Today was Arizona Star Reporter and Photography Day-July 31

The Arizona Star had contacted us about a story after our neighbor alerted them to this interesting Olympic family.  We met at Martin's and they were shocked when they saw all the stuff we had collected and laid out on Martin's large dinning room table.  Chuck and I had been looking for things for a day after they called.  We even found a pamphlet from the 1964 Olympics that said that the Opening Ceremonies were between 500  yen and 8,000 yen which in those days meant about $1.50 to $19.00 for tickets.  Beijing Opening is about $250 - $800.  What a difference 44 years makes.  We had the seat cushions from Tokyo, Sapporo, and Salt Lake City.  Cow bells, olympic glasses, old tickets plus the new ones for this year, t-shirt from Lake Placid, of course tons of pins.  We even had a slide show with Olympic music playing while they looked at the stuff.  Martin had made a CD of about 30 pictures and we had a contact sheet all labeled.  We had a backdrop of four Olympic posters collection that Martin and Jessica had started in Atlanta 1996 Olympics all framed and beautiful.  Chuck and I had also complied an outline of Highlights from each of those 14 Olympics.  The Photographer asked for a ladders so he could get an aerial shot of all the stuff.  The reported said people would really like to know how two school teachers were able to afford this.  So we told them about "56 Chevy camper we took to Montreal 1976 and Martin told them how he froze in Calvary, Canada 1988 sleeping in the Le Sharo camper in the cold winter.  We also shared about our home stay in Sapporo and Nagano,  Japan and in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.  Not sure the overwhelmed reporter and photographer survived their hour and half visit.  We will see if there is something in the Arizona Star on Sunday, August 10th.  The photographer shared that he also was a Tour de Tucson bike rider and had a signed Lance Armstrong yellow jersey and had ridden with him.  I told him I also rode the Tour de Tucson but Martin made me fess up to the fact that I only did the 35 miles and the photographer was really talking about 115 miles race. I just forgot to say that part.  It was a fun morning reliving our experiences and looking forward to more.  

Blessings,  Judi and Chuck

Torino

Here we are with our friend Al Roker in Torino in 2006.

Bonvoyage!!!

Bonvoyage,
Well we are excited about Beijing and this new blog idea. Trying to keep up with these kids. We even got a new iphone. Love it so far. We can remember Martin's first Olympics in Montreal, Canada in 1976. His first words were red, white and blue. Well this will be Martin's 10th Olympics and Papasan Chuck 14th. We are so glad he is continuing the family tradition. The flight to Beijing is 11 hours but we haven't told Shelby and Luke.
Keep checking... we leave Aug.4th and are packing only 44 pounds for 23 days SO we will be lookng for a good chinese laundry in Beijing.
USA USA USA USA USA USA USA JUDI

Welcome to the Official Olympic Family's China Adventure blog. We are super excited about our upcoming trip and want to share as much as we can to family and friends. We are scheduled to leave on August 4th to give us a couple of days to explore the city and get acclimated, prior to the start of the games on August 8th. Jessica and I are going to be attending the Opening Ceremony, which we are hoping will have a couple of fireworks. The shirts below are a mock up some shirts we are having made so if you see a family in alternating red, white, and blue shirts with that design, it is probably us. Or we ran out of money and traded them for rice. I am hoping that the whole family will be contributing to the blog to give a it an interesting perspective. Oh wait Luke would like to contribute (eghkbgeopkjgesvhuokngesvhiplnhfrdc). Thanks Luke, provocative stuff. Also, we will posting pictures as much as possible. We are new to our iPhones and will not be taking the computer so bear with us.