I’ve been trying to get to this post for weeks now—I’ve already been back for almost a month. But yes, my brother and I took a trip to South America from April 23rd to May 5th. We traveled to Asuncion, Paraguay and kicked it with our awesome friends for a few days. Then spend the second half of the trip in the uh-mazing city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

For the sake of moving things along on the terribly outdated blog, I don’t think I’ll post detailed info about the trip just yet. There’s so much to show and tell and I don’t have the time quite yet to get into it all… plus I want to post all my photos to Flickr to help tell the story. So bear with me. But I will say that it was one of THE best experiences I’ve ever ever had—ever! I’ve truly missed being there ever since I got back.

Some quick highlights though:

• Hanging with my good friends in their beautiful country
• Asado, asado and more asado
• Finally trying tereré
• Attending a Super Clasico futbol game in Asuncion. Riot police lining the streets and dividing the stadium in half so the fans of the different teams don’t “interact.” They even had to dismiss one side 1/2 hour before the other so they don’t “interact” in the street after the game!
• Lomitos! Probably the most delicious thing I ate. Street cart meat and egg sandwichy food. Seriously amazing.
• Oasis concert in the largest soccer stadium in Argentina. 80,000 people. Crazy.
• Meeting Biel. Juanma and G’s new baby boy.
• Traveling the countryside and old towns that surround Asuncion.

More to come, I promise

Now, I don’t claim to be terribly web development inclined; it’s actually something  I’ve grown fairly rusty at over the months/ years. Our company has a division run by phenomenal people who are the heart and soul behind our web services so they’re the ones who primarily handle that sort of thing. But when my good friend Chuck Elmore asked me to help him out with launching his website in time for the release of his new album, I simply couldn’t resist. So I spent nights and weekends the two weeks leading up to his CD release concert and here’s where I ended up.
And please, do yourself a favor and spend some time listening to his music. Chuck is an incredibly talented song writer and worship leader. You’ll be blessed fo sho.

www.ChuckElmore.com

The owners of the popular Artichoke Cafe here in Albuquerque recently opened a wood oven pizzeria and wine bar called Farnia Pizzeria. It’s located next to Artichoke Cafe in the city’s EDO District–an urban revitalization of Central Ave. between Broadway and I-25.  We had recently heard about Farnia and had even passed by a few times. We love wood oven style pizzerias (Il Vicino being the top pic) so we decided to check it out last Friday.

The atmosphere is great: dark woods, contemporary lighting and an exposed brick interior wall of an old Cash and Carry make it a cozy-cool experience. It certainly is a small place though. The tables are a bit closer together than what you might be used to (dinner with your neighbor, really). Though we did observe that having people so close to your right and left really make you focus in on each other a bit more. It’s true. If you glance to the right or left your literally looking right at your neighbor. It didn’t take too long to get used to it though.

We would probably recommend making it an earlier outing if you can. We showed up about 5:45, missing the big crowd and a much longer wait (again, a fairly small establishment). There are certainly signs of it being a new restaurant—you just notice the small things a bit more knowing it’s brand new. The food, however, is fantastic. We shared the verde salad and the margherita pizza (with an addition of roasted artichoke hearts). I jsut love that crispy smokey wood oven flavor.  All in all, a pleasant experience. I can certainly see us going back again.

Just want to give a shout out to my brother Mark (aka Captain Awesome) on his 30th Birthday today! 30?! What the crizzle?! That means I’m next! Again, Happy Birthday Mark. You truly are awesome. Have fun in Ecuador. Bring me something…ecuadorian.

Here’s a pic of the Cap’n and me a couple years ago. »

I thought this was pretty cool and innovative. You know how a new pair of shoes comes with a clunky cardboard box and a bunch of trash that’s just used to keep the shoes snug? Well, this packaging for Newton Running shoes is made from molded post consumer materials. And the shape eliminates the need for extra packing tissue and paper. Pretty smart.

“Determined to create a new innovation in running shoes and to advance the barefoot running technique, a small group of elite Boulder, Colorado based runners founded Newton Running. The idea was to create a running shoe company by runners and coaches, for runners. A company that would listen to the concerns of athletes and strive to not only make better shoes but to make better runners as well.”

With environmental awareness packaging and Natascha Badmann winning the Ironman South Africa sporting a pair of Newtons (shaving 15 minutes off her marathon time from the year before), I’d say Newton is off to a successful start. My only beef is with the logo… not a fan. And something about it looks strangly familiar…

Welcome to 2009 everyone! We truly hope you all had a safe and awesome holiday season. Apologies for the lack of blog dedication the last couple months of 08. Once we got back from DC on November 12, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year just zipped by. We’ve also been crazy busy with work so free time has been scarce. I suppose we can begin the first post of the year with a brief recap of the past couple months…

• Our DC trip was a success. We had such a great time just working,  chilling and hanging with Mark in that awesome city. (DC trip photos on our flickr account here). It seems we went just in time because Mark moved to Denver just a few short weeks later to work for NREL. Mile High City, here we come!
• New York was just AWESOME! Maybe someday we’ll catch up on the details. For now you can relive the experience by checking out our New York photos on our flickr account.
• We spent Thanksgiving in Belen with Rebekah’s fam.  Amazing food, fellowship, and much needed down time.
• We headed up to Santa Fe for Christmas. Thanks to a snow storm that hit Santa Fe several times over the course of that week, we had a very cold and white Christmas. It doesn’t get any better than that. Christmas was perfect: family, food, friends, faralitos, and yes, gifts ; ) The absolute best gift for Christmas was Jared and Adri’s new baby girl—our new neice—Miriam Sonja Tanner! She was born on Christmas Day at 3:15 pm. awwwwww! (We’re pretty sure we’ll be heading up to Spokane in May to see them).
• Juanma, one of our best friends, celebrated his 30th birthday on the 27th! Happy Birthday again homie! We love you man.
• We took a road trip to Kansas City with Kristin over New Year to attend the One Thing conference again. We left at 7:00 pm on Saturday the 27th and drove all night (14 hours). We stayed with our AWESOME friends Steve and Amanda and their beautiful and amazing 4 month old baby girl Emmaus. It was seriously an amazing trip. We can’t think of a better way to close out the year. We got back on the 3rd. Photos to come.

Thus begins the start of a whole new year full of hope and new beginnings. We pray that yours will be filled with triumph, love, peace, growth, and a decent success rate of all those resolutions! We love you all and are truly fortunate to have each and every one of you in our lives! Be blessed, encouraged, and strengthened in the Lord.

Right after completing the 2008 ING New York Marathon, Mark somehow managed to get interviewed LIVE by NBC Sports. This makes his second national news appearance this year after his debut when they interviewed him for  segment on Zip Cars back in June.

We were able to see Mark twice during his 26.2 mile run that brisk but beautiful Autumn morning in NYC. We hopped  cab from Central Park to meet up with him at mile 17 where we perched on some scaffolding overooking the crowd, then hoofed it back to Central Park to see him again at the “1/2 mile remaining” mark. Unfortunately he had some stomach pain for miles 16-18ish (even had to walk for a bit). But he pulled through and still finished at 2:45. It was a really great experience (and we didn’t even run). Tens of thousands of spectators cheering for tens of thousands of marathoners in the great City of New York. It was awesome to take that in.

Hey everyone. I’m writing this post on I-95 about a half an hour outside New York City. (I just caught sight of the Statue of Liberty outside our bus window.) We hopped on a Bolt Bus at 6:30am this morning in DC and headed on the 4 hour journey north to the Big Apple. We’ll be staying at The Time Hotel a couple blocks from Times Square. Mark left yesterday afternoon but we’ll be meeting up with him today sometime. Again, he’s running the New York City Marathon—the biggest marathon in the world—tomorrow morning. 40,000 people. It’s going to be awesome!

Okay. Gotta take pictures! We’ll be posting again soon.

This is hilarious:

Even though she tried really hard, Rebekah wasn’t able to see me start or end the race because of how many people were there. She was pretty bummed. I obviously didn’t see her either. But when we reviewed the clip of me coming through the finish (because she said she was standing right there), this is what we found. I think it’s pretty hilarious. If you pause Video 3 of 5 at exactly 4:37, this is what you’ll see: