A Memorable Ballgame

As I mentioned here recently, I love the Isotopes, our local AAA baseball team, but my feelings were somewhat bittersweet because we hadn’t made it to a game this year. Thursday, Summer and the kids picked me up, and Summer commented that it was a great day for a ballgame—cool, cloudy, but not muggy or chilly, just comfortable. But we decided not to do anything about it, as this was to be our only evening at home this week, and we were rather looking forward to it.

But after we got home that changed. We had a message from the Christensens offering us seats in the suite that Kyle’s medical practice has at the ball park. In a heartbeat our mood changed from utterly unenthusiastic to entirely exuberant. Free tickets, suite seating, and an excuse to go out to dinner (the game was at 6:30, so cooking and cleaning up would have been unfeasible). Within an hour we were ready to go.

We stopped by Dion’s near the house for dinner, filling the kids up so we wouldn’t have to buy tons of eats at the game. Then we drove to the stadium.

Now, I’m a simple guy. I ride the bus to work, eat leftovers for lunch most days, avoid wearing ties as much as possible. But the fancy is sometimes quite nice. Like reserved parking at the park. And a luxury suite behind home plate (just to the first-base side). We were pampered, and it felt kind of nice.

The suite was nice, opening up to two rows of seating just to the right of the press box. It was nice to let the kids run around a bit, knowing that they were contained more than they typically are in the regular seating area, and the view—with the Sandias in the distance—was amazing. The night was just right for a game, and when it did sprinkle a bit, we were able to duck inside the suite and stay dry.

When Kyle dropped off the tickets, he explained that two years ago he was in the suite and caught a foul ball, and I told him that this was one of my life goals. In the third inning, I was standing near the doorway to the suite, at the back of our seating area, when a foul pop-up came our way. It bounced off the seating in the box to our left and settled in the front row of our section, right at Isaac’s feet. Not quite as momentous as catching it barehanded, but it still made a nice souvenir.

The game itself was fun. The visiting Salt Lake Bees struck first with a leadoff home run in the top of the first. After that, we had several innings of strong pitching and defense by both clubs. Then in the late innings, both teams erupted for several runs, leaving us with a 5-3 Bees’ lead entering the last frame. In the bottom of the 9th, the ‘Topes drove in one run and had a man on first and one out, when Valentino Pascucci grounded into a game-ending double play. It was a shame.

So here are some photos taken by Michelle Christensen. First, a very cute couple, if I may say so:

And next, our three oldest with Spencer:

Why I Love ABQ

This morning as I was walking to work I saw a billboard that asked a simple question: what do you love about ABQ? It also had the address for this website by the local visitors bureau, which I visited after getting to the office. I like how the site uses local residents to tout the positives of the place, and the various categories (ballooning, outdoors, golf, etc.) cover a wide range of interests.

So this brings me to my own bit of pondering. I've actually been thinking about this quite a bit recently, and our family's most recent adventures have gone along this theme. What do I most love about ABQ? Here are some thoughts, followed by some reasons why our non-NM readers should keep reading:

1. The BioPark--for a town this size to have such an impressive zoo and botanic garden (the aquarium is a bit weak) is great
2. Petroglyph National Monument--not just for the experience of visiting, but also because at the edge of a modern city this reminder of a past that has nothing to do with Europeans gives a bit of perspective
3. The Sandias--just an amazing bit of mountain, with a fir/alpine forest towering over the desert
4. Downtown--not too big, not too small, and rapidly becoming a nice place to eat and spend time--this summer we hope to catch the free movie on the plaza evenings
5. Minor league baseball--this one's a bit sad, since I haven't been to a 'Topes game this season, but I love having such a great little ballpark within sight of my office
6. The Albuquerque Temple--the simple fact that we have a temple in ABQ is great--the absolute beauty of it (not that you'll find an ugly LDS temple, but I'm especially fond of ours) is a bonus
7. The Rio Grande Nature Center State Park (and the entire North Valley, really)--minutes from downtown you have this area that is still undeveloped and in touch with nature--roadrunners, raccoons, and even coyotes make you feel hours from an urban area
8. Old Town--kitschy and touristy, it still represents the history of the city and serves as a sort of community gathering space

So, for those of you in the Duke City, what have I missed? and for our non-locals, what do you love about where you live?

Sometimes They Make You Very Proud

The kids, that is. Last week the missionaries ate with us and invited us to continue thinking about someone with whom we can share the gospel. (This has been an on-going project for a while. We were going to focus on a part-member family we home taught...until they moved.) This time the approach involved asking us to give a pass-along card to someone.

We accepted the invitation, but the question of "who" was at the fore of my mind. We run with a lot of fellow Mormons, and the people we encounter the most outside of the church are often in situations that are a bit off-limits--I oughtn't give pass-along cards to students who visit during my office hours, for example.

Today's FHE lesson came from Preach My Gospel (a great resource for FHE, by the way), and focused on finding people to teach. In beginning the lesson, I referred to the missionaries' visit and the pass-along card. Rather nonchalantly, Ryan said, "I gave it away today." Huh?! Ryan?! Huh?!

It turns out that Ryan and Isaac took some time yesterday making an invitation to Ryan's baptism for his friend, Michael, from school, and today Ryan gave hime that and the pass-along card (as Ryan put it, "since Michael's in a lower reading group, I helped him read it"). And he didn't make a big deal about it. Here's a thing he knew he wanted to do and a chance to do it, and he did it.

That, more than anything else, is really what I want for my children, that they will recognize the chance to do something good, something selfless and caring, and that they will do it, without worrying about it, without the hesitation that often marks my decision-making, without fanfare or expectation of acknowledgement. They'll just do something good for someone. It's very touching and, for me at least, inspiring.

On the Town

The school year is drawing to a close, as is my break before the summer term begins, and the weather in ABQ has turned beautiful. Today the kids had their carnival day at school, so we decided to play hooky and spend the day as a family. It turned out to be the best idea we've had in a while.

Our first stop was the Sandia foothills, where we did a quick hike to an overlook with a breathtaking vista of the Rio Grande valley. At the overlook we got a few nice shots, first of Summer and the older kids:And then of Evan, looking just a bit scared to be this high up:
We then went downtown to see the new Earth movie, which was quite enjoyable, if a bit overambitious in scope. But the kids were really well-behaved, earning them a trip to a new local dining find, the New York Pizza Department, a fun place on Central with great thin-crust pizza. And finding fun stuff downtown is always great.

Our final stop before heading home was the National Hispanic Cultural Center, located in the historic Barelas area of town. The complex houses a performing arts center, a museum, and educational resources. It's a very impressive facility, and we're thinking of having family photos taken there, so we did some reconnaissance. Here are some of the results.

First, from the promenade to the facility itself, Ryan and Evan in the shade of some maple trees:
And here the three oldest kids pose near the fountain:
We then made our way home for a nap time. A well-deserved nap time.

Coronado State Monument

On Friday we accompanied Allyson's class on a field trip to Coronado State Monument in Bernalillo. The monument is located at the edge of the Santa Anna pueblo (from whence comes Allyson's teacher, so it was fun to talk with him about his hometown) on the bank of the Rio Grande at the site of the ancient Kuaua (pronounced like “koala” with a lisp) pueblo. Here Coronado and his party encamped during their first winter in what is now New Mexico, so the monument—in a somewhat split-personality style—celebrates both the pre-contact society of the Tewa people who lived along the Rio grande and the arrival of the Conquistadors in 1540.

We were part of a party of 60 or so kids and a dozen or so adults, representing the whole of the 4^th grade of Griegos Elementary School (a far cry from the 10 or so classes in each grade at the kids' previos and overcrowded school). The three classes split up and went with separate guides to different parts of the monument.

We followed the path along the ruins of the pueblo, stopped every 100' or so for a tidbit of history. Among these pieces of trivia were the following:

• In the Tewa pueblos, women owned dwelling places, and, at the time of marriage, the husband had to trek 40 miles or so to the mountains to get the wood for the roof of the home the wife built in his absence
• The original building style prior to the arrival of the Spaniards was called ball and paddle—pizza dough-sized spheres of mud that were stacked and then coated with more mud to form the walls of the structure
• The ladders you see in these pueblo sites havea symbolic nature—the different lengths of vertical posts represent the man and the woman, of different heights but held together and reaching upward
• “Kuaua” means “evergreen” in the Tewa language, which is odd since the trees nearby are all Cottonwoods—a deciduous tree

During the hike we saw some fun stuff. First, the reconstructed walls of the pueblo rooms (note the rectabgular shape, indicating the post-contact style introduced by the Spanish):

Next, a yucca plant ready to flower, which made us wonder if yuccas are related to asparagus:

A reconstructed room from the pueblo (the structure itself was three stories high and was entered only via ladders like the one seen here—the ceiling inside is only 5' high, meaning the Tewa were a short people):

After walking around we visited the museum, a small structure that houses a set of mural paintings from one of the original kivas at the pueblo. In the 1930s, anthropologists from UNM removed the murals and found layer on layer of these fresco-type paintings. The museum displays a dozen or so of these, the only of their kind in existence.

We then ate lunch and hiked to the banks of the Rio Grande before departing. On the way home, the little boys both fell asleep, which is always good for a picture or two: