We got the fever

Every two years, for two weeks our household comes to a complete standstill. We eat quickly prepared dinners, in the family room. Dishes pile up and are ignored until morning. We are up until after midnight, every night. We are all tired during the day and the kids can barely keep up with schoolwork. Yet we can't stop night after night.

We talk about slips, falls and missed opportunity. We talk about sacrifice, hard work and devotion. The kids try to add up scores in their head to see if their favorites won. We look up flags to see which one belongs to which country. We love listening to the personal stories of the athletes and wonder what it must be like to work your whole life for something and have it all come together or fall apart in two minutes.

At the end of the two weeks we are exhausted.

When it's over we go through withdrawal and catch up on some sleep; then start our wait for the next Olympic Games to start.