Olympic Story part 4..

i realise some of my readers (if there are any out there??!) may be starting to get a bit sick of my olympic updates. Well im happy for you to pass this one by. I am, truthfully, documenting it for us and our family, which to be honest is why i write this blog when it comes down to it. 🙂

So….coming out of the Aquatic centre was a bit like leaving wembley after a concert…not the sort of thing you would generally see as a ‘must do’  experience with three small kids. So i took hold of my 3 year olds hand and made sure the older girls walked in front of me.  We made it out, found the water fountains and met up with the boys.

It was a busy day in the park, im sure there weren’t too many quite ones tbh but this was a big ticket day. Chris Hoy, Usain Bolt, just to name a few and so the numbers thronging round the park never seemed to die down. While we were in the Aquatic centre we kept hearing a noise that i had thought was thunder or a plane going over..when we came out we realised that it was in fact the noise from the athletic stadium. Mr. Bolt was in ‘da house’ 🙂

At the end of the morning session of athletics it became very congested. i guess a sudden influx of 80,000 people will do that. We had an idea of going to sit on the hill and eat our lunch where the big screen shows the events unfolding and to be honest i was a bit surprised to see a queue to get in. We decided against the queue and sat on an available bench near the incredible Velodrome and listened to the roars and shouts from the various venues that were near us.

We strode round the park, which is MASSIVE. It was lovely seeing people in amazing outfits…there to support their country. It was a big scandinavian day obviously and i loved how supporters dressed in their national dress would stop and pose for photographs. We walked along pathways lined with wild flowers in a wonderfully typical english summer type way. My girls oo’h and ahh’d at the exceptionally well trained police horses. The kids took a while jumping across the coloured spots area on the way out of the park. But lingering seemed to be encouraged. There was little presentations and buskers dotted around the park. This was, after all, for most of us a once in a lifetime and it was good to be able to soak up the atmosphere.

We left the park, passing by the fountain which displayed words of inspiration and hope that were spelled out by the droplets of water as they fell.  Tired but still smiling it was the end of our Olympic Story for now.

But we would be back.

This is part of my somewhat lame attempt to link up with my friend older single mum..you can find out about her challenge by clicking the lovely little link box below….

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Olympic story – part 3

Ticketing was a bit of a nightmare with the Olympics…

wait…really?? 😉

So we were unable to get tickets for all of us to go to the same event. Up till the night before we actually were unsure if all of us were going to be able to get in. We had four tickets, there were 3 kids and 2 adults who really wanted to go. So we had a bit of a sticky issue and it was looking like one of us adults would miss out. But thanks to the heroic efforts by my mum on the *@!***ing olympic tickets site we managed to get not 1 but 2 other tickets to get in..meaning that a certain little toddler could come along too.

The girls went to the Aquatic Centre and the boys went to watch a quarter final in the Women’s handball. Going into the aquatic centre was a bit strange. I dont think ive ever been to ‘watch’ such a big swimming event and having all the stall signs and seat numbers felt like we were going to get our seats in a theatre. A heads up from a games maker at the bottom of a set of stairs gave me a bit of an idea of how high we were going to have to climb to get to our seats. Needless to say 8 flights of stairs with a 3 year old on my hip left me a bit out of breath.

Interestingly we got to witness the limitations of the unusual shape to the roof of the aquatic centre. If one of those divers jumped really high on their take off they disappeared into the ceiling….wondering if they thought it through at design stage? hmmm…

There was a great atmosphere in the aquatic centre though and everytime the British diver stepped up the whole place became a sea of flags and bunting. On thing that really struck me in there was how completely bizarre it was that 17,000 people fell silent all at the same time when the diver was poised to jump..it was totally silent..you could hear the schusssing sound from the water jets breaking the surface of the pool.  I shusshed the kids a couple of times before i realised how ridiculous it was to think that their chatter was going to be heard all 200 odd rows of seats down.

The girls did really well, being as diving is actually quite hard for kids to follow. Its all scoreboard and a difficulty factor thingy. It was hard for me to follow let alone them. I did miss the commentary you get on the TV telling you what is going on. I think one of the most memorable moments for the kids was when a diver from the USA just sort of ‘belly flopped’ into the pool during his dive and the gasp from the crowd was just about as loud as the slap of his back hitting the water..ouch..

Meanwhile over at the Copper box..they had slightly closer seats to the action. My OH said ‘i think the only person closer to the goal was the press photographer!” They saw Norway V Brazil. Norway went on to win the Gold medal. They came away from it full of excitement and buzzing on the energy and thrill of the game. My son was thrilled to have been given a team Norway pin by a member of their squad who had been watching the game on their row. Something he treasures now. He was also pretty chuffed that he had spotted a Chris Evans interviewing gold medal winning athletes for his show on the way to the Copperbox.

that was the events done…now to explore the park……….

This is part of my somewhat lame attempt to link up with my friend older single mum..you can find out about her challenge by clicking the lovely little link box below….

 

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Continuing our Summer Olympic Story…part 2

Apologies folks..as you can no doubt see i have been fiddling with my blog design…..and that has sucked up huge amount of time…but im digressing and although i am SO totally stoked by my new look..im going to keep on track for the sake of this challenge.

So…

Entering the Olympic park reminded me a little of going through an airport, you had to show your tickets a lot, you were hearded through lots of roped gangways like cattle and then you had to walk through security scanners and put everything you were carrying in plastic box and send it through the scanner camera. That is where the similarity ended though. My experience of airports is usually always fairly stressy..travelling with kids is not easy at the best of times and adding security to that usually serves for some warp factor stress levels. Passing through London 2012 security was the totally opposite. We were met at the start of the cattle pens by the smiley, chatty, games makers, high fiving the kids and pulling the Bolt pose with their comedy ‘foam’ hands.

“hey what are you going to see?” “make sure you shout really loud!”

Passing through the security scanners being manned by some members of the RAF, I reprimanded my son for trying to shove the plastic boxes full of our stuff along the rails to the camera scanner. I only did this because he tried doing this in Manchester airport once and got scowled at and ‘take your hands off it” look from the operator……

“Don’t worry, its fine!” young Mr. RAF man smiled, winking at my son ‘we could give you a job here i reckon!’

Even when they had to confiscate a can of pop from our packed lunch the poor guy looked mortified and tried to convince us to wait and drink it rather than throw it away. I had forgotten it was in there. I had remembered  that you could only take empty water bottles through security to fill up on the other side. We, along with many others had added to the trail of hastily dumped water running from the bottom of the large planters that lined the path to the entrance gates. Im thinking those plants are either dead by now or triffid-like.

The games-makers, the military and the police were such a huge part of making the day a great experience. I know everyone has said it…the athletes, the politicians, the celebrities but it really would have been so much less without those little moments, winks, cheeky shout outs on the loud-speakers that, if nothing else, put a smile on your face.

Walking into the park was such a thrill…it was like walking into battle..we had come to support, shout, believe. Bringing our young family to be inspired.

It felt a little bit like finding a book and only reading the last chapter. In most cases we know nothing of what these athletes have gone through to get to that start line, the highs and lows that have got them to this point in their lives.. but we become players in the final, triumphant, closing  paragraphs of their story.  Willing them on,dreaming for the best of best ending to theirs and now our story too.

We were ready to bring it.

This is part of my somewhat lame attempt to link up with my friend older single mum..you can find out about her challenge by clicking the lovely little link box below….

 

one week

 

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Ill tell you what i want what i really really want

The Spice girls were back….briefly…yelling..um i mean singing…into the microphones at the Olympic games closing ceremony. Apparently its just a one off reunion. *collective sigh from all humankind*

Anyway the presenter of the games shouted in her enthusiasm “they really are the ultimate in girl power!’ …girl power its one of those catchphrases that we hear over and over again. Its bit like when at school we used to use the word ‘nice’ in a sentence. My english teacher would always roll his eyes and suck in his breath and say ‘nice is not a descriptive word, it means nothing!’ and it got me thinking..Has that term ‘girl power’ just become a term we use now for strong, positive, women or has it become merely a tag line for a bunch of loud, up too high, out too far, women with just a bit too much mouth?

In the weeks preceeding the closing ceremony, throughout the fantastic sporting spectacle that was the Olympic games things like this were popping up all over twitter and facebook:

Jessica Ennis is such a wonderful role model for young girls, none of this TOWIE rubbish, we need more Jessicas! – this comment alone got retweeted over 1000 times!

and:

and i wondered if really the sort of ‘girl power’ that the likes of the spice girls demonstrate and exhibit is really the sort of ‘girl power’ we should be shouting about and laying down as an example for our young women. It seems like there are a LOT of us who think that there is a very different type of woman that we would like to aspire to and more importantly that the new eyes of the young generation should notice above the nonsense, reality TV, be famous because you can puke on the pavement type person.

There didn’t seem to be many tweets  of ‘how inspiring are those fabulous spice girls careering around a stadium on a flashing black cab!’ ‘ from what i can see they are fairly miserable, constantly starving and self obsessed individuals. Looking for the quick and easy way to make money, loose weight, look browner, thinner, younger, cooler….

None of those characteristics i see in the 30 something Olympic rower who despite coming runner up with silver in the last couple of Olympic games, dedicated herself to getting her dream gold and for four years trained to get it.

 

I can’t imagine that any of those cyclists care for a micro-second what they look like when they are being interviewed after their dream has seen it fruition after so much work. Im thinking in the super hot and humid environment of the velodrome frizzy hair and no make up is probably standard anyhow!!

Their achievement is built on the fundamentals of dedication, committment, hard work, enduring through pain, setbacks, knock downs and holding fast to your dream no matter how far off it might seem, despite there being no ‘get there quick’ option. It is just all down to how much effort you, yourself put into it.. showing up, sticking with it…every.single.day.

In my opinion that is the sort of ‘girl power’ i want my little girls inspired by.

This is my very sadly very late  link up with my friend over at the Wednesday Witter.  Go check out some other ideas of the week.

 

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London2012 images, aquatic centre, olympic monets

#silentsunday images from the olympics

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