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.