Olympics

My sister Alesha has ALWAYS been obsessed with the Olympics.  I am sure that we recreated our own Olympics hundreds of times growing up.  Well now that we are older we still try and recreate the Olympics for our kids.

Alesha has her basement decked out with Olympic decorations trying to make it their home base to watch them.  When her kids' friends come over and ask what all the decorations are about, she is quick to launch in that it's the Olympics "Aren't you watching them?!?!"

She started this Olympics out with a little party.  Of course there was a torch that was run from one floor to another in their house.  We broke her battery operated torch at my mom's when we had our last Olympic party so she took a bedpost and whipped up another.

There were ski events to compete in.  And clever Alesha DID NOT have to rent skis, NO she just made her own for the kids.

In fact it looks like the kids' even got to decorate them.  That is not possible on rentals!  I'm sure you could even tape slippers on to cardboard strips for bigger sized skis.  Here is an action shot with the skis -

This is actually the biatholon where you ski and shoot.  Water guns work just fine for that, unless they are shooting at you instead of the targets.

They did a luge down the stairs on sleeping bags.  Then they drew names for partners and took turns doing the bobsled with their partner pushing them.

Lee had her kids help decorate.  She had a snowball toss (cotton balls) into the Olympic rings and suggested that a snowball (big marshmallow) fight would be fun to do  Of course refreshments were donuts to be like the Olympic rings.  Alesha is even choosing a different country to feature each night until the Olympics are over.  She chose Mexico first and her 13 year old was quick to look up and point out that they don't have an athlete in the Winter Olympics.  Oh well!

Our last summer Olympics we were together at my mom's house.  Each family had to design their own flag and march into the backyard.  There were cards that each of the kids got where they could record how far they jumped, ran, threw ...  Medals were awarded to everyone.  Chinese food was served because that's where the Olympics were being held.  Alesha had signs on all the telephone poles to get us excited as we were driving to mom's.  She even had a drug testing table.  It was basically a sign and then cups of apple juice for you to drink, (yeah she was trying to be funny). 

Toilet paper was used as the finish line to cross.  It seemed like all the kids loved to break through the finish line.  I think that every homemade Olympics has to have toilet paper finish lines.

Here is a picture from the day, everyone looks so young to me.

Alesha IS always quick with an Olympic story of determination and hard work.  It's fun to talk Olympics and do our own analyzation of them.  I really think that Lee and I could take over Bob Costa's job and keep everyone entertained and excited about the Olympics.