics. Shocked that it is already over. It goes by so quickly. We all enjoyed the Olympics a great deal, and stayed up way too late every night for the past 2 weeks. We missed most of what showed during the day because we had a hectic couple of weeks with daddy being home and football starting, but we were all glued to the tv every night.

I was pulling for the US to beat China in the gold medal count, but we didn't quite make it. It was however so exciting to watch some of our underdogs --Men's Water Polo -- win medals that no one expected them to win. It was also sad, and disappointing to watch some of our athletes who were favored in events but did not even reach the finals. The most disappointing to me was to watch the women's gymnastics team loose to children who should not have even been competing. We still did outstanding but how sad. The second most disappointing event to me was the mens 200m race in track. I was shocked that they disqualified two runners for stepping on the line. I know that it is "the rules", however: neither runner stepped into the other lane -- only had a toe on the line, and neither runner impacted the race of any other runner by stepping on the line. I thought it was totally contradictory to the Olympic spirit to DQ them. The US runner who received the bronze due to their misfortune said it best " I may have a medal but I still got beat. They still beat me". The last major disappointment to me: we are eliminating baseball and softball from the Olympics after this year, but we still consider badminton and ping pong to be viable Olympic sports? HMMM.Another interesting note about the week: why were the womens sand volleyball players wearing next to nothing bikinis while the men were required to wear shirts? Great moments for me: watching Phelps win by a fingernail. Watching the mens 4x400 team smoke the competition. Seeing the US put forth a respectable basketball team. Seeing the US women take first and second in the gymnastics individual all around despite China's seeming dominance. Watching the Men's water polo team beat Serbia. Seeing women's soccer take the gold medal. Watching Sasha's pommel horse routine -- WOW. Watching the men's sand volleyball pull out a win for the gold.WHEW -- Ok I fell asleep after game two and woke up just after they won game three for the gold. LOL.

The Olympics really has Zeke excited about swimming. He wanted to know if the medals were real gold, and he told me maybe one day he would be a champion swimmer and go to the Olympics. I am already registered with the 2012 Olympic web site so I can receive emails about when events will be and when tickets go on sale(2011). We are hoping maybe by then we can take the kids and attend a couple days in person. Wouldn't that be awesome. We need to start saving our money now.