Vancouver Day 7: Danish Roots and Norwegian Pants

Do not underestimate the cultural reach of the Norwegian Men's Curling Team's Pants. They've been on The Today Show and they have their own facebook fan page. I must credit My Wife with bringing them to my attention earlier in the week.

Also, you must see SI.com's Separated at Birth: Olympic Hockey. I'm quite certain they've featured a lot of these before but some of the likenesses they've found are astonishing - and hilarious.

While watching the women's USA/Denmark curling match, we got to talking about family heritage last night. Between us, My Wife's family and mine are all over the map but amazingly, we each have some Danish heritage. My paternal grandmother was 100% Dane. Though she was born in Omaha, she spent a decent part of her childhood in Denmark. She didn't teach us much Danish but I did learn the word for thumb: tommelfinger. My Wife has some Danish heritage in her maternal grandmother's line. We are both big fans of ebelskivers, a Danish breakfast treat. The pans are family heirlooms in my clan. Our Girl is always interested to hear about grandparents, great-grandparents and so forth. She's also increasingly interested in other countries so she had lots of questions.

Last night, we watched Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr., a wonderful series in which the Beer Summit academic traces the family roots of many famous Americans. My father has done quite a lot of genealogical research and has, in fact, written two short books on the subject - one for his mother's Danish line and one for his father's German AND Danish line. I haven't dug too deeply into the Danish one yet. Perhaps I should now that my daughter seems eager to learn more.