Olympics: Day 8

Saturday was our final day at the Olympics.

After saying good-bye to Brian's parents that morning, Brian and I headed to the train station to drop off our luggage, then to the Olympic Superstore for a few last minute purchases. Brian even found a great Canadian scarf (though I failed to get any pictures of it) he thought would be perfect to wear as we cheered for Canada in the Men's gold medal match of curling.

We arrive at the Olympic center for our last event and waited in anticipation of a good match.

The Canadian Women's team even showed up (with their Silver medals in tow) to watch and cheer on the Men's team. We saw some amazing hits, takeouts and steals and overall just some amazing curling! It was soooo much fun to be there and experience such a greatly played game in person. We were also finally able to see the famous Norway Men's teams pants that had made headlines and they were just as funny in person...in fact, during the first curling event Brian and I attended at the start of the week, someone held up a sign that read: Canada's Men = Gold Norway's pants = Silver Super funny and turned out to be super true! Can I tell you how excited those boys were to win the gold....the red rock still has to hit the yellow rock out of the rings to win, but it doesn't matter, they now they have won and are already celebrating

and yes, the yellow rock did leave the rings, so it was official at that moment that Canada had won the Gold and Norway the Silver.

The official score:

and standings for Men's curling at the Olympics...and yes I am sorry to report that the US had an HORRIBLE showing at the Olympics...at least we had another team we were willing to cheer for!

With it being so close to the end of the Olympics and no Victory Ceremonies left, curling gets to present it's own medals at their venue after the game is over, so we were excited to see another set of medal awarded...especially ones we had watched the final of.

As they were getting everything ready for the medal ceremony, we had to take a picture of all the media people who were super funny all trying to pile onto the carpet and walkway right in the middle so they got all have that perfect shot.

At one point we questioned whether some of them were going to try the pyramid technique, but before they could try, out came the flags

and the athletes

and the medals

the presentation was made

and the venue went crazy for their home boys and they all sang proudly as their national anthem played.

I must admit, with as many times as I heard "O Canada" during that week, I almost had it memorized better than the Star Spangled Banner" and have been caught with it stuck in my head more than once since we have been home.

But yes it was fun to see Canada win and to celebrate with so many other people at the same time.

Then as is curling tradition, each team take a walk down the sheet with the Swiss (bronze) going first

Norway (silver) second

and finally the gold medalists, Canada

Once the ceremony was done...our camera battery died, which we really couldn't blame since we hadn't charged it at all while were there and had used our camera quite a bit (that is what we call great battery life)....and it was really time for Brian and I to be off to the races. We sped walked 4 blocks (and after a week of waling everywhere, my shins were not loving me!), caught our bus and headed back to the train station. We retrieved our luggage, had plenty of time as we stood in line for customs to fill out our declaration forms, but finally made it safely to the train where we relaxed, took naps, read and enjoyed our train ride home.

We arrived back in Seattle at 12:15am and Uncle Jared was super nice to come get us and we were super excited to get back to my parents, see our cute, sleeping boys and crawls into a nice bed.