Good-bye Auntie Geri...

Auntie Geri lost her fight against cancer yesterday. I was pretty young when my Uncle Willy married Auntie Geri, but I remember my mom saying that Geri was the best thing to have happened to her brother.

Geri had the greatest laugh, and a smile that would light up the entire room. When we went on our Kauai vacations, we would stay in one of Geri and Willy's extra bedrooms.

I have a few pics to share... These first ones are from 2007 when Auntie Geri, Uncle Willie, Uncle Roy, Joseph, Keenan, and Grandma K were visiting for Grandma's 80th(?) bithday.

These are photos from Universal Studios...

This one cracks me up! LOL!

Off to see the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park!

Auntie Geri could jump double dutch!

... much better than cousin Keenan...

Here is a photo I took the last time we were in Kauai. It's doggie bath time!

Auntie Geri was so full of life. It is so sad to hear that she lost her battle with cancer. May the Lord keep you close.

Our LOVE goes out to Uncle Willy, Keenan, Tami, Kimmi, and Grandma K.

July Drive Vacation - Day 1

Welcome to another Moore Family drive vacation... that's where we get in the car and drive with no plan other than a general direction. This vacation's direction is NORTH-EAST, toward Bodie. The BIG difference this time is that the kiddos are in summer school, so we left them at home. I was worried leaving them. Cheryl is 20yrs old, but she's still my baby girl. Well, enough of my mommy fears and on to the vacation...

Jim and I started out Wednesday afternoon after I got off work. We drove NORTH-EAST until it got dark and ended up in Bishop off hwy 395, where it was 102F at 6:30pm!

We studied the map that night and made plans for the next day. Our first stop was going to be Devil's Postpile in Mammoth. Well, it turns you can't drive to Devil's Postpile. We had to park at the Mammoth ski resort and take a shuttle bus to the trail head. It was only a .5 mile walk to Devil's Postpile.

Devil's Postpile was just as I've seen in photos.

We took the short walk to the top of the postpile, and I was amazed that the top of the posts were prefect hexagonals. They looked just like polished paving stones.

It was only 2 miles further on to Rainbow Falls. Other hikers on the trail told us it was a "DO NOT MISS" spot! Well, since we were there, we trekked 2 miles further to Rainbow Falls. It was WONDERFUL. If you look carefully, you can see the double rainbow at the bottom left of the photo.

We liked it so much that we climbed to the bottom of the falls. There was a lot of water coming over those falls. It was 25F cooler at the bottom than it was at the top. The water was freezing!

More scuttlebutt on the trail said that the Lower Rainbow Falls was even better than this (the upper falls), so we set off down the trail 0.75 miles further to the Lower Falls. I didn't think it was better... you really couldn't see it unless you leaned over the cliff, but I took this nice photo of Jim!

So... .5 miles to Devil's Postpile, PLUS 2 miles to Upper Rainbow Falls, PLUS .75 miles to Lower Rainbow Falls = 3.25 miles UPHILL back to the shuttle bus stop, WHEW!!! After getting out of there and stopping for lunch in Mammoth, we headed to our next destination, Mono Lake.

We've driven by the lake quite a few times, but this is the first time we've stopped. It's a very eerie place. These "tufas" are formed when the calcium rich underground springs seeped up into the carbonate rich lake.

It was unexpectedly beautiful! After walking around the Lake for a ways, it was back to the car and on to our planned destination, the ghost town of Bodie!

When we first came around the bend and saw Bodie, we both said, WOW! It was an entire town, with standing buildings... over 135 buildings!

As we were walking through the town peeking into the buildings, where people just "up and left," we were surprised to see old time radios, a chalk board at the school, an old newspaper with the headline, "Trojans defeat Bruins," and a pick-up truck???????!!! What's going on? This was supposed to be a gold town from the 1800's!

As we finally got around to the park museum, we found out that Bodie is an old GOLD town, but it's a GHOST town from the depression (1930s). I guess it was still interesting, but I was expecting an old "wild west" type ghost town.


It was a busy first day! For being the middle of summer, all the places we visited today were very quiet. There didn't seem to be many people vacationing in the Eastern Sierras this summer, lucky us! Stay tuned for Day 2!

OC Fair 5K - Opening Day

It's opening day of the OC Fair again!

Chris, our neighbor Tina, and I ran the 5K. This was Tina's second 5K. Her first 5K was in the 28 minute range. This 5K was 26:54! GO TINA!

I finished in good time... not a PR, but still good:

Overall: 92 out of 618
Women: 21 out of 365
F 50-54: 1 out of 32
Age/Grade: 70.63% Place: 25
Finish: 23:58 Pace: 7:43

Chris has a NEW PR!!! This is even after he crashed coming around a turn at the beginning of the race. He skinned up his leg, both hands, and back when he rolled.

Overall: 20 out of 618
Men: 19 out of 253
M 15-19: 4 out of 10
Age/Grade: 71.37% Place: 19
Finish: 18:56 Pace: 6:06

YAHOO TO US!!!

Postage Stamp Afghan

This is the afghan pattern that my MIL used to use all the time. We have six of these postage stamp afghans. After my MIL's heart attack, we found copies of the instructions in her craft room. They are very hard to read.

Here is the little afghan that my MIL made for Cheryl's dolls. Each of the little squares is 1"x1":

I know the pattern starts in the middle with a strip of "postage stamps." Then, it's worked out and around from the center. Here is where I think the afghan starts:

Here is what the backside of the afghan looks like:

Here is one of the larger afghans made by my MIL for our bed:

I've googled and can't find the instructions for this pattern anywhere!

--edited--
Found it!
http://mylifeinknots.blogspot.com/search?q=my+first+afghan

Congratulations Bob!!!

Uh... Who's Bob? Bob is the name of the co-ed team that Cheryl plays on with World Cup winner and Olympic Gold medalist Joy Fawcett. If you are wondering which one she is, she's the one with her arm around Cheryl.

Team Bob lost in the finals, so came in second place in the league, but it's the furthest that Bob has ever made it in the play-offs! Congratulations Bob!

4th of July Photos

I've been working long hours this week, and finally had time to upload the promised 4th of July photos. I won't bore you with the running photos... they look just like all our other running photos..

Here is where we spent our evening; at the Galaxy game! Galaxy defeated the Sounders 3-1!

After the game there was a nice fireworks show...

About four years ago, we got some free paper glasses from the 4th of July celebration at the Barking Sands Navel Base. Can you believe I still had them? Here is what the fireworks look like through them!

Here's a spacey view of the stadium...

I hope everyone had a great 4th!!!

Happy 6th of July!!!

Hi all, did you miss me? We are still finishing up with the computer. I was trying to copy my backup files back to the computer and ran out of disk space. So, I've been working at compressing the video. The computer kept wanting to install backups and reboot while I was working on the video, so I took it off the internet for the weekend.

Chris and I ran the Ladera Ranch Freedom Run 5K on the 4th of July. Chris felt that he was doing really well, and might even come in 1st place in his age group... until he was passed by the first place Varsity runner in south Orange County, lol! Once Chris saw Jacob, he knew there was no way he was going to win. In fact, Jacob came in 1st place overall out of 762 runners, at 15:47! Chris came in 10th overall, at 19:46. I came in 125th, at 25:10 lol!

Chris - 19:46.5, pace 6:23, overall 10/762
Me - 25:10.0, pace 8:07, overall 125/762 (28th in women)

That evening we went to a Galaxy game (Galaxy won 3-1) and stayed for the fireworks show. I have a couple pictures, but I haven't taken them off the camera yet.