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.

Time For An Update

So the Kellys are finally residents of the Bible Belt (official motto: a Baptist church and a Curves on every corner)! We've spent a lot of time helping them get settled and just spending time with them, so we haven't set aside much time for blogging. They are getting settled in very quickly, and we're really happy that they're here. We'll put up some pics of their new digs soon, but we want to let them get settled before we go publicizin'.

It is now officially hiking season, as we took our first hike last weekend. We started out by exploring our backyard, which we had yet to do because of the mosquitos and then the cold. It was a good hike, but a fence keeps us from getting to the creek. We didn't see any snakes or spiders, but we did find a couple of Christmas trees. Now we know what to do with ours, since the garbage guys won't take it. Here's a picture of Matty and Chip making their way through the wilderness:

Our hike continued in the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield. Gabriel walked a good portion of it and rode the rest out in his Kelty.

As we returned to our car, we passed a very unconcerned herd of deer. Here is the biggest one staring us down:

We finally decided to contribute events to the MOMS Club calendar. This month, Gabriel and Mommy hosted a Starbucks outing, and Christopher brought his mommy, Lisa. Christopher is one month younger than Chip and has so much of the same personality and mannerisms, it's funny. They both have just started spinning in place until they get dizzy and fall down, and they both love to watch Elmo's World on Sesame Street. They're also both going through a slightly shy phase, but both were sharing books in no time.

Later this month, we are hosting a family night out at our house so everyone can meet everyone else's family. We're excited to host it and already know that there will be a few families here.

Gabriel is getting so darn cute. He's putting together lots of new sounds and can now say "th". He has quite long conversations with us sometimes. He also mastered the art of opening doors yesterday, to our nervousness, but he's learning a lot of good things by watching us, too. We were watching TV in the family room today while the Chipster roamed the house, and we came into the kitchen to discover that our little angel had emptied the silverware from the dishwasher and put it all away in the silverware drawer! Sometimes we wish we could give him a Good Boy pill, but other times we wish we could bottle up his sweetness and sell it at the mall.

We are planning on finishing our bathroom this weekend, now that Gabriel has somewhere to go and we have a drywall sander to borrow. We were able to make one really good home improvement this week already; Mom and Dad gave us an under-the-counter TV for the kitchen. It's making cooking, cleaning, eating, and blogging lots of fun, and it saved Matt today when the sound on our family room TV went on the fritz and he wanted to watch Seinfeld. It even has a little remote control that is magnetic so it can stick on the stove hood or refrigerator. So clever!

We promised more pictures... we deliver

We just got back our first roll of film from our new manual focus camera and wanted to share some of the results with our blog audience. We are very, very impressed with the way it takes pictures. On the actual prints the colors came out gorgeously, and the images are all very crisp and clear (where they are supposed to be).

Patty took this shot of one of Gabe's toys in the sunlight

And this one of Gabriel

We also picked up a set of photographic magnifiers so that we could use the camera to really get down close to things and take some detailed shots. They look like this: ...and they work great!

Gabe's toe Have we mentioned lately we're going to Peru? Yeah, we're so excited that we're taking pictures of the guidebook. We're going to set up a new shared album on Shutterfly with the rest of the pictures. If you want to be able to see them, send us an e-mail. Everyone who saw the last shared album will be able to see this one too.

We Go Live In 5...4...3...2...

This is our first video from Google Video, and since it's free, we plan to make many more.

Rolling the Dice

There is a new Yahtzee champ in town. Feast your eyes on this doozy of a score. And yes, that's three (3!) Yahtzees in one game. Beat that, Mom A!