The Big Cheese & Connections of Olympic Proportions

I did something today that I initially vowed I'd never do upon having kids... we went to Chuckee Cheese. We actually went for a birthday party. Who would have thought eating pizza with a giant rat would have been so much fun for a group of 4 year old kids and their younger siblings.


Of course the boys wanted to play and ride all of the stuff. They also had a giant maze to crawl through, much like the ones you see at chick-fil-a. All I know is that my kids got to play in a safe environment, ate lunch, played some more and came home tired. They had fun with their friends too.
A good time was had by all and Monkeyman got a really sweet gift from the birthday girl. She hand painted frames for all of her friends and Shannon glued the word friendship along with some shapes (ours were dinosaurs) to the frame. It was really sweet. Thanks Shannon. My boys had a blast.

Now to my personal Olympics news ....
I got an email from a friend I grew up with during my teen years yesterday. He and I were lifeguards together back in the day. After we both graduated from college he went into business and was very successful. A few years later he left his lucrative business career to become a teacher of sorts. He went to OSU (GO BUCKS!) to get a degree in sports management while on the side he helped coach a cross country team of a smaller college. He also was very involved in running himself, participating in many triathlons and competitions. After school he moved out to California to coach other distance teams. Along the way having opportunities to compete in Australia and having a life threatening accident due to being hit by a truck while cycling in California during training.

Back to the email... he dropped a line to me and many others to tell us that his job has changed again... he is currently in Beijing coaching the USA Triathletes. He went to the opening ceremonies and got many cool pictures attached below.







How cool is that? My mouth dropped after hearing this. So all of these pictures are from a friend of mine who attended the Opening of the Olympic Games and has a real room and is staying in Olympic village and will do all of the other things that coaches of Olympic teams do. I still can't believe it. You think I should ask him to try to get an autograph from our favorite swimmer????