Moments D671: Early bird catches the worm.....

.....or in this case the GOLD medal for men's hockey.

Mom, Dad & I were all up early this morning so we could watch the final match in men's hockey.   (After all, how could we call ourselves proud Canadians if we didn't?!!)

What an incredible game it was. They came out hard and fast, tweaked their game to better off-set the unexpected offence of the Swedes and kept fighting hard for the win right to the very end of the game.

It was a little surreal eating breakfast over a game of hockey, but I suppose that was a little less surreal than those drinking beer at 7 am today!

So very proud of our Team Canada this winter Olympics.  We ranked in third place in the medal standings in Sochi with a medal count of 25.  We had some spectacular moments this Olympics.  The first female bobsledders to earn two consecutive gold medal in the women's two-man event.   The bobsled crash, where no one was, miraculously, injured.   Sisters winning gold and silver medals in the same event.  Charles Hamelin, crashing out of his two top events.

Dreams being realized and others being dashed away.

We may not have topped our 2010 medal count, but Team Canada was impressive none-the-less.

Congratulations Team Canada.

Moments enjoying the Canadian sport of hockey.

Moments feeling pride for your country`s athletes.

Moments D361: Winners, by one point

I work hard. I play hard. I love to feel accomplished and I love to win. That sense of pride, of hard work coming to fruition, that drives me to do my best always.

And yet every now and then I feel a wee bit (just a wee bit) guilty for winning. Here’s today’s moment - we won by a point. I am grateful for that point and it’s fantastic to have the bragging rights…..but…..

Today I was in an indoor beach volleyball tournament. We play 9 matches. We won 7 of our 8 games to make it to the finals. We met up with the team that we split games with earlier on in the day. Our final ended up being another good match up. They were strong and organized, we too were playing smart and digging up most balls. We won the first game by two points. In all honesty, the game could have gone either direction.

Game two: We played hard, but we quickly found ourselves down a few points. We fough back and found ourselves within two of our competition. And then, the whistle blew. Time was up on the courts. The next serve was to be the last serve of the tournament. The entire tournament championship rested upon this last serve. It was our serve. We were down by two. Hmmmm…no pressure there!

We served. They returned. The rally went on for quite a few passes back and forth and in the end, we won that last point. That last point was the deciding factor. We won the first game by two, we lost the second game by one point. The deficit - one point in our favour.

Yikes. That’s one of those situations where I feel guilty for winning! We should have played out the rest of the game (we were early in the second game - it was 14-13 in the end and a game typically goes to 21 points).

The other team was gracious about losing, and we were gracious about winning. Our team had first pick at the prizing (we chose the bags) and the second place team ended up with beach chairs. One of the girls on the second place team was looking to swap out a chair for a bag. I happily complied as I want the chair in the first place. Win/Win.

So, not so bad for a point deficit!

Moments where fate tips in your favour.

Moments knowing it could have easily gone the other way.