Va!

That means "go", and it's the title of the Olympic Hymn sung today at the opening ceremony. The part of the ceremony where the people formed a giant cross country skier, then a downhill skier, then a ski jumper was just awesome. That was the coolest thing we've seen in a long time. Unfortunately, we can't find a photo of it yet. And the Ferrari Formula One car doing donuts in the stadium was super cool... but why did they play a medley of American old dance music, and what the h-e-double hockey sticks was Susan Sarandon doing carrying the Olympic flag? Was she the most important American woman they could find, or was Jessica Simpson busy today?

We're writing this as the ceremony is being broadcast, so here goes some train of thought. Currently, there are acrobats forming a giant dove, which is great symbology, but, like, okay TIME OUT. Why is Yoko Ono reading onstage? What is going on? Is Torino in California? We thought it was supposed to take place in Italy... And of course, here is Italy's favorite native son, PETER GABRIEL. We love the guy's music and give him extra props for making the music for Patty's favorite game, Myst IV, but can he please stop singing Imagine? Even Kevin Spacey sings it better! The commercials, though, are way better than the Superbowl. And here comes the flame. Alberto Tomba is bringing it into the stadium, cool, and here is the 1994 Italian cross-country gold medal-winning team, good, and they're handing it off to a 1976 slalom guy, okay, whatever, big honor, good for him, and here is an alpine skiier who won gold in 3 different games, and now the flame lighter - the most decorated Italian Olympian ever with 10 medals in 5 Olympics, apparently a cross-country skiier. Huh, actual Italians. Well, at least they're embracing the international thing. And Sweden, by the way, wins the award for coolest mittens. Oh, and one serious question: Is Torino the same thing as Turin? The Pope did bless the flame, after all...

Okay, to on to our personal news for today. We trapped Mom and Dad in our house all day so we could work on the bathroom (and get Matt's hair cut, FINALLY), and we got a ton done. We sanded, cleaned up all the edges, and plastered some more. We have a schedule to get the painting done by Sunday and then finish the cleaning up and decorating throughout the coming week. We moved the toilet out onto the back deck. It gives new meaning to "when nature calls":

Gabriel loves to be helpful. Since he unloaded the dishwasher yesterday, he decided to load it back up today. We found him in the kitchen loading all of our clean silverware into the basket in the dishwasher. Here is a photo of our little cutie - you can see how neatly he got everything in there:

We had a good time before dinner watching a video we got at the library about helicopters. It was an IMAX movie, and we found it in the kids' section, but we all three generations loved it. There was even a section with Marines flying over Onslow Beach, which is where we stay when we go visit Jack.

We also set up the train set that Aunt Laura gave him for Christmas today. He LOVES it! With it, he learned how to turn a crank, and he caught on to the remote control for the train right away. He didn't want to go to bed; he just wanted to stay up all night playing with it. We will be surprised if he doesn't spend all day tomorrow playing with his train.