First EVER Castañeda Family Olympics

 

Olympic rings (please forgive the use of orange instead of black.
Black did not come in our stacker set)

We have had a very exciting week with our first EVER Castañeda Family Olympics!  I'm going to let the pictures tell most of the story today since we have so many, but I'll give you a little overview first. 

Creating our "Team USA" banner

We're ready to go!

We spent Tuesday prepping for our activities and kicking off the event with our opening ceremony including running with the "torch" and lighting up our Olympic lamp.  We concluded the afternoon with our first Olympic event, swimming.  Afterwards, one of our champions had a new exciting experience.  Nico had his first tinkle in the potty!!!!  He's been showing some interest for a few months now, but every time he got on the potty he would sit for only a few minutes and give up.  I've learned from my mistakes my first time around, and I'm going with the "no pressure, let the child decide" approach to potty training.  I had thought I was doing that with Max, but I see now that I wasn't.  I had listened to way too many outside sources instead of going with my gut instincts, so we're going with my gut this time.  Anyway, he was a champ and Fernando decided to sit with him for as long as it took.  We kept giving him water and juice, and finally he succeeded!!!  He still hasn't done it during the day, and only two nights in a row in the evening, but he's on his way.  Leading up to his success he had been telling me when he was ready for a diaper change.  Sometimes he'd even take off his diaper and put it in the trash himself.  I think he's about ready!  Gold medal for Nico!

Wednesday morning was our second Olympic event, Men's Gymnastics.  It was their final day at their classes and the parents were allowed to watch.  My BFF, Ashlie, joined us for the day of "Olympic"games.  Both my boys did such a good job!  I was very proud of them for trying so hard and most importantly, enjoying themselves.  After the gym, the kids "carbed" up with lunch to prepare themselves for an afternoon of games!  There were traditional games including high jump and long jump, as well as not-so-traditional events including Sequence playing, Guess Who? playing, and the least popular event, balance the pillow with your legs.  I let Max make up a game and that last one is what he chose.  He enjoyed it for only a couple of seconds until his pillow kept falling.  Then he just became frustrated.  And when it was Nico's turn, well forget it.  Nico didn't have a care for balancing the pillow.  He just wanted to kick it out of our hands when we tried to place it on his legs.  Nico would giggle, Max would scowl.  As much as we enjoyed our time doing our Olympic events, the boys could only handle so many organized events at a time.  We had every intention of picking up more events today, but we just played all kinds of random things instead.  We really should have gotten out of the house today, but it's just so hot that I HATE (with a passion) juggling all three kids to go anywhere in it.  I don't like that they are stuck in the house a lot of the time, especially with no backyard, but for my sanity and our health we stay inside.  But we do keep busy with all kinds of things.  Nico helped me make meatballs for dinner.  Batman came for a visit and so did Mario.  Both helped me with a load of laundry and so forth.  I have discovered that Nico is the sneakiest of the sneaky lately becoming my Ninja child.  I'm telling you, I think he's been monitoring his past 2 1/2 years where all of the flaws are in our child proofing and he's been testing me so much lately.  I mean this is serious stuff here.  Today I found him proudly showing off a meat thermometer to his brother.  He had the biggest grin and was holding it up like it was a trophy.  I've also found him snooping around my bathroom taking wrappers off bars of soap and just carrying them around.  He's also been known to get ahold of my wooden spoons and measuring spoons.  I found him using a wooden spoon today on a set of bongos.  This evening I had Fer install a safety latch on a drawer in our kitchen that I guess got missed back in the day when we first child proofed.  We are going gate shopping ASAP to keep Nico out of certain rooms (only hope the gates stop him) and of course because the baby will be crawling before we know it.  I need the boys to practice learning where their toys need to stay and where they are not allowed.  Especially the teeny tiny ones. 

But I digress.  Today we didn't really have any particular Olympic event, but tomorrow morning will be our Soccer finals.  I'm really hoping for some basketball in there somewhere.  Today we were going to play basketball, but Belle got ahold of the ball and we did a fun game of roll the ball back and forth instead.  It was a basketball so I suppose that could count!  I thought we'd have our closing ceremonies by now, but we're having a lot of fun randomly deciding on a new event.  Perhaps we'll let this go on until the real Olympics end.  Who knows what we'll come up with next. 

Olympic torch runner, Maximiliano Castañeda

 

The lighting of our Olympic lamp



We sang the our National Anthem while the torch was "lit".
Max was so proud.  Nico refused to participate.  I think he already
knows we're crazy.

 

The two boys originally wanted to ride in on a boat like
David Beckham (aka empty diaper box)



Our first events were swimming events. 
Here is Nico's back float which he just mastered!

Nico helping Papa with his back float.



On their marks...



I think Max is winning this race. 



The ultimate underwater handstand event. 
Fer won the gold by default.
He was the only participant.




The guys' biggest fan

 

Gymnastics was the following morning.  Nico's back bend

Max's back bend

 



Max's crab crawl



Nico's bear crawl

Max and his balance beam routine

 

Cheerleaders Belle and Ashlie

Tumbling Max

Tumbling Nico

Nico working his upper body strength

Max rockin' the high jump event

Max's long jump

Nico didn't quite get the concept and kept jumping up and down,
but he was having so much fun doing it!

Nico and his interpretation of the long jump

Nico getting a little help "balancing" the pillow.  Didn't you know it's a brand
new "olympic" event!

Max took his signature event very seriously!  He brought home the gold!

The Guess Who? "Olympic" event.  He played Ashlie for a long time!

She's so happy after her nap! 

Batman came for a visit today!

He rescued us from all sorts of jams.

Belle, you've got a little something on your nose.





He says he's Captain America. 
Only he's carrying a pirate sword and a tamborine. 
Love him!


  

The family got a new camera and Max wanted to be one of the first shots

Look at that handsome devil



Our precious Isabel

 



Belle, our sweet little chunky monkey



Two headed monster Nico and Papa sharing the same shirt.