Olympic Excitement

About a month before the Olympics started Jalen was getting really excited about it. He would constantly tell us how many days until the olympics were going to be on, and kept asking us lots and lots of questions about it - 'what do the rings mean?', 'how many countries go in the olympics?', 'when was the first olympics?', 'have you ever been to the olympics?', 'which one were your favourite olympics?'......

Jay had more questions than we had answers for, so we would tell him to go and look up on the net (didn't want to be like the Dad on the Bigpond ad who told his son that the Great Wall of China was built to keep the rabbits out! ;) He would then look it up and would tell us all these facts about the olympics - 'did you know at the very first olympics they competed with no clothes on!', 'the next Olympic games are going to be in London', 'the first Olympic games were in Athens'. Once his class at school started their unit on the olympics Jay already knew it all, but was so excited to do it at school as well. He loved looking up the official website and would print out the pictograms to go with each sport.

On the night that the olympics started Jalen desperately wanted to stay up to watch the opening ceremony, but it was on way too late so we recorded it so he could watch it the next day. For the past two weeks he has been glued to the TV whenever he is home. Harri has also gotten into it and Jay often gives us bits of information that he heard from the commentators. He also loved reading the paper every morning and seeing the medal count.

The boys both loved watching the swimming especially and also the track and field events. Harri was totally obsessed with Stephanie Rice and Grant Hackett for some reason. Whenever he would see Grant Hackett he would yell 'there's Green Packet!'. It cracked me up. Now at least he calls him 'Grant Packet'.

Harri would always ask 'who does Stephanie Rice go for?', and I would say she was from Australia and he would get so excited and say 'we are from Australia too!'.

Now whenever Harri sees an Australian flag he gets so excited and says 'its an olympic flag!!'. The other day we were grocery shopping and Coles had Australian flags all over the store. Harri was so excited and said 'Olympic flags Mum!'. I said to him that they were actually Australian flags and he was so excited and said 'we go for Australia Mum!'. A lady walking past cracked up laughing.

For the past two weeks the boys have been having their own olympic games. Jalen made his own torch and they loved the gold medals that I had made for Primary music time, and had been awarding themselves with them all week. They set up a volleyball net inside using a sheet between two chairs and used a balloon as the volleyball, they also tried their hand at the gymmastics!


Yesterday Jalen was still sick, so he had the day off school. He didn't mind as it meant he got to watch the closing ceremony that we had recorded the night before. Last night he was complaining that there was 'nothing on TV' and wanted the olympics back on. This morning Jay and Harri were both glued to Sunrise as they watched the Australian Olympians arrive in Sydney. Jay cracked us up and some guy got off the plane with a medal around his neck and Jay asks Aaron if it was so and so. Aaron had no idea who he was even talking about, and either did I and Jay goes 'you know Dad - the rower!'. He knows them all better than us.

Today at school it was Jalen's turn for 'speakers box' (sharing) so he took Aaron's Sydney 2000 book that we bought just after the Sydney olympics and lots of the newspaper articles that he had saved from this olympics to talk about. It's going to be a long 4 years for him to wait until the London Games begin!