Local celebrity

Way back in the summer (like 6 weeks or so ago), my friend Bean posted a blog about a couple of kids she knew from back in the day at gymnastics who were selected to represent the US on the Men's Gymnastic Team, Justin Spring and Alexander Artemev. This was interesting and exciting news and added a little bit of "hometown flavor" to our Olympic experience. We found during the first Men's Gymnastics competition that Justin was from Burke, which is virtually across the street (seriously, we live in Fairfax, but can walk to the Burke Target and the Burke VRE station). Alexander is from Colorado, but his parents were once Bean's coaches at the gymnastics center where she and Justin both trained.
We watched, and cheered and then the Olympics were over and we honestly didn't give it another moment of thought until this week. On the second day of school, Josh came home and announced to Brad that his P.E. teacher's son, Justin, had competed in the Olympics and she shared her story of going to China and watching the Olympics with Josh's class that day. We met both of Josh's P.E. teachers when we volunteered for field day back in May, so I was pretty sure I knew who he was talking about. This was very exciting for Josh as we made a point for him to watch as many different events and learn about different sports while the opportunity was there. I sent him back to school making sure that he remembered who Michael Phelps was and how many gold medals he won in the event that his teacher gave a pop quiz on the Olympics.
When I went to fetch Josh after school on Friday I saw Mrs. Spring out on Kiss & Ride duty and overheard her talking to another mom about her time in China and Justin's experience at the Olympics. The PTA, of course, has been harping to get him to come in to the school and talk to the kids. Hopefully that'll happen. What a neat connection.