"she's a diamond, and how will they cut her?!" or something like that.

i caught him practicing his figure skating in the bathroom mirror on sunday.

he swears he doesn't like the figure skating.

too girly for him.

then he begged for snowboarding all day.

and when can he learn to snowboard?

cause that's what he wants to do when he grows up.

cause he loves the manly kill moves they do.

and even though i kept plugging skiing and how you can do cool tricks on skis too,

he wouldn't back down.

sorry, dad, i tried my best.

and then i came around the corner to change a load of laundry.

my heart skipped a beat when i saw him glued to the figure skaters,

and then later practicing his spins and glides alone in the bathroom.

there's nothing i love more than seeing a softer side come out in a boy,

even if he won't fess up to it;)

...

my favorite part of the olympics?

watching the figure skating with sean,

and laughing about all of the commentary they give.

then we requote them back and forth to each other 

in our best commentary voices.

or sometimes we say it in our normal voices,

because that can be even funnier.

and then we laugh until we cry.

brian boitano is my favorite.

maybe it's my hometown bay area pride,

maybe it's his soft soothing voice,

maybe it's his passion of skating that comes through my tee-vee.

there's one thing for sure,

i LOVE with sean.

and it doesn't get any better than that:)

bring on the beginnings of olympic watching FHE!

knowing what it feels like {Olympic Park}

-friday october 18th, 2013-

you know the movie 

"a league of their own"

where they go to the baseball museum at the end,

and all of the ladies are there with their kids and grandkids,

and they're looking at the old baseball pictures of themselves and their teams,

and all of the memorabilia from their heyday of playing women's baseball during the war?

well that's what it was like walking through the 2002 salt lake city olympic 

memorabilia museum with my mom and my kids.

because when i saw the skiers in the black and white pictures on the wall,

i was scanning the pictures for my mom.

i just wouldn't have been surprised to see her in one of them.

and then she was like,

"Emily!!!"

and i thought to myself,

welp, there she is. i bet she found herself in one of those old pictures.

but then when i got over to her i realized that she wasn't in the picture,

but that she should have been.

because she was all,

"i was there! i did that! 

my senior year of high school! 

1963 and 64!"

and i was like,

"no way!"

and she was all,

"yes!!! and back then

we bought these punch passes to ski,

and your card had 10 punches,

and to do Thaynes Shaft one time 

it took TWO punches,

but it was so totally worth it,

so you did it because it was awesome,

and you went up in these mining cars,

and then up an elevator,

and you'd come out on top of the mountain, 

and then you got to ski down,

and i did this!

{pointing at the picture with a big, huge happy smile on her face, beaming so proud.}

can you believe i did this?!"

and i was just so happy to be there with her.

watching her hold chase in her arms.

telling us about a part of her life that i had never heard about before.

you know,

like one of those moments when you remember that your mom is a real person,

who had a real life before she was your mom,

and then you realize that your kids won't see you like that for a really really long time.

and it was just one of those great life moments.

2 minutes. 

tops:)

the kids were fascinated by the zip liners that would swoop down on cables right across the long jump.

i'm pretty sure they thought the green jump slopes were giant slides.

my favorite place to stand at the bottom of anything,

is right there at the bottom of those jumping slopes.

they make you feel so small.

but in a good way.

and for a minute i try to pretend what it might feel like to be Olympian.

walking in front of these massive slopes for the first time.

and how amazing it must be to stand at the bottom of them.

and then i think about how it's too bad i never wanted to be an Olympian

because that really must feel amazing.

but then this time,

i stood there staring at my kids stare at those slopes,

and it hit me.

i already know what it feels like:)