After I took a picture of Holly by the Olympic banners on the fence, she insisted on taking one of me!
We had to wait for about 40 minutes after we arrived because they were cleaning up after the last set of spectators had exited. Luckily, we got to see the mascots again! They took our picture for us, so I got to be in it, too!
The media section - a full house tonight!
Clean ice - ready for competition . . . across the way on the right is the IOC section (you can see small white squares on the seats) - we didn't see them, but I heard after that the King and Queen of Sweden were there.
We've been lucky with seats at events so far - these ones were at the top of a small set of stairs, so no one was sitting in front of us. We were right by the "house", so half of the action was right in front of us - and we happened to have the Canadian women's team curling on the sheet closest to us!!! Holly is ready to cheer, with a snack in hand and her cowbell around her neck. Thanks Uncle Jim for buying it at the hockey game last night!
Warming up . . .
Pipers leading the countries in . . .
Holly watching the matches intently. This was after a nearly one hour nap she had on my lap at the start of play. She fell asleep just after the teams came in, saying to me, "Mommy, I wish they had beds here!". The crowd was nuts for Canada - cheering, stomping their feet on the metal bleachers, etc, etc. . . but she slept through it all!
. . . having fun . . .
And after all the excitement, and 3 hours later Canada won their game! The match went into extra ends when the 3 other games had ended - the last shot (which was at the other end, so I couldn't get a picture) was by Canada, straight down the ice to stop almost dead centre in the middle of the button - what a great shot! Who thinks curling is boring?! Not me! And after seeing it live for the first time, Holly wants to curl in the Olympics, too!
Before the Games started, Paul asked her what she might like to do in the Olympics and she replied, "Gardening!". We had to explain that it wasn't a sport, but that she could swim, or ski. She liked the idea of swimming and I said, maybe she could even do a triathlon. After asking me what a triathlon was, and I told her it was swimming, biking, running, she said "I can bike and run!" - so it was possibly swimming, triathlon or skiing for the Olympics. We saw a bit of figure skating and I thought it might be fun for her to try since I used to be a figure skater, but when I asked if she'd like to try it, she said "no". Now after tonight, she's decided curling is the sport of choice. . . future Olympian? That would be cool!
