Moran Family Fun

From Thursday morning through last night, so for four straight days, my life was filled with people. On Thursday and Friday, I attended a Resiliency Training Assistant course so I could become certified to teach resiliency to people here on the base. The training is part of USAFE's (United States Air Forces in Europe) Operation Grit  which has the goal of developing courage and determination in military members and their families. This training course was for members of Jared's squadron and their spouses so it was me, two other spouses (who used to be active duty Air Force), and a room full of military cops. I definitely felt like the odd woman out, but I'm still glad I attended the course and that they opened the training up to spouses. I learned that there are as many interpretations of business casual as there are people. Mostly I learned that being resilient is more than just bouncing back after difficulties. I was not surprised to see that so many of t...

This past week the game was Apples to Apples but we don't want to talk about it. Abigail chose Apples to Apples because she's not as on board with this increased game playing as all the other family members are and she thought choosing a game that her mom and dad do not like playing would give her a break from all the forced family fun. Well, we played A LOT of Apples to Apples last week anyway. But the game two weeks ago was way more fun so I thought I'd share it here. Two weeks ago the game of the week was Citadels , a quick and fun card game that requires more thinking and strategy than you realize at first. We were first introduced to Citadels about six years ago by Shaun and Chanda Frost, the friends we most often played games with while stationed at Ramstein. This is another game that gets packed in suitcases and brought along on vacations. It takes up almost no space in a bag and can be played by up to seven players. Finding a good game that our entire family can p...

I've been sick for over a week. Not so sick that life can't go on, but sick enough that business as usual has left me straight up exhausted. I'd wake up in the morning when the girls got up for school but go back to bed after they left and take a morning nap. Then I'd go to work only to come home and nap for another hour or two.  And then I'd go to bed later in the evening and fall immediately to sleep, which is not like me at all. Needless to say, it's been a rough week and I've needed every single minute of extra sleep I've been able to squeeze out of this weekend.   But it's also been a great week because I was asked to speak in Sacrament meeting  and I got to spend a lot of time over the last six days focused on studying and preparing to speak to our ward about temples. This is what happens when you mention in a ward council meeting that you feel as if the members of your ward aren't attending the temple nearly often enough. I do have qui...

This post could be titled The Perfect Game. Last week's game of the week was our all-time favorite game, Die Siedler von Catan: Städte und Ritter or The Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights . We were introduced to this game by our dear friends, the Kennedys, and we've been playing it since our first days in Germany in the early 2000s. The Settlers of Catan (the original base game) was released in 1995 and kind of revolutionized the board game world. And Settlers is an amazing game, but the 1998 Cities and Knights expansion is board game perfection. The idea behind the basic game is that the players are settling an island called Catan and they get points by building settlements, cities, knights, and roads. Those are built with cards representing different combinations of resources that you collect based on the dice roll. You can also get bonus cards from commodities which are produced by the cities you've built on commodity producing spaces. Bonus cards make it easier to ...

As a family, one of the things we like to do together is play games but we weren't making time to play them nearly often enough. It's just easier to watch a movie or something so our game closet door was rarely opened and the many, many games in there were just gathering dust. I mentioned in my birthday post that I won the game of the week. In case you were wondering exactly what that meant, in January we started a new tradition of picking a different game each week to play as a family. Each evening after dinner we try our best to make time to play a round or two of whatever the game is for that week. We're playing games much more often and watching movies and TV much less often. Each Sunday, a different family member chooses a new game for us to play for the next seven days. The game gets pulled out of the closet and lives in the dining room all week. No more out of sight out of mind excuses.  It's been a fun way to spend time as a family in the evenings and it's r...

It's my birthday and England has surprised me with beautiful weather in February. Blue skies, sunshine, and temperatures in the 60s? Happy birthday to me! Plus a Saturday birthday means Jared was home from work and we spent the day together, which is my very favorite thing to do.  We needed to vacate the house for a while so the girls could put their birthday plans for me (cleaning the house and making my birthday cake!) into effect so Jared and I headed to nearby Oxburgh Hall. I can't believe we haven't gone here before. It's a beautiful house in a really lovely setting. We explored inside the house before heading outside to enjoy the sunshine. I always like to look up at places like this. The ceilings are always so fantastic. This was in one of the front towers of the hall and I really liked that you can still see the individual bricks.  Oxburgh Hall is home to one of England's priest holes, which are hiding places built into houses of Catho...

I posted on Facebook earlier this week about a pattern I tried and loved recently. It's the Jade Shirt pattern from Made By Rae. It's a cute, boatneck tee shirt pattern that sews up easily and beautifully. I love the options that are included with the pattern - four sleeve lengths and two necklines mean it's a pattern I can use again and again and find myself with a different shirt each time. But what I really loved about this pattern is that it coordinates perfectly with the Isla Dress pattern. Taking the Jade shirt and using it as a bodice and attaching it to the skirt from the Isla dress makes a great fun dress.  My sweet husband thought I'd lost my mind and our dining room/my sewing space was overrun with pattern pieces and knit scraps for the better part of the week. Excuse the mess, mom's making clothes. I think the temporary mess was well worth the outcome as this week I sewed four Jade+Isla dresses and one long sleeved Jade tee. And all with only...