Yup...I'm a slacker and update this every three to four months. Oh well. I'm actually doing another blog for the United States Olympic Committee which I'm gonna post on here and add a little bit to it as well...so here it is:
I think most people think that Olympic athletes have very different lives than the average person... eat, train, eat, train, eat, train….sleep…do it again. Okay, so at times this might be true. But for many of us, we have “normal” lives to live outside of our competition schedules as well. Bills to pay, loved ones to spend time with…and yards to maintain. An example of this is last month, my husband and I received some news:Good News: After the snow melted away and the frost disappeared, we had a company come out to spray for bugs as well as fertilize our grass.
Bad News: They weren’t able to spray because grubs ate the roots of our grass so we had to tear apart our whole yard…
We have spent the past five weeks cutting, digging, pulling, filling, raking, planting, building, tilling, leveling and spraying our yard. I have no idea how farmers do it. Talk about an Olympic workout! I would wake up at 6 AM, do my workout for a couple of hours and then work on the yard until bedtime. Lacee (she’s 16 months now) would help me dig up the yard and ate a little of it here and there (which saved us an extra trip to the land fill). Over Memorial weekend we had a “sod laying party” and friends and family came over to help us lay 4,000 square feet of sod. Thanks to those that helped!!!
This week I built a couple of planters boxes and planted strawberries, watermelons, squash, zucchini, corn and my favorite….a pumpkin patch for the fall!!! I have planted over 200 plants, trees and flowers! (Okay so 100 of those are lily bulbs). But still! Our yard is almost finished. My brother owns “Pikus Concrete” and is going to come and pour a cement patio for our backyard sometime next week as well as the cement for the fence posts (yup…we’re going all out- New grass, new plants and trees, new walkway and patio… and a new fence) We are landscaping fools. I have been so sore over the past couple of weeks. 
I had no idea I had muscles in some of the places that are sore. I have come to believe that the “yard work workout” will one day become the new strength and conditioning trend. It’s the perfect workout. It slims, trims, and tones your body and if that’s not enough, it effectively increases the aesthetic appeal to your living area! J Gyms are seriously over-rated. (Okay, okay so I really need my gym too. But all I’m saying is that Rocky had the right idea.)
My break from training and working on the yard is playing women’s and coed slow-pitch softball. I love it! As the sliding season comes closer, I will obviously need to back off from playing so much to avoid any kind of injury. Most of the time, I play short stop or third base. Janson plays outfield or pitches. My two favorite bats (in case you’re interested) are the Mizuno Crush 2 and the Worth Mayhem. I hit a ball to the fence (320 feet) using the Crush 2 this week…yup, homerun for yours truly. We played in a pretty competitive tournament two weeks ago and have another tournament this weekend 
which my family is playing in. Trust me, when you play shortstop and a 300 pound guy steps up to the plate and whacks the ball in your direction, it forces you to work on your mental game because quite honestly, it can be pretty intimidating. You have to have confidence in your abilities. Whoever thinks that slow-pitch softball is easy or isn’t fun has most likely never tried it out. You should try it sometime.
I had no idea I had muscles in some of the places that are sore. I have come to believe that the “yard work workout” will one day become the new strength and conditioning trend. It’s the perfect workout. It slims, trims, and tones your body and if that’s not enough, it effectively increases the aesthetic appeal to your living area! J Gyms are seriously over-rated. (Okay, okay so I really need my gym too. But all I’m saying is that Rocky had the right idea.)
My break from training and working on the yard is playing women’s and coed slow-pitch softball. I love it! As the sliding season comes closer, I will obviously need to back off from playing so much to avoid any kind of injury. Most of the time, I play short stop or third base. Janson plays outfield or pitches. My two favorite bats (in case you’re interested) are the Mizuno Crush 2 and the Worth Mayhem. I hit a ball to the fence (320 feet) using the Crush 2 this week…yup, homerun for yours truly. We played in a pretty competitive tournament two weeks ago and have another tournament this weekend 
which my family is playing in. Trust me, when you play shortstop and a 300 pound guy steps up to the plate and whacks the ball in your direction, it forces you to work on your mental game because quite honestly, it can be pretty intimidating. You have to have confidence in your abilities. Whoever thinks that slow-pitch softball is easy or isn’t fun has most likely never tried it out. You should try it sometime.
Finally, it was Janson’s 29th birthday this week. (Happy birthday Jans!) I checked him out of work early and took him to lunch and golfing. Even though I had a double bogey on just about every hole, I had a blast. My main goal for skeleton this summer, going into the Olympic season, is to work on my mental game. Maybe I should golf everyday? What a tough mental sport. Kudos to those that golf without completely losing it.
Janson says, "nope". That's all he wanted to say when I asked if he wanted to say anything to our blog. -He's doing great. And even though I know he'll never read this, he is the best husband and father I could have ever wished for.
Talk to you later!
-Noelle
-Noelle
You can see part of a van under the snow. All the vehicles just looked like little mounds (which is probably why many of them got hit when the snow plows came through to clear the roads). It definitely provided for some of the best snowball fights ever.
After 3 days of waiting for the avalanche warnings to subside, a ten hour van drive, an "accidently cancelled flight" by the flight attendant, lots of money to buy a new ticket, a 10 hour flight from Munich to Chicago with an 11 month baby(4 diapers left), an hour long wait in the customs line, a missed flight to SLC (3 diapers left), the airline not offering any help stating that we'll be lucky to get home for Christmas which was 5 days away...then telling us the farthest she could get us was to Las Vegas ("we'll take it") but we only have 20 minutes until it leaves...going through security and getting "randomly selected for additional screening", sprinting to our gate and being told they gave our tickets away because we weren't there, (but miraculously two men decided not to fly out and gave us their seats), a 4 hour flight to Las Vegas (2 diapers left), buying ANOTHER airplane ticket just to get us home, spending the night on the airport floor (1 diaper left), and taking a 6 AM flight to SLC (Out of diapers).............. WE JUST FELL TO THE GROUND AND KISSED THE HAPPY VALLEY DIRT. So what if it was a run-on sentence. That doesn't even compare to what we had to endure. :)
