Slow News Day

Slow news day!  We were at Team Edge practice this morning, and I was off to the races with the next KidPak service, plus doing quite a bit of clean-up and maintenance.  Maddie is feeling her feet now on her flips, getting further and more confident, so that's good.  It seems as if there's a good bit of gymnastics to learn for the newer routines.

And speaking of gymnastics, we were watching a good bit of the Olympics throughout the day.  Okay, a lot of the games.  Yesterday's less-than-stellar - and in some cases awful - Opening Ceremonies won't stop us from watching some of our favorite events, and those obscure ones too.  Throughout the day we watched a judo final, and then about a half hour of surfing.  We saw some cycling through Paris, and then a beach volleyball match.  One of Maddie's favorite sports is the synchronized diving, where we saw the Chinese win gold and a couple Americans win silver.  I even watched a bit of a shooting final with these rifles that looked like something from a James Bond movie.  The taekwondo events must start a little later, because we didn't get to see any of those yet.  But prime time tonight was fun to watch, and a sign of things to come the next few weeks - we're big into the the Games, cheering on Americans or anyone else with that small town story of grit and determination.  There's a guy from North Georgia on the gymnastics team with such a moving backstory - we're certainly routing for him.

It was raining a lot today, and apparently it rained quite a bit in Pigeon Forge after we left.  We saw quite a few images of Dollywood with water racing through the middle of it, plus the usual pictures of the rivers raging through town.  They closed the road through Smoky Mountain National Park, so yeah, we got out of there just in time.  The rain here wasn't quite as destructive, but there was a lot of it today.  That's not too bad of a thing.

That squirrel is testing our patience.  We're okay with them being there, but when they start the acrobatics, it becomes a nuisance.  This one is trying out for the US Gymnastics team, leaping and flipping over to bird feeders, and of course eating everything in them and knocking them down.  It might be time to add another sticker to the squirrel trap.

We did do some Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze today, slowly inching towards Donkey Kong Island, which is frozen over.  You can see the beginnings of the freezing on the island we're at now, with things all frozen over.  These levels are occasionally super challenging and frustrating, but we put the game down when we reach that moment of frustration, and then we come back to it later.  The artwork and creativity in these games is just beautiful though, and we're enjoying it a lot.  It's a love/hate thing some times!

Tomorrow we get up early for church, so after watching the Games a good bit, we went upstairs to read some more.  We finished another Ewok story, and then we said our prayers.  Time for a good night's rest!