Summer Olympics

We all know full well by now that I am not generally the creative/planning/fun mom. So you can rest assured if you see something fun on here, it is probably the only fun thing my kids have ever done. EVER. Oh all right. It’s not as bad as all that, but I should put a little more effort into planning some special things more often. The kids love it so much when I do (of course . . . maybe they love it so much because it is so rare!).

Anyway, with all this Olympic business in the air, it seemed only fitting that we should have an Olympic themed family night.

During the day the kids created countries, made flags and arm bands, chose mascots, etc. We even made circle shaped sugar cookies and frosted them gold, silver and bronze for our medals (and, I must say, given my choice of four food colors, I did a pretty spectacular job of creating gold, silver and bronze frosting!).

Abe and Penny were from Penavia. Land of sharks.

Daisy and Jesse were from JDaisy (Juh-Daisy). Where the flower of the country has always been the lovely Daisy.

And Goldie and Anders came from the country of Somewhere – a country where sunflowers bloom, penguins roam and whose mascots include Jumpy the guinea pig and a stuffed Pac-man ghost.

In truth, the planning went off much more smoothly than the actual execution of the plans. When it came to event time, Anders was needing changed and fed for bed, Penny was having major meltdowns at every turn, and so forth. Abe had been so excited all day (which made me happy as he is getting old enough to maybe not be as easily excited about little activities of this nature). He spear-headed much of the planning and kept saying things like, “I am going to do a family night like this for my kids some day.” So, I felt a little badly about all of the distractions, etc. when it came down to the actual events.

Still, maybe it is all right. Mike’s aunt Leisa stopped by during the proceedings – long enough to cheer on a few contenders in the gymnastic trampoline routine. I confessed to her that things had not gone as officially and smoothly as the older kids had hoped, but she insisted that the planning of the whole thing was maybe just as fun and created just as many happy memories. I hope.

Anyway, here the young Olympians are participating in the grueling and little known “Carry a sibling as you run” race.

(You may be able to guess from the above photo what the mascot of JDaisy was)

And a wee bit of Goldie winning her silver medals in both the running and the standing long jump.