Once every 4 years...

The summer Olympics begin today and I am counting down the hours till the opening ceremonies! It is no secret that i love all sports and grew up in a sports enthused family. Our family vactions were not so much vacations as they were driving to my siblings soccer tournaments when i was young. Even when we were not playing in actual games my siblings and I were "hosting" our own Olympics in the backyard. We had opening and closing ceremonies (equipped with fireworks if you can believe it) and we each picked a country we would represent. I was always Frace because at the time my "boyfriend's" last name was Franz. I think this is really where my love of Olympics, and all sports in general, started. It was usally just Terry, Sheila and I who would play, as I think Sean was old enough to realize how big of nerds we were; but we played every sport. All the events took place in our front or back yard and street and I'm fairly sure our neighbors thought we were nuts. Below is a description of some of the games we would play.

Baseball: with only 3 people it was a little difficult to field a team but ghost runners helped complete the games

Basketball: one on one with the person sitting out acting as ref

Tennis: Thanks to the cracks in our street we had what was a pretty good court, except if you got it past the opposing player then you had to run down the street after the ball.

Volleyball: a cleaned out garage, a ballet bar, a taped floor and a big rubber kids ball work wonders.

Track: your basic races in the front yard worked well for this event. And i vaguley remember the high jump consisting of the same ballet bar described above and some old mattresses placed underneath it

Our all time favorite was SOCCER: We used the rubber ball from volleyball (my parents would have been wise to take out stock in these since we went thru so many of them) and had two pillars on our house which we used as goal posts. Occasionally, we would have inclement weather, (thanks to a strategically places sprinkler) that we would have to play thru because that is what real soccer players do. No matter what the game would always end in penalty kicks and so we would line up by the curb and do our best to get it past the goalie.

Once all the games were over we would tally up which country was the all around winner and then hold, you guessed it, the medal ceremony. Now I am not sure if we had actual music for each countrys anthem but i do know we had medals. We would take our brother's old soccer medals that you got for competing in different tournaments and use them as our Gold medals. I dont think second or third ever actually got anything besides made fun of for not winning the whole thing(Gee i wonder if this is where my competitive drive comes from?:))

It is clear writing this that my brother, sister, and I had entirely too much time on our hands, but looking back now they really are some of my favorite memories. It was the most awesome thing to be able to hang with my older siblings and not actually have to force them to play with me. We still all laugh about these crazy things we did when we were kids. But it is no doubt where I got my love for all things Olympics. As I have gotten older, clearly i have learned to love the olympics for other reasons but thats a whole other post. So while you all will be going on with your daily lives you can bet that for the next 16 days I will be at home engrossed in the Olympics and my childhood dreams of standing on that podium, with the national anthem playing in the background and the real gold medal being hung around my neck...and secretely rooting for France! :)