Updated: O'Hares/Riddles 2013

URGENT BREAKING NEWS FLASH: The O'Hare/Riddle 2013 picture has been updated.

The most current O'Hare/Riddle family picture. Ya heard??

O'Hare/Riddles 2012

Ahh, the fam. Looking good!

The Can

This is the toilet seat that the school for provided us in our dorm room, which we've been using all semester. Thanks, guys...

Ergonomically designed

Santa and His Sleigh

Earlier this week, Santa loaded up his 21-speed sleigh and delivered Christmas gifts to a local family that we're friends with.

Jolly Ol' St. Nick rolls a little differently in the Himalayas...

Aleluia, Aleluia! Earth to Heav'n Replies

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!"
Luke 2:13-14

For lo, the days are hastening on by prophets bards foretold, 

When with the ever circling years, comes round the age of gold

When peace shall rule over all the earth, Its ancient splendors fling

And the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing!

merry christmas from the rooftop of the world

Thank you, Patagonia

This awesome article on Patagonia's website is a great reminder that Christmas should be about more than stuff: Take Back the Holidays

Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Texas, takes it a step further in his first sermon of Advent from a few weeks ago and helps to give some perspective in the midst of the Christmas madness - A History of Darkness and Depravity [This is a great sermon, definitely check it out, and I also recommend The Village Church's Advent guide for this year]

Christmas is friends and family and Christ and hope.

The Perfect Space

"I wanna fit into the perfect space..." - Avett Brothers

This, my friends, is what a perfectly arranged space looks like. My desk. This is where the heavy lifting gets done...

the weather here

I'm not really ever sure what the temperature actually is here.  I gauge temperature by the clothes I need to wear when I go outside:

In the mornings:  as much as I possibly can

During the day:  No gloves or toboggan (i don't mean a sled, yanks) while riding a bike.

In the evening:  Almost as much as the morning, with a little less - unless we're planning on sitting in a place without heat for a while.

So when Aaron and I ride to friends' homes at night, here is what we wear:

this was his reaction when i told him what i wanted to take pictures of

Peace on the Earth, Goodwill toward men

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world hath suffered long;

Beneath the angel strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love song with they bring

O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing!

"I like it a lot" - Lloyd Christmas

"Feels good to mingle with these laid-back-country-folk, don't it Harr'?"

how we celebrate

This is footage from a Christmas party I attended this Christmas season.  It doesn't seem like Christmas parties in China have changed much since I attended my first one in 2006.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXwYDnqWAho (in case the video below takes a while to load)

Mac Attack

Happy birthday, Micah! We love you, miss you, and are sorry we can't be there to celebrate with you!

The (older) O'Hare boys this summer in Memphis

Hung by the fire with care

Biking GN

This past Saturday, my friend Justin (of Hiking Gambo Mtn. fame) and I set out for my most ambitious scheme yet - a 70-mile round trip bike trip, including an ascent up to 14,000ft. to a remote monastery.

We set at at 8:30a and the temperature was in the mid-20's. It was freezing cold, still dark, and honestly, pretty miserable. Within 5 minutes, my CamelBak water reservoir had frozen solid and it wouldn't thaw back out again until close to 11:30a.

Justin and I thawing out during our first break. The sun had only just risen over the mountains.

After a little over an hour, we stopped to rest and thaw out. I'll be honest, I was miserable at this point - I hadn't felt my pinkie or ring fingers for over an hour. On top of that, I had turned down an offer to go to a natural hot spring with some friends for the day. The irony was as thick as club-hands felt.

After a quick snack, it was time to start the climb....

...which I was hoping would help thaw me out.

Stacy's step-dad Erik had sent some trail mix granola bars from America, a treasure for sure, and I was carrying 3 with me. At the foot of the mountain, I downed two of them and finally got my water unfrozen, and then began the climb.

Hopefully you can see from the picture that the climb was brutal. It just kept going up and up and up, something like twenty or thirty switchbacks, and because of the elevation, I had to stop at nearly every cutback to catch my breath.

Taking a picture is a great excuse for catching your breath...

After nearly an hour and a half of grinding it out, we finally made it. Probably the happiest I've ever been in my life to see a Buddhist monastery...

The monastery is there behind me, in the saddle of the mountain

We ate lunch, saw some of the local monks doing their thing, and then turned around and headed right back. I must say that the 23-minute ride down the mountain was the polar opposite of the climb up - it was pure bliss.

The ride back, not as cold or seemingly far as the approach, was uneventful. A solid 10 and 1/2 hours later, just as the sun was going back down, we made it back to town.

I should have gone to the hot springs...                                                                                 ...or not

This makes me happy

One of the only Christmas-y things I can buy here (Who cares if I can buy them year round?):

And here's one of the best Christmas commercials ever, featuring those lil' guys:

Call me the lucky one

Because I've got a great wife.

Stacy's mom has got it going on (It's true)

Happy Birthday to my beautiful Mom! (Belated post - her birthday was actually Sunday).

so 80's. so cute.

I love you and hope you had a great birthday!

S(L)SO!

On Saturday, I went for a 70 mile bike ride which included climbing a 14,000ft mountain on my bike. As I was enduring this pain, I casually mentioned to my wife in a text that all I could think about was fried chicken and waffles.

I arrived home from my 11 hour travail to find that... she made it happen!

Stacy (Leigh) Shepard O'Hare - incredible beyond words. In fact, incredible was a lame attempt at securing a fitting word.

A Christmas Tradition

As soon as we returned from our honeymoon in Greece,  I was ready to set up our Christmas decorations, and realized as most newlyweds figure out their first Christmas together that:
A) we had no christmas decorations

2) we had no christmas tree

and D) we had no money.  (home alone reference anyone?  and yes I've seen that at least once every year (most years multiple times) since it came out during my childhood)

Thankfully family gave us some of their old decorations and there was a Food Lion right down the street where we bought a $25 tree with our VIP card.

Our first Christmas together, Aaron gave me Home Alone.
It was the longest I went a Christmas season without watching Home Alone.
My previous Home Alone was on VHS and we had upgraded to a Blu-ray at this point.

Our first Christmas tree....also, I look like I'm in 9th grade in this picture.
No seriously, I wish I could post my yearbook picture.  you would agree.

Our first Christmas together.
Notice - no VHS capabilities.  It was a sad season until Christmas morning.

Anyway, that Christmas we decided to start a Christmas tradition of getting a new Christmas ornament every year, so we could slowly add ornaments to our Christmas tree.  So this year - this is what our tree looks like:

this year's tree

Here's a sample of some of our ornaments from the past 5 Christmases.  (the first two are MIA because I left them in America, afraid they would break or get lost over here).

2010's ornament.  I love this little guy.  He always makes me smile.

2011's ornaments, our first Christmas in China....we spent a lot of time on bikes and dodging electric scooters, so it seemed appropriate.

And the cloud ornament below is this year's ornament.  We bought them from a local artisan's guild here.  You see clouds like that in decoration (painted as trim on walls) all around the city.

I look forward every year to picking out a new ornament.

And here are some pictures from our previous Christmases together:

2008, Aaron's parents' house

This happened right after:

2009

I miss this house

2010, first Christmas in China

since we just moved into our house I didn't have much to decorate with
so I made one festive corner

2011

I'll be honest, I don't miss this house.

Anniversary Gifts

This past week, we celebrated our anniversary (if you read the blog, you may have heard...)

Here's the rundown on the loot we scored:

Aaron:

Stacy surprised me with an incredible gift - a painting. Not just any painting, one that I've had my eye on since my first time up here, in 2007. It is an oil-based painting of some mountains with sunlight highlighting one of the faces, and fog shrouding the bottom.

I'm not much for the arts (or very "cultured," for that matter) but I am in love with this painting. It reminds me of great times I've had hiking and the mountains that currently surround me on a daily basis, plus the Almighty Father who created the mountains (Psalm 65:6) and all creation. Incredible.

Stacy:

Before moving up here I had been eyeing copper tea pots that they sell up here.  So I was so happy when Aaron surprised me with one for our anniversary.

Also there is an artisan guild here in the city that sells really quality goods, using local patterns and colors.  Their bags are made of a really soft  leather.  When Aaron biked to the fishing village a couple of weeks back, he found the factory where they actually make the bags, and picked one up for me.  

I'm not as descriptive as Aaron is - but trust me, I love them.  In fact I love them so much, I was worried that Aaron wasn't going to like his gift nearly as much as I love mine.

Gentiana Update

Just over a month-and-a-half after trying to transplant some mountain flowers called Gentiana Phyllocalyx, it's time for an update.

As you can see, something is growing. However, I think that for the most part it's just the grass that was in the clods I dug up - I haven't seen any evidence that the flowers took hold.

However, according to a friend familiar with the Gentiana flower, I dug mine up right at the end of flowering season, so there is somewhat of a chance that the roots have taken hold (the other plants certainly have...) and that the flowers will bloom next year. That's what I'm hoping for.

PS - does anyone have a lawnmower that will fit inside a Coke can?

An Early End to No-Shave November

As is customary for gentlemen in the month of November, I participate in "No-Shave November." When December comes, there is usually the much anticipated* unveiling of the Post-No-Shave-November Facial Art.

This year, Thanksgiving and our wedding anniversary fell on the same day, and a few days prior to the glorious coincidence of these two ever-important jamborees, my wife lamented to me that I always have a beard in our anniversary pictures. Not one to quickly break tradition, I nevertheless saw this as an opportunity to bless my wife. So, I decided to do something uncharacteristic and bring an early end to "No-Shave November," so as to bless my wife.

Instead of a beard in this year's anniversary pictures, I will be sporting a look I have christened "The 4-Point Buck" - a mustache the descends on either side to downward-facing forked prongs of glorious facial hair, creating a strong resemblance to the rack of a 4-point buck.

I'm not sure this is what Stacy had in mind when she requested "no beard this year," but I guess we could quibble over the semantics all day...  Ah, the things I do out of love.

(* Stacy waits eagerly to see what sort of artistic rendition I will come up with. I think it is probably her favorite surprise of the year.)