Sochi Olympics as a Mom!

The Dufour-Lapointe Sisters

The Olympics have started, did you miss the memo??

How can you, my Facebook and Twitter are flooded with news stories about the Olympics and all the reason why the Russians weren't prepared, why we should boycott them for their political positions and so on. I literally could go on and on about the news stories coming out from the concerning to the truly ridiculous (I don't care if your Hotel room has a picture of Putin on the wall, every Hotel in the USA has a bible in the drawer.)

But as we watched the opening ceremony, with 3 girls in front of the TV, up late at night, in our house politics gets pushed aside and the Olympics become again the Olympics. Raising children in an age of frowning at competition with their peers, the Olympics gives me the platform to remind them it's OK to strive for #1 and push hard to get it.

So since the Opening Ceremony finished we have had our TVs glued to either CBC, SN, TSN or even NBC not to miss a moment of the games.

And then this afternoon it happened, 3 girls, 3 daughters, 3 sisters just like in my house came down the Skiing Moguls and blew our whole family away. What a better way to show my girls that it is OK to compete against your sister, it's OK to win and let your sister win, look at those Dufour-Lapointe girls, they make having daughters, who are also sisters worth every moment of raising a house full of girls.

At the heart of their win, a Gold by the youngest Justine and a Silver by the middle child Chloe gives lessons the Olympics is full of. I have mentioned raising girls is hard, harder when female conflict will start in the household, and yet here are 3 girls competing in the healthiest of manners and teaching my girls you can still compete and be proud and rooting for your sibling all the way home.

And then the CBC did it, they aired their special segment of Raising an Olympian and they featured the mother (new personal hero of mine) of the Dufour-Lapointe girls and you look at her in marvel, she did it, she did what you hope you can accomplish: Raise 3 girls to be fearless enough to fight hard for their dreams all without plucking out the eyes of their competitors who also happen to be your sisters. Don't get me wrong I cried. I did. I mean it.

So much about the Olympics can be said, but at the end of the day it's stories and morals of the stories our kids get from watching the person land perfectly off a ski jump, sail through the finish line in speed skating or scoring that winning goal. The Olympics is about being proud of your fellow man or woman for the work and perseverance, the accomplishing goal or hurdle they just passed to get here. I want my girls to grow up where competition is healthy, not mean, where striving to be first can be done while being a good person. And all it took was day 2 of the Olympics to get that across already.

So can't wait to see what the rest of the Olympics has to bring...

Cheers!~

Hello February

I am not a superstitious person, I struggle with the idea of fate and if destiny is a thing, I truly believe we play a role on how destiny plays out.

I am a fair believer in horoscopes, Chinese and Western versions, as a math devotee I also believe in numerology. Yet no one of these can be appreciated or practiced without the other in my opinion.
So when the New Year came, it blanketed my hopes and aspirations of what the new year could bring. So excited and welcoming. I was happy to see 2013 go. She wasn't a horrible year, she just wasn't the greatest year. And the idea and hope that 2014 could be so much more was refreshing and something to get excited about.

And she arrived. Celebrated with the children as we do every year, family on New Year's day and then my month became the month I hold my breath and hope nothing further could go wrong. You saw we had a leak in our living room, then our furnace stopped because of the leak, a second leak occured and work which gets done at home now takes a severe back seat.

Where was this New Year, this new opportunity for something great. I read facebook statuses of January not only hitting me hard but many of my friends as well were not having great starts and in the idea of what is next to come, my first 3 week into 2014 are making me pine for 2013 to come back.

With Chinese New Year's arrival, the beginning of February, I have renewed belief and faith that better can be on the horizon. And then I remembered last year, the year of the Snake... The snake wouldn't go out without a fight. So I am going to say I am excited to see what the sturdy horse can bring.

So to us all, I wish you a Happy Chinese New Year, a big Hello to February and a renewed faith that 2014 will be great and will provide wonderous moments of excitement, love, happiness and great fortunes.