Sunday, July 29, 2012

Olympic Party

After months (read: years) of waiting, the magical time has finally arrived!  As I compose this, I'm also watching women's gymnastics on TV.


Confession, Part I: I'm a Michael Phelps fan.  Well, maybe not him personally so much as his accomplishments.  He's two medals (of any color) away from being the most decorated Olympian in modern Olympic history.  You have to admit that that's pretty epic.


Confession, Part II: If Phelps misses his target and doesn't beat the record, that's okay with me, because I'm kind of enjoying his flop.  That might make me a bit of terrible person, but I'm okay with that.  But in the last two weeks, I've seen some interviews that painted him with a less than humble brush.  He has admitted to not working as hard as he should have, skipping practices, and other such related poor choices.  Bad decisions certainly have their consequences and he may be realizing that more than ever right now.


On Friday, we hosted two couples for a small Opening Ceremony Party.  I'd LOVE to be able to have invited more but our living room is small and I've recently realized that us and 2 more couples is about all we can accommodate comfortably.  So my brother and sister came up from Albuquerque and our friends Chris and Sarah rolled in from Santa Fe to enjoy this event with us.


For dinner, we had some Shepherd's Pie in honor of the hosting nation.  For dessert, a cake decorated with the Olympic rings in fruit:




In addition to themed food, we had some games of our own.  First was a little croquet:

Of course, there had to be a podium for the winners:

Sarah, Chris & Claire


I'm sure you didn't notice the beers they were holding.  In a stroke of brilliance, Chris and Sarah brought beer that was themed towards Olympic medals.  As pictured below, we've got a beer with the word "GOLDen" in the title, Coors (the SILVER bullet) and a Dos Equis Amber, whose label was quite BRONZE if you ask me :).




In addition to the croquet action, Claire and Nick had brought some hula hoops to play with.  It needs to be pointed out that these were not regulation hula hoops.  They were made out of irrigation tubing and INCREDIBLY heavy.  Quite the ab workout, even painful at times when more than one hoop was used at the same time.

Look out into it Leni got!
Enjoy this video of some of our hula hoop games:



Without a doubt, my favorite activity was our very own torch relay!  It was planned to include everyone but be a surprise to Chris and Sarah upon their arrival:



Oh yeah and we watched the Opening Ceremony, long as it was.  I was impressed with the entire orchestration.  The amount of times that the staging and props on the floor changed right in front of our eyes was amazing.  It was a great blend of history, dramatics and humor.  Favorite moments included the live performance of "Chariots of Fire" with a cameo from Mr. Bean, the Queen "parachuting" in from above, and the part with the five huge rings coming together overhead.  I wasn't overly impressed with the actually lighting of the torch but the torch apparatus itself was pretty cool.  Great Britain should be very proud of the show they put on.

Hope everyone enjoys the next two weeks of events.  I know I will!

Keep It Real!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Mid-Summer Update

I've been so neglectful as of late.  Many apologies.  But I don't feel too bad....I can think of very few followers of this blog who don't catch on to what's going on in the Moore household via Facebook.  Still....it is time to give some attention to the blog.


So Far This Summer...


My most recent post before this was immediately following Joshua's baptism over Memorial Day Weekend.  Good times.  Since then, we've been keeping busy:


First, there was the Gorski wedding:




This kid was a real hit at the wedding....and exhausted from it all too!
When we got back from the wedding (which was in central Virginia), it was HOT in Los Alamos!  This shouldn't be news....the whole nation was (and still is) having a ginormous heat wave.  Our home is without central AC or a swamp cooler, as are most of the homes this old in Los Alamos.  Since last summer, we've had a window unit in our bedroom.  It was so hot when we got home that I started having to take Josh into our bedroom after lunch time to stay cool enough...it was getting up into the upper 80s and low 90s in our living room.  After about a week of that, I'd had it.  We had a HUGE window unit for the kitchen, dining room and living room area, but it needed to be installed and since it required a 220 volt outlet, it wasn't your typical installation.  God bless our friends Chris and Sarah....they came over one Saturday and Chris helped Leni install the beastly window unit while Sarah and I kicked back and watched.  Now our house is much more comfortable during all times of the day.




Next was a trip down to Silver City, New Mexico, the new home of Leni's parents!  Paul has accepted the call to serve at the little but very active Episcopal church down there, so we had to go down to check things out.  On the way down, we knocked off 3 breweries from the New Mexico Brew Challenge (more on that below).  In Silver City, we enjoyed the small town feel, the cute downtown (complete with farmers market and art market), bike trails, apricot picking, and the town's proximity to the Gila Wilderness.  We did a challenging yet beautiful hike on Saturday afternoon with grandparents, parents, baby, and 4 dogs.  Difficult but well worth it!




We also found the people at Paul's new church to be tremendously nice and welcoming.  On the drive home, we picked off one more of the many Albuquerque breweries.


Speaking of breweries, you may recall our commitment to the New Mexico Brew Challenge, or, as my sister-in-law refers to it, the "Beer Blast".  So far, we're in the lead!  Even though many folks in Leni's office said they wanted to participate, the only folks taking it seriously are us and our previously mentioned friends, Chris and Sarah.  As I said, we are in the lead but very cautious to assume future victory.  You never know when one couple will shoot out ahead of the other (it has happened in both directions).  But those breweries down south this weekend afforded us many points (points are assigned to breweries based on their distance from our area).  Still 6 or 7 places to hit up, so we keep chugging along....pun intended :)


Yet to Come This Summer...


We are looking forward to visits from some folks we love.  Later this week, we'll see some good friends from my high school days in Arizona, Amy and her sister, Allison.  A couple days after that, we'll see Leni's brother, Landon, and his girlfriend, Marcie, from Idaho.  I've got some friends from the Dallas area who say they might come visit....I hope they are reading this and looking at their calendars for trip planning purposes :)


Next week, I resume my work duties at church and am quite ready for that.  We've connected with a friend of a friend who will be watching Josh during my work hours and are quite confident that it will be a good fit for our family.


We are hoping to squeeze in a whitewater rafting day on the Rio Grande River sometime later this month.  Each time we drive north along the river on our way to Taos or Colorado, we always comment that it would be fun to be one of the groups in the rafts enjoying the river below.  Hope we can work it out....it looks really fun!


Olympics....SO close!  The opening ceremony is a mere 18 days away and my excitement is growing.  Having the Olympic trials being televised on a channel that my television receives has been such a teaser.  Such a great time in life to have DVR :)


That's about it for now.  I hope this has found everyone else's summer going well.  Stay cool out there.


Keep It Real!