Olympics

I am pretty excited for the Olympics. There is something great about finally having sporting events where basically our entire nation is rooting for the same team/individual instead of our intra-national NBA, NFL, NCAA, etc. I'm a little bummed today because we are probably going to miss the Opening Ceremonies, which are usually pretty amazing.

I can't decide which sport I am looking forward to most. There are so many exciting sports in the Winter Olympics! For me, the coolest are snowboarding, figure skating and freestyle skiing. The racing events are less exciting to watch than the events involving artistic form and routines. The lamest is curling. Obviously. But what even is Nordic Combined? I have no idea.

Anyways, I can never remember what all the Winter Olympics includes so here is a reminder of the medal events:

Alpine skiing - 10 events incl. downhill and slalom

Biathlon - 10 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Bobsled - 3 events: 4 man, 2 man, 2 woman

Cross-country skiing - 12 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Curling - 2 events: men's and women's

Figure skating - 4 events: Men's and women's singles, pairs, and ice dancing

Freestyle skiing - 6 events incl. moguls, aerials, and skicross

Ice hockey - 2 events: men's and women's tournaments

Luge - 3 events: 2 man, 1 man, 1 woman

Nordic combined - 3 events all individual of different courses

Short track speed skating - 8 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Skeleton - 2 events: men's and women's

Ski jumping - 3 events: small hill, men's large hill, team large hill

Snowboarding - 6 events incl. slalom, half-pipe, and snowboard cross

Speed skating - 12 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Also here is the TV schedule from NBC.

Go team USA!

Sports and fun

Now that fall is officially here, we have been so busy! It seems like every evening we have stuff and more stuff that we need to get done (like homework, Seminary lesson, YW, dinner, going to sleep early...) so we don't get nearly enough time having fun.

Fortunately we have something to do on a lot of the evenings that we DO have free. Since it is dark and usually cold in the evenings now, we switched from playing tennis to playing racquetball. It is kind of a hard switch to make but I've heard its a lot harder to move the other direction. I guess we'll find out come spring when we move back outside. We play these sports with some friends of ours and have a great time and get in some exercise while we're at it. The other day while playing r-ball I served the ball and turned around to see where it was going when WHAM the ball hit me - hard - in the forehead. It stung a bit and I got all teary but I was mostly just in shock. It was a hard hit! But I recovered after a minute and we continued playing. It is a lot of fun and is better exercise than tennis and a lot less precision is required (which is good for me if you catch my drift).

However, yesterday was a very warm lovely day so we headed back out to the tennis courts for one of the last games of the season (boo). It was great - perfect weather, good courts, fun, blah blah blah. My serve, which was okay in the spring then went severely downhill over the summer, is on the ups again so that makes it nice since I rarely did the dreaded double-fault. Even with that though, we lost again but it was close as usual.

We have also done some other fun outdoor activities recently. We went hiking at a nearby state with some friends from the ward. I had a really good time and want to go again! Hiking around where we live is so cool mostly because it isn't like hiking in Utah where you are tired out from all the elevation gains! Nope, we decided to go on the "Moderate difficulty" hike that was 2.75 miles long. I was worried because I'm not in great shape and was never a great hiker to start with but having been on it, I would say now that a Moderate hike here equals a Beginner hike in Utah. Or maybe more it's closer to an unpaved nature trail. So as a result, I now love hiking :) I hope we can go again soon while the weather is still good. Especially if the fall foliage is still around. Ooo-la-la!

Yesterday we played some good games of sand volleyball with 6 other couples from our ward. It was way fun! I haven't been crazy about volleyball previously either and I'd really only played in YW but is was great! we played a few sets, switching up the teams now and then, just really casual-like. Yay! I hope we do that again soon too!

It is really very ironic that now that the weather is cooling down to where it is often uncomfortable to be outside, I have found all these fun things that I want to go outside and do! We'll see how many of them I can fit in, but you can bet I will be ready next spring when it warms up again!