Flashback Friday: The Olympics

Are you watching the Winter Olympics?

We are!
Kevin and I both love playing sports, watching sports & attending sporting events!
We especially love the Olympics.
My first memory of watching the Olympics was when I was 5 years old and I watched on TV as Mary Lou Retton won the gymnastics Gold in 1984 Summer Olympics. That started my obsession with the Olympics.

I wanted to be an Olympian so badly. Obviously that didn't happen, but a girl can dream, right?

Imagine my excitement when my parents told us at Christmas of 1995 that they were taking us to the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. My sisters and I were ECSTATIC!
Luckily for us, some of our family friends had just moved to a suburb outside Atlanta and they graciously invited us to stay with them for the week.
The events that my parents got us tickets to were the 2 Women's Soccer Semi-Final games and tickets to see Track & Field.
(These were the 2 events we wanted to see because my younger sister and I were both heavily involved in Soccer and Track).
Of course, we would have loved to see gymnastics, but those tickets were hundreds of dollars. Oh well!
I will never forget our flight from San Francisco to Atlanta. Almost everyone on the flight was going to the Olympics & was wearing red, white & blue. It was so fun to hear everyone excited & talking about what events they were going to.
The American & Olympic spirit was alive and contagious!
Our first event was on the 2nd day we were in Atlanta. We were going to see 2 Women's Soccer games, both semi-finals. It was a double header held at the University of Georgia.
(My dad fell in love with the University of Georgia during this trip and since then has been a die hard Georgia Football fan. He even likes Georgia Football more than he likes my alma mater, the University of Colorado!)
The first semi-final was China vs Brazil (China won)
The 2nd semi-final was USA vs Norway (USA won)
Both games were amazing & so exciting.
Our original plan was to see track & field the next day and then after that, head to Savannah, Georgia for a few days of sight-seeing.
Because the US Women won the game & were heading to the Gold Medal game, my awesome parents decided to find tickets to the Gold Medal Soccer game & not go to Savannah.
We were able to get tickets to the Bronze medal game AND the Gold Medal game.
It was amazing. The US Women beat China to win the Gold Medal.
It was an experience I will never forget & so fun to witness.
(A year later, when I was playing college soccer I actually played against 2 girls who were on the Gold Medal winning Olympic team!)
The next day, we hung out all afternoon in the Olympic Village.
It was crowded! But, it was fun to see people from different countries who have traveled from across the world to attend the Olympics.
We got to hold the Olympic torch used in the torch relay:
(I can't believe how tan & in shape I was. Oh, to be 17 again!)

This next picture is classic & typical me as the middle child.......
Here we are on the "medal" stand. Of course I insisted on being the Gold medal winner. And poor Becks was the bronze medal winner.
We also went to a track meet, but I don't have the pictures from that because we lost the roll of film from that day. I still haven't gotten over it ;) The track meet was great, even though we had seats in the nose bleed section. We got to see Michael Johnson & his gold shoes.

The last few days of our trip were spent sight-seeing in the South.
Growing up in California, most of our family vacations were to Lake Tahoe or to Oregon.
We had never been to the South, so it was fun to experience.
We went to Chattanooga, Tennessee and went to several historical plantations in Georgia.
We also went to the Whistle Stop Cafe, where Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed:

One of my favorite things about the South is Cracker Barrel!
We don't have those in California.
We became OBSESSED with Cracker Barrel and ate there almost everyday of our week long trip. I have now had a 14 year love affair with Cracker Barrel.
(Remember our trip to Florida last year? I made Kevin go to Cracker Barrel everyday!)

This trip was also the first time we were introduced to Sweet Tea. Oh my goodness! So good.
Here in California, if you order an iced tea, you just get plain ice tea, no sugar.
Sweet tea is Amazing. I could drink it by the gallon. Do you know how happy I was when McDonald's starting selling sweet tea 2 years ago? Yumminess for just $1.

This past October, I was able to actually hold an Olympic medal!
This is me with SF Giant & USA baseball player Nate Schierholtz at our High School Athletic Hall of Fame Induction dinner. He was on the USA Olympic Baseball team that won the Bronze in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
{I was surprised at how heavy the medal was!}

I am so thankful that my parents gave us the opportunity to go to the Atlanta Olympics!
I would LOVE my girls to experience that. And, I would love to experience it again!
On my "Bucket List" of things to do before I die is to go to the Winter Olympic Games.
I would like to experience the Olympic Games with the winter sports.
I would love to see figure skating, speed skating, snowboarding, downhill skiing & curling (for reals)
I better start saving now!

I hope you have been enjoying watching this year's Winter Olympics, it has been full of excitement & drama (of course!) I can't wait for the women's figure skating to start in a few days! What is your favorite event to watch?