{"id":54,"date":"2012-08-03T01:41:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T01:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=54"},"modified":"2015-03-25T15:12:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T15:12:39","slug":"the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=54","title":{"rendered":"The Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a family, we have gotten into the Olympics this year.&nbsp; It has been fun to watch the events together.&nbsp; What is even more fun is watching how we all help out the athletes from our chairs.&nbsp; We move side to side, back and forth, and make funny faces as we some how send the athletes just what they need to achieve their goals.&nbsp; We cheer when they win.&nbsp; We&nbsp;sigh and tell them it&#8217;s okay when they lose.&nbsp; Some of us have even shed tears with the athletes when there is great disappointment.&nbsp; It can be emotionally exhausting.&nbsp;&nbsp;And I love it!&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>It comes as no surprise that along with watching the events, I love to hear the stories.&nbsp; The stories of what it&nbsp;took to get&nbsp;to London. &nbsp;The stories of&nbsp;hard work and sacrifice for the athletes and their families.&nbsp; There are even&nbsp;commercials that speak to the dedication of the athletes.&nbsp; One of them&nbsp;is from the athletes&#8217;&nbsp;perspectives.&nbsp; They say things about not ordering dessert for two years, not watching TV, or reading the book everyone is talking about.&nbsp; They were too busy training.&nbsp;&nbsp;They were focused on the goal.&nbsp; They were&nbsp;making&nbsp;choices that got them to their dreams.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good reminder.&nbsp; Dreams are not realized simply by dreaming them or hoping for them.&nbsp; Dreams involve action.&nbsp;&nbsp;And often times, those actions must be repeated frequently over a long period of time.&nbsp; Sometimes it seems too difficult&nbsp;or not worth the sacrifice.&nbsp; But as I watch the faces of those athletes (and their parents), I&#8217;m convinced&nbsp;it is well worth the effort!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a family, we have gotten into the Olympics this year.&nbsp; It has been fun to watch the events together.&nbsp; What is even more fun is watching how we all help out the athletes from our chairs.&nbsp; We move side &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=54\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}