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!

1915...

One thousand nine hundred and fifteen. That is how many pages (of books, not articles) I've read mostly for Covenant Seminary in the last two months (although some was for the missionary prepartion program at Wheaton Bible). Within the next 25 days that number needs to be two thousand seven hundred and seventy seven pages total. I guess for a normal person who reads a bit that is not really that much...say 30+ pages a day, but given that I went from reading very little (except presentations at work and also stuff online) - this has been a huge adjustment for me. Also, many of these books I would categorize into 'smelly old textbook' which can make them brutal to get through. The books on the list thus far are:

Introducing Christian Education*
Teaching for Reconciliation*
The Heart of Evangelism
The gospel and the New Spirituality*
Introducing Postmodernism
Evangelism in the early church
Chameleon Christianity
Let the Nations be Glad
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Becoming a contagious Christian

Clearly some are better than others but if I had to chose my favorite (I've read 70% so far - all but the ones starred) I would say it is 'The Heart of Evangelism'. Dr Barrs is the professor of the class (Apologetrics and Outreach) I'm taking at Covenant Seminary and I have learned a tremendous amount from him. I have to write a small reflection on many of these books so if you want some fantastic night time reading do let me know and I will send them along.

It is hard to believe that Christmas is only 7 days away. I think as a child you always spend a whole month gearing up for the big day so it takes forever to roll around. As with most things in life, the older you get the busier, and important days seem to sneak up on you. Luckily, I think our family is mostly done with Christmas shopping so the stress of the season should be at a minimum. That being said, all of us (Christy, Sammy, Elizabeth and I) have all had a little case of some sort of bug that we can not seem to shake fully. In conjuction with that, my Crohn's symptoms (for those of you that do not know - can not imagine who you would be - I have Crohn's disease) have been coming back. This is especially frustrating after I had been off any medicine for several months. Certainly a matter of prayer for the whole family getting back to a healthy, if not at least normal, state. That being said, staying up until 1:30am probably does not help so I am off to get some sleep...

A Window Into Kindness

So every other Wednesday a lady, Sophia, comes and cleans our apartment (one of the many perks of living in my in-laws condo unit!). I can not really communicate with her because she speaks Polish with only a few words of English (thank you, yes, okay, etc). Sammy is a little afraid of her and will usually get close then run away back to Christy or I. Elizabeth likes to peer in at her from the door frame and watch what she is doing. Even though we can not communicate, you can tell she is such a sweet lady. Every time she cleans Elizabeth's room she will make her bed (something we don't even do as she just has two blankets) and will arrange all of her stuffed animals in a row. I've also seen her cleaning the kids bibs if they happen to be in the sink. Those things are clearly not in her job description, but are little acts of kindness she does simply because she loves children.

I remember thinking weeks ago that Christy and I should buy her some type of gift with a nice card as small token of our appreciation beyond just the money she gets - but as usual - I totally forgot. This last week when she was cleaning, I put together a bag of oranges and grapefruits that we had sitting around (Christy's parents had bought us a big box from the rotary club) for her to take home...way to go me. Problem solved. I'm such an innovator. She said thank you very kindly. When she was leaving that day, she motioned us over and proceeded to bring out of a large bag toys for the kids, Polish candies for all of us and a very nice card. Everything was in Polish but given the Halo around two people over a manager on the card - I'm pretty sure it was for Christmas. First of all, how cool is that? Second, its such a reminder to me that you can be the nicest person in the world but if you do not move from 'nice ideas' or 'warm thoughts' to action - what good is it? I find that this is constantly true of me - I'm the king of great ideas with no action - and here is an example again with someone I hardly know and can not even talk to showing me what true actionable kindness looks like. I need to continue to work to push myself beyond thinking 'It would be great to...' and actually do it.

So this weekend my parents were in town - and I was able to put them to work as soon as they got here. My dad watched Lizzy and Sammy while my mom, Christy and I had a cookie making evening. We probably made 120+ cookies that we were planning on delivering and/or mailing to several people. One such cookie package was sent to my friend Dave down in Florida. He wrote me a note to say thank-you, and also to show me the state of package when it got there. So clearly, most normal people sending cookie tins will put them in a box - however - most normal people are not quite as lazy as I am. At the post office I saw large padded envelopes and thought, 'This is a great idea - the tins will be fine in there...' Well, if you look at the picture on the left you can see that is clearly not the case. As good as the hole by the return address and the packaging tape over the other hole in the upper right is - my favorite part is the big 'Fragile' stamped on the front. Can you imagine what would have happened if THAT wasn't there? Yikes....

Anyway, I hope the holiday shopping is not getting the best of everyone and you are enjoying the snowy (in Chicago) and cold (also in Chicago - I miss warm temperatures) days before Christmas. Make sure you keep the economy going...shop early and shop often.

Until next time...

Where did November go?

Well...its been almost a month since I last made a post and I can not believe that much time has gone by! I feel like it was just yesterday that we were trick-or-treating and now all the stores are fully decorated with Christmas trees and lights. I even found myself getting out some Christmas music to get into the spirit. From age 5 until 25 I started hearing Amy Grant Christmas songs immediately after Thanksgiving - just would not feel like December with out that music. So... lets see what all has happened since I last posted...

With me quiting my job to pursue full time ministry in Costa Rica the kids wanted to do their part to pitch in financially as much as possible. They have been working around the clock to get the big project out the door, but I think when its finally done it will be great. Actually, Christy's Nana and Papa bought the kids little faux laptop computers that are to be used to help them learn how to spell, add, sing, etc. Elizabeth already knows how to turn hers on and make it play music. Sammy quickly learned how to chew the mouse and throw the computer. Thats my boy.

The week before Thanksgiving I went with my dad and my middle brother to go deer sight seeing which was cold (9 layers of clothing cold) but fun. While I was sitting outside enjoying the 30 degree weather, 25 mile an hour winds and occasional snow, I snapped a couple pictures of the property we were on (the old family farm that my grandpa owns). The picture on the left is cool because many of the apples are still on the trees in the old orchard even though the leaves are long gone. I guess they have not had a hard enough freeze to make everything fall yet. Add a little snow and I thought it made a nice picture. The picture on the right is the looking out over the backside of the property. If you were to walk left from here there is an old beaver pond and on the right is a small swamp.

The next week our whole family spent time in Spring Lake, Michigan with my parents and my middle brother and sister-in-law for Thanksgiving. One day we were able to sneak across Michigan to Detroit and spend some time with my dad's dad, Grandpa Meyer. He recently had his 95th birthday, and still manages to get around the retirement home pretty well. The kids enjoyed being smothered with attention by him (see to the left) and also getting rides on his walker as we tooled around the building (see right). Even at 95 my grandpa's memory is still far superior to mine. I enjoyed learning more little nuggets about his life like the stories from when he grew up on the farm as a boy, his time in the service during World War II, how he became a follower of Christ as a boy (he remembers the month,day,year,place and preacher who led him to Jesus - I can not even remember what I did yesterday!) and many other things. I know that he misses my grandma who recently passed away - they were married for 63 years but knew each other their whole lives. He is so looking forward to seeing her in Glory, but I suggested that God wanted him here for a while longer. He is really a ray of light for the retirement home he is in. He befriends everyone that he meets (this place has a huge staff and everyone knows him and was so excited to see the great grand kids that he talks about all the time) and lovingly and consistently shares his faith. I pray that I can be as effective at building relationships and witnessing as he has been and still is.

After Thanksgiving we drove back to Wheaton where we plan on being until Christmas day. My brother-in-law John recently changed jobs and had some time off work so we decided to do something fun with all of our kids. My parents always deprived me of the fun/joy/germs that are chuck-e-cheese so we loaded up the car to give our kids a flavor of what we never had. It was basically everything I expected. The pizza was terrible (even the workers warned us not to buy any - but we did not listen) and the kids play area smelled like finely aged throw-up. However, those two things aside, it was great. They had a reasonably good salad bar to offset the pizza, and plenty of little kid rides that everyone enjoyed. By far the kid favorite was the small carousel ride. It had three horses which was the perfect number for us. After three hours there, John and I realized that next time we need to find a babysitter for the kids so that he and I can go back and play video games for a couple hours. If we tried to play a game for more than 30 seconds, I would look up and realize Sammy was climbing up a skee-ball machine, Lizzy was in the back of the building and Luke was walking towards the front door. Needless to say, not a great atmosphere for us focusing on video games.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are looking forward to some time with family for Christmas. Until next time...

Purple Puppy

We had a very fun time trick-or-treating with cousin Luke on Halloween. Luke was his favorite animal in the world - a cow. Sammy dressed up as a farmer with overalls, a flannel and a red bandanna. And Elizabeth was a very proud purple puppy. For those of you that do not know - her favorite buddy in the world besides 'Hammy' is her pink puppy - shown in the picture. Christy sewed the ears and tail in the afternoon - I think they looked great. I snapped two pictures of Elizabeth but did not have my camera to get some pictures of Sammy - I think Luke's Grandma may have gotten some of all of us so I'll see if I can post those sometime. We walked around downtown Wheaton in the block just north of Memorial Park. The number of people was amazing - and so was how much some people do up their houses. I'm not talking the occasional pumpkin or spider webbing - but full electronic moving ghosts and goblins, light shows, creating miniature haunted houses enclosed in porches - the works. Some things looked so overboard that we decided not even to take our kids there. I would think (or should I say hope) people are a little embarrassed when my three year old daughter dressed as a puppy comes to the door and they answer with their full Freddy outfit, fake blood, etc. The other funny thing I noticed was that 10% of all the dads trick or treating with their family had either 1) an ipod in their ear 2) their blackberry out responding to an email or 3) their blue tooth in their ear so they could talk on the phone. Pretty sad. My brother in law was yapping on the phone as well, but to be fair, he was talking to his sister (or so he claims...)

Our remaining weeks here in the US seem to be filling up pretty quickly. We will be spending time up in Michigan to visit my family during both Thanksgiving and Christmas. In January, I have a tentative trip planned to Phoenix early in the month - then I will be in St Louis for a week of seminary residency and our whole family will be in Denver the next week after that. Lastly, I think we are planning a trip back to Richmond in mid February to visit West End Presbyterian Church and our other friends before we fly to Miami and Costa Rica in March. Someone asked me this week if I was still planning on trying to get a part time job but given that I'm gone for one full month of the remaining four and a half it seems a little silly.

Here is an article about a town running out of water that I thought was interesting. At least this was a relatively small town...but...for those of you that are not aware - the the entire metro Atlanta area has been hovering at about a 90 day supply of water as well. Their large reserve is drying up quickly. Water shortages have always been a problem in the west and its a growing threat to the southeast that many people do not talk about - but I think could be a great investment play in the future. Its slightly less urgent than the fossil fuel shortage because we already know how to solve the water 'crisis' - simply build more treatment centers, reserves or desalination plants. So, you just need to be in on the companies that do these sorts of activities. You could guess at that, or just do an ETF that tracks these sorts of companies like PHO.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm having fun listening to lectures and reading books for my Apologetics and Outreach course and I'll share about that next time - that is of course assuming no more amusing notes are posted in the condo building that require my attention...