Winter Olympics (in Summer)

Now I know one of the reasons why it's been so long since I made a blog post. I forgot I started this one in March and never finished it! It's long overdue, but better late than never, right?

Friday February 28th

To celebrate the last day of summer, we had an office party to hold the winter olympics (in summer). I am so amazed at our social club committee for being so creative. I was really skeptical when I heard we were going to hold some actual events to compete for the gold, but it worked out wonderfully.

Opening Ceremonies

For whatever reason, I was chosen to bring in our "Olympic torch" to kick off the games. So I ran in waving it around and got a good laugh out of everyone.

Here we have moved outside to receive our instructions for the first event.

Event #1: Curling

How do you curl on grass, you ask? I was surprised at how well this really worked!

1. Spread out a large tarp to act as your ice rink
2. Fill some large buckets with soapy water and get a couple of sponge mops
3. Freeze a scrub brush that has a handle on it in some water inside a pie tin
4. Remove the pie tin and you have a curling stone

I got to be a sweeper for our team. Go team Norway!

And we were the best! See the blue handle? That's my team :)

Event #2: Tandem cross-country skiing

And the creativity continues. For this event, we had to "cross country ski" in tandem across the lawn. All it took were some straps to be stapled on to some 2x4's. Simple, yet effective! My team did not medal in this event, because I fell over. I was wearing high heels and had a hard time keeping my balance haha. But I didn't want to go barefoot and get slivers - oh well!

Event #3: Olympics Quiz + Lunch!

Mmmm - Subway! I was quite happy with the lunch choice today. It's not every day we get to order Subway sandwiches and they were tasty.

Anyway, for the third event we had a quiz - sort of like the quiz night game I posted about a year ago. Each team had questions specifically geared toward the country we were representing. Luckily we had done our research and knew questions like the capital of Norway, how many gold medals Norway won in the 2014 Olympics, and the population of the country. 

And once again - my team won this event! 

Enjoying food - and conversing with team Russia

And the winners are...

Team Norway!!! (can you tell my competitive side kicked in? I think patriotism is part of the DNA of Americans) We won the gold in 2 of 3 events, so we were the overall champions as well. What a satisfying day :)

We are anticipating our victory! From left to right - Quynh Tran, me, Laura Cotter, Caitlin Gray, Carl Stuart and Richard Perrett)

Caitlin is accepting our gold medals for the team - hip, hip, hooray!

And here we are donning our bling - and wore it proudly for the rest of the day!

Funny story. I really did wear my two gold medals for the rest of the day. That evening, Brian and I went to dinner at our favorite little middle eastern restaurant (that closed soon after) and while we were there I realized I was still wearing them. How embarrassing!