Rocky Mountain High

It has been quite a crazy couple weeks to say the least. Last week I was in St Louis at Covenant Seminary where I was taking a Christian Education course during their residency period. The class was truly wonderful. There was a diverse group of folks ranging from full time MDiv students to retired military to business men and woman to....well...me. The class was very interactive and the teachers did a great job keeping the class interesting by actually using many of the different tactics/ideas they were teaching in their own lectures. I met many people that I will likely keep in touch with in the future. All that I have left to do now for the Christian Education course is to finish up the final project.

During that week I was gone, Christy took the kids up to Michigan to hang out with my mom. What started off with a fun filled Monday went down in flames quickly as Elizabeth, Christy, Sammy, my Mom and Dad all got sick. My mom took Lizzy to see the new Veggie Tales movie on Tuesday - and about half way through she said she wanted to go home. Later that evening, they were having dinner and she fell asleep on the floor underneath the chairs. Then, when she woke up as folks were finishing dinner - massive amounts of throw-up everywhere. As much as I felt bad that I was not there to help - I was very happy to be in St Louis for the remainder of the week :-)

I got home late Saturday night and Christy and I had about enough time to finish the laundry before we flew out of Chicago to Denver on Monday early afternoon. We stayed at Christy's sister's (Bekah) house on Monday night as I-70 (the highway to get up to the mountains) was shut down due to ice/snow/wind. This worked out okay though as Bekah and her family had just flown in from Ethiopia that day, and we had an opportunity to meet our new nephew (Miles) who they had just adopted.

We drove up to the mountains on Tuesday (the weather was much better) and made it to Bachelor's Gulch where we are staying. The first thing that caught my eye this year was a little slip of paper placed by the phone (you can see a picture of it to your left - simply click it to make it larger). It exposes a dichotomy that I have long been confused of. The cheaper a hotel is, the more you often get, and vs vr. For example, if you go to a Days Inn, you probably stay for about 30 to 40 bucks a night, get all your phone service paid for, get free Internet and I bet you might even get a continental breakfast. When you come to where we are staying, it is quite expensive, however, to make a local phone call costs one dollar. To make a long distance phone call is a $16 dollar connection charge, a prevailing per minute charge for sprint and a 99% surcharge on the bill. I just do not understand.....I guess the corporate philosophy is that you charge more simply because you can. However, I can think of very few industries where this model actually works. People get mad about payday loan lenders charger 100% interest....I think if you put this hotel's telephone fees into a APR, we'd be in the thousands!

Anyway, after musing over the phone bills for a while. we decided to explore the natural beauty that is Colorado. Actually, Sammy was watching TV (see to the left). The best part about that picture is that the shades are drawn....majestic mountains outside and we like dark rooms. The other fun thing we liked to do was play with the EXIT sign on the floor out in the hallway. Oh well, maybe we'll start working on exploring a little more than just the hallway and the room. I think I'm going to go snow shoeing tomorrow (which should be an amusing exercise in futility) and probably log in some skiing or snow boarding later this week.

I hope you all are doing well and we'll be in touch.

Quite an adventure

Well, another blog, another 2 weeks. I really do apologize for taking so long to update this in between updates. I wish I had a better excuse, but...even now I can not think of one. We have already had a pretty busy January. I was able to fly out to Phoenix and visit my long time friend Kenn who I went to UW-Madison with and have been close with every since. I flew out on Wed and got back Sunday morning. We did everything from eat out almost every meal, played pool, bowled (I managed to get into the 130's...not to shabby), solved Halo3, played alot of call to duty 4 and watched my beloved packers get to the 2nd largest game in the NFL. Quite alot accomplished by anyones standards. All in all, it was a great trip, however, I did lose my voice well out there due to a nasty cold that I think everyone in Christy's extended had since Christmas. Also, I think Christy got slightly less excited about me being out there every day I spoke to her on the phone. Needless to say, she was happy to have me home to help out with the kids when I flew in on Sunday afternoon. This week has been good as I've been spending time preparing for my residency down in St Louis at Covenant Seminary (writing papers and reading multiple text books) while Christy has spent her free time sewing everything from baby slings to cloth diapers. You do not have to cry for me yet; however, I am going to take the Amtrak (coach) from Chicago to St Louis on Monday morning. We'll have to see how this all turns out....I think it will involve me getting up at 6 to take a Metra downtown Chicago, and then taking a smelly, old, cramped Amtrak train for 5.5 hours down to St Louis - topped off with an overpriced cab ride to the hotel. I'm not holding out much hope...but, maybe it won't be as bad as I have it in my head. One interesting thing that has started happening is that the kids will pretend to have 'nap time' together. I'm not entirely sure where this has come from....at first I thought maybe Elizabeth had naps at preschool (which I would wonder why we pay them anything as she is only there for 4 hours a week) but Christy assured me this was not the case. I'm assuming this is just something that Elizabeth has come up with on her own - and Sam being the good sport he is goes along with it. Either way, they sure are cute when they play this way together. Even if it only lasts for about 3 minutes, it gives me hope that some day, maybe...just maybe, they will not hate each other. The jury is still out on that and we will have to wait and see.

Another exciting happening occurred this morning. There was a gentle cry...which turned into a big cry....from Elizabeth's bedroom. I hear Christy say....'Josh, you've gotta come here and see this - quick!' So, instead of coming quick I do the first thing any father would, grab the camera. I'm so glad I did, you can see to the left the problem Sam got himself into. In case you can not tell, that is legit the #2 that he managed to stick his hand into - so it is very stuck. We had to empty all the block pieces out of there, and get Vaseline all over his hand and the toy to pull it out. He looks just like me in this picture minus the vein running down each side of his forehead. As much as we wanted to comfort him, Christy and I were both laughing pretty hard this morning (and continue to do so when we see this picture). Ahhhh...the things you get to deal with when you have small children.

After the St Louis trip next week, our whole family will be going to Denver for about 10 days. It looks like our next trip after that will be Richmond, Virginia around February 20th - so hopefully we will get a chance to see all of you then.

Go Pack Go!

Happy New Y(ear)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! You would have thought with so much extra free time around the holidays I would have had more time to post - but it just was not the case. I found myself busy enough with kids, school work, and family activities. I hope you all had as nice of a time as we did over the last two weeks. We were able to spend Christmas morning with Christy's family (two sisters, brother in-laws, and the kids' three cousins) which was great. Then on Christmas day we drove up to Michigan to spend Christmas evening through Saturday with my family. During that time we were able to see my mom's parents and my brother and sister-in-law.

One of the gifts that Christy got (actually on her birthday on December 28th) is something I am most excited about. A couple weeks ago we played a game called Carcossonne with our small group from church and it was so much fun. I won't go too much into how to play it, but it is basically a tile based game that anywhere between 2 and 5 players can play. You use the tiles to build cities, roads and farmland - and based on the positioning of your men - you score points. One of the best parts is that as few as two players can go at it - I'm guessing that there will be some lonely nights in the first couple months of Costa Rica where Christy and I will tire of learning Spanish and will take a break playing this game. If you are ever looking for a fun but simple and quick strategy game, you should check this out. If you are familiar at all with 'Settlers' - it is similar but maybe a little more simple.

The most exciting thing that happened over the last two weeks was our adventure last night. On the left you can see a silly picture of Lizzy looking cute. However, if you were to pull back her hair you would see the aftermath of last night (see to the right). She was running around at Nana and Papa's and we think caught her foot on the rug and fell down next to their coffee table. Instead of a bump or a bruise, she managed to some how slice her ear about a half an inch at the end of her ear lobe, straight through. I assured Christy by saying, 'I think she is probably fine, I'm pretty sure we do not need to go to the ER' which translating Josh speak means - I have no idea how much the ER costs with blue cross blue shield, but I think Elizabeth's ear is not worth it. Luckily, Christy (clearly the smarter half) insisted that we go to the ER and I'm glad we did. (from Christy - Getting out the door and getting to the hospital was pretty chaotic with Lizzy crying and holding a paper towel fiercely to her ear...she was ready to bite off the head of anyone who tried to remove that paper towel hand for even a second. She helped break our tension a little bit, though, when she confided in me that her real worry about going to the hospital was that the doctor was going to take off her ear as a way to fix the problem. Once we assured her that they would not take her ear, she warmed up to the idea of getting some help.) Luckily they did not need to do any stitches (instead they were able just to glue it shut because the bleeding was not terrible), but the nurse and doctor said had we not come she likely would have had a pretty large scar across the bottom part of her ear. The one thing that hit me most yesterday while in the ER was the pain you feel as a parent when your daughter is squirming in pain. That has to be the single worst thing you can go through as a parent. I was almost feeling her pain and contorting with her - but still utterly helpless. Now...think how much worse it is for parents who have kids how are seriously ill, chronically sick, or worse yet end up passing away. I can hardly even fathom how hard that must be. My last thought before I fell asleep last night was, now think how hard that must have been for God to send his only Son. Certainly gives you pause, and makes you appreciative of the fact that we have a heavenly father who will stop at nothing to save his children here on earth.

On that note, its getting later here and I'm going to try and listen to a lecture for school or maybe get some more reading done. I hope your new years eve was relaxing and fun. We look forward to seeing many of you in the first quarter of this year before we head down to Costa Rica!