Enjoying Charleston and the Olympics

We have been away since Thursday enjoying a relaxing vacation in Charleston, South Carolina.  This vacation was somewhat different than what we typically do.  Normally we plan our vacation (or should I say, I do this and drive the husband crazy) down to every last detail from where we’ll go and what we’ll do each day and even where we will eat.  But with the stress I’ve been feeling lately from work I decided to make note of a few places we could visit and if we made it there it would be good, if not that would be good as well.  Our main goal was to just be away from home and relax.
Also, we couldn’t help watching the Olympics in the evening either before or after dinner.  So we’ll be back sharing our vacation and perhaps some favorite Olympic moments.
I will share a couple of things with you right now.  Charleston is fabulous but DO NOT go in July or August.  Did you hear me?  I said DO NOT go in the heat of summer.  The PGA Championship will likely be thinking this as well at the end of this week.  Living in St. Louis we’ve always talked about summer heat being bad but that we get more humidity than my family in Kansas.  But there is nothing like the humidity in Charleston in August.  But we muddled through and we’ll talk about our coping mechanism as well as what we did for fun.

London Olympics – Week 1 Review

We have enjoyed the first week of the Olympics in our home this week. As Americans we typically rally around our home team, but the week started off with us being sad about the Men’s Road Race in cycling. We were all cheering for Mark Cavendish, but after his effort in the Tour de France he was unable to medal in London.  We enjoyed the diving competitions as we spent many years at the pool cheering on our son during his high school diving career. The U.S. has done well in the medal totals and we’ve cheered on Team GB as we love England and our friends across the pond.
The rest of this blog is for your viewing enjoyment – faces and photos from the first week. Click on each picture for a companion article from a multitude of news agencies.

Mark Cavendish at the finish of the Men’s Road Race for Team GB

Women’s Skeet Test Firing medalist Kim Rhode is the first American competing in an individual sport to receive a medal in five consecutive Olympics.

Michael Phelps now holding the record for most Olympic medals

Women’s Gymnastics scores gold in the team competition

And now some pictures just for fun

Element of surprise

The worst thing about the Olympics this year is the coverage that we are suffering through with NBC programming.  Granted London is 5 hours ahead of New York and so all prime time programming is for events that have already been completed but, Hello, some of us have to work but would still like to know the thrill of the unknown.
Missy Franklin scored gold in the backstroke but we knew it before the race took place because NBC had to run an ad to promote the dang Today show stating that they would be interviewing gold medal winner Missy Franklin the next morning.  It’s no wonder Today has repeatedly fallen behind Good Morning America in ratings recently.  But regardless, congratulations Missy Franklin.

As we watched a profile on Franklin regarding her refusal to take any endorsement deals so that she could still compete on a high school level, my husband and I joked wondering if she was the Colorado State High School Champion in her events. So I took to the internet to find the results and found this article: http://www.maxpreps.com/news/3Zk8MgaeyUucfuIE7IyUJA/missy-franklin,-bonnie-brandon-electrify-the-class-5a-state-swim-meet.htm
One of the quotes in the article has Franklin stating that, "It's so great to be with my sisters and be with my team and enjoy it. State is unlike any meet out there, it's definitely one of a kind, and I want to be there as many times as I can."  Wonder how it compares to the Olympics?

A Skill By Any Other Name…

Friday night the husband and I were watching the Gymnastic Olympic Trials with our daughter.  We enjoyed watching all the routines and talented gymnasts.
One of the gymnasts was Sarah Finnegan from St. Louis.  Finnegan performed a skill on both the beam and in the floor exercise.  As we aren’t experts in gymnastics we didn’t know if this skill had a name or not.  Finnegan extended one leg and spun three times on one foot. (See video at 25 seconds)

I looked this up on the internet and apparently it is called a Triple Wolf Turn or as Finnegan likes to call it the Humphrey Turn after a gymnast Terin Humphrey who was apparently the first to perform this skill.
However, from now on as we go through to the Olympics the husband has proclaimed this skill as the Finnegan Spin-Again.  So we here claim the rights to this name – NBC take note if you use this during the Olympic Coverage we expect royalties.