A Colorado Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! (Okay, so I'm a little late)... So Merry Christmas!!! (there, I'm early for once). And my pictures below definitely get me in the Christmas spirit, so I don't feel bad about saying it early.

This year for Thanksgiving, we went to Colorado Springs to visit Evan & Heather, friends from our Indiana days. And what better way to remember those cold Indiana days than to go to a snowy destination?

Our first few days in CO, we went up to Steamboat Springs and spent 3 days at a time-share that Evan & Heather's friends couldn't use. Don't ya hate it when you have to go to beautiful resorts to help out some friends?

The second day we were there, we woke up to snow falling, which was really fun since it ended up being the only snow we saw fall while we were there. This is our view from our hotel window as it was snowing.

We all ventured into the town of Steamboat Springs and window shopped in the little shops and generally had fun being cold for a while.

We inquired about snowshoeing, but the locals said there wasn't enough on the ground to need it. So we stuck with our tennis shoes and endured cold toes, but it was fun.

I think this was on the third morning. The snow was still there, but the sun came out and was shining through some snow that was blowing off the mountains. So I caught this rainbow from our window.

I think this was a maintenance shop at the resort because they kept pulling out mini snow-dozers and shovels from it. But it had the best row of icicles I've seen in a long time!

While it was still snowing, Paul and I actually went out to the outdoor jacuzzi (we sprinted from the hotel door to the water) and had fun making snowballs from the snow surrounding the jacuzzi and seeing how long they would last underwater, etc. It was fun...but no pictures.

After we returned from Steamboat Springs, we went to the Garden of the Gods and drove around. We got out of the car for a few pictures, but didn't spend a lot of time outside hiking in the park. We saved that for geocaching later in the week.

Proof we were there...

Paul's such a funny guy. I love 'im!

Another day we hiked up to Pulpit Rock. It was crazy because there was snow all along the trail that we took up (on the non-sunny side), yet the temps reached at least 75 degrees that day, so I was actually regretting wearing all the layers I had on.

It was pretty slippery since the snow had been melting and then re-freezing. There were some close calls with slipping, especially since I had old tennis shoes on without much tread on them.

The view from the top - Evan & Heather looking out.

I was making a face at Paul because he jokingly threatened to push me off the edge.

Pike's Peak is in the background - it's the peak with the snow on it in the middle of the picture.

Evan had a small slide on the way down (we took the sunny trail down so there wasn't snow, but there was LOTS of mud! You can see the compassion on Heather's face as she analyzes the "injury". Just teasing Evan!

That's Pulpit Rock from the bottom of the trail looking back up.

A couple of different days we went geocaching in the area. This was along a trail of which I can't recall the name. Heather found the first cache, which was fun.

Paul hinted loudly enough that I "found" the next cache. It was pretty close to the drainage ditch, (I really doubt it was a named creek), so I had to be careful not to fall in.

The next day we went geocaching again, and the temperature was MUCH colder. So we all had lots of layers on and hats/gloves. Gotta love Colorado weather...it's a lot like Texas - just wait a while and it will change!

This was another one that I had help "finding". But it was fun.

Self-photo attempt.

Another find...I actually wasn't there for this one because I wimped out and sat down for a while. I learned the hard way that I should have brought water on this outing. While in CO I was constantly thirsty and felt like I never had enough water to drink. Darn elevation!

Other than those main activities, we played lots of games (Settlers of Catan, Carcasson, Fluxx, Sequence, etc), watched movies, and read books. It was great to be able to relax and just hang out without any appointments or meetings to go to!

Thanksgiving day we spent with the friends who had let us use the timeshare. They are Evan & Heather's ballroom dancing instructors, and their daughter is also Evan's co-worker at Focus on the Family. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone who was there and playing games (Evan & Heather introduced us to the game Fluxx there - a fun big group game). Evan and Heather are really blessed to have great friends there in Colorado Springs.

After our week with Evan & Heather, we spent Sunday-Wednesday at the CCCA national conference that was hosted at the Broadmoor Hotel. I'll post another blog with pictures of the hotel. It was the NICEST hotel I've ever stayed at! More details to come!

Movies to go with the September Post...

Here is one of the videos that go with the post I uploaded in September...before you comment on how long it takes me to put videos up, I have to explain that it took hours to upload this one and then it would error out and not upload anything. So it wasn't due to a lack of effort in getting the videos uploaded...it was technical difficulties!

How is it already September?!?!?

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been that long since I posted anything. And I can’t say that it’s because I post to facebook more, because I haven’t done that, either. So here’s an attempt at a semi-brief update of what we’ve been up to over the last 4 ½ months.


May was spent preparing for summer camp (staff arrived May 14)! I don’t really recall having a life outside of working and sleeping that month. We were able to sneak in a Settlers of Catan tournament with Philip & Felicia, and Jim & Stacey at the camp over Memorial Day weekend. But the rest of the time was wrapping up retreat season, and transitioning to summer camp.
Then summer happened and I really don’t know where the weeks went. I really don’t think it’s because I’m getting older that I think it went so fast. Maybe I’m wrong. But it really was the fastest 10 weeks that I can remember.


One thing that made it pretty special is that Rachel came out for 3 weeks and worked in the kitchen because we were short handed. She was switching jobs, so I convinced her to quit her old job early and come out to Texas before she started her new job. We owe Clay big time for letting her come, and Rachel deserves a medal of honor for her hard work and sacrifice of sleep and free time. I will definitely admit that the kitchen has the worst hours of all of our jobs. She was usually out the door by 6am and didn’t get finished until 7pm with only a short break in the afternoon if she was lucky.


It was really neat for me to have someone else in my family get a true sense of what summer camp is like. My mom came out for a week in 2007 to help in the gift shop when we were short there. So she had a pretty good idea as well, but I think Rachel got the full picture. I promise that the next time she comes to visit, we will just play and not work at all!


Here's some proof that we did take off a couple days and go sightseeing. We went to the IMAX theater near the Texas History Museum near/on UT's campus. We saw Night at the Museum 2...it was fun, though we did have to sit in the very back row to feel like we could see the whole screen. Are we old, or what?


We went down to the Congress St. bridge to wait for the bats to fly out. This is while we were waiting.

Then this is when the bats flew out. You can't really see it in the pictures, but it was pretty cool to see in person. It's just a stream of black dots coming out and you can hear them squeaking. They all take turns leaving. I envisioned a huge mass of bats flying out all at once. But instead they start at one end of the bridge and start leaving and gradually the bats leave from left to right. As the bats started to leave from the side we were standing on, you could smell them. It wasn't pretty. I think watching them fly over the city from your car is just as cool. :)

Girls Night In! Of course we had to play the Cupid Shuffle and dance. Then we watched a movie, had ice cream sundaes, and played ultimate twister!!!

This is the day Rachel, Nerys, Paul and I went to San Antonio. We went to Six Flags first, then went down to the Riverwalk to have dinner. Six Flags was nice because it was still cool in early June, and there weren't any lines. It was great!

Rachel & Nerys at the Casa Real (I think that's the name of it) on the River Walk.

Me & Paul...the flash made it look like we had tans!!

We had a mariachi band play for us, too. I'll try to get that video uploaded as well. It was fun!

Then we went to see the Alamo. Paul was taking lots of pictures as we walked...Rachel was super excited about it, too.

Yep, there's the Alamo! Right in downtown San Antonio...it's so weird sometimes when you look at what surrounds it now, but I'm glad they didn't destroy it or let it deteriorate.

She was really excited about this picture.

I'm not sure which historical figures we were imitating from the sculpture...but it was fun.

She likes sticking her tongue out.

After Rachel went back to Virginia, the summer just flew by and all of a sudden the staff was leaving and I was headed to Virginia to surprise my dad for his 60th birthday. All 3 of us girls showed up the weekend after his actual birthday, which I think helped keep him guessing, though he almost found out our secret several times. It was fun to go back for a weekend just to hang out. Although I still ended up breaking their back porch screen…actually Scout, Rachel’s dog, ran through it, but somehow I ended up with the blame. Apparently she is really scared when you pick up a chair that was knocked over and it makes a noise as you set it down. So she ran from the noise…straight through the screen. And the screen didn’t even faze her or slow her down a bit.

Saturday we went down to the dock to visit Dad's "new to him, but old in age" boat. The shaft on their motor hadn't been altered yet (it needed to be longer), so we didn't go out on the boat, but it was fun to look at and imagine the wind blowing through our hair on the York River. Now they have it running, so they are becoming sailors! Okay, Dad's becoming a sailor...I think Mom's just enjoying the ride.

Then we all went out to eat dinner in Gloucester on the water. It was beautiful and we had wonderful seafood...actually I think I had pork medallions, but they were super good, too. We saw lots of jelly fish in the water as we walked around the dock after dinner. I never think about them being in fresh water but maybe the water there is just brackish enough that they can survive?

Sunday after church = Family Bowling Trip! Go Mom, go!!

Clay, Rachel, and Scout!

Life in posed pictures...

Real life...

After my trip to Virginia, Paul and I went out to Palm Springs, CA for a week. Everyone in Palm Springs kept asking us why we decided to visit in August. I guess they couldn’t understand why we would choose the 110 degree weather over the 105 degree weather we had back in TX. Well, hot is hot, and we just wanted a change of scenery to relax and get refreshed before retreat season started.

We did lots of eating out – some places were ½ price because it was their “off” season. Other places were not because their food was worth every penny!!!

We also went on a glider ride for an early 30th birthday present to Paul. It was really fun and not nearly as scary as I thought it might be. A small prop plane towed us up to 10,000 feet above sea level, and then we released the tow line and our pilot delivered the most graceful fall I’ve ever experienced. He even put a few tricks in to make you feel weightless. I’ll put the movies on another blog after I get the pictures up.

This is the tow plane taking us up.

He turned before we hit the mountain...but for a minute I was almost concerned.

Coming in for the landing...the dots in the middle of the picture are cows. He said, "I'm going to put us down before the runway on the field so that I don't have to use so much brake to slow us down." It worked just fine.

After our flight, we drove around Hemet and the surrounding small towns that I can't remember names for. Our rental car was a hybrid Nissan Altima. We only filled up once after driving over 500 miles, so that was really nice...because gas in CA is expensive!

Paul saw these mailboxes and got these pictures. He has a great eye for these kinds of shots. I'm too busy looking at trees and plants to notice the fun man-made shots.

It amazes me that people would choose to live in the desert. It was SO HOT!!!!

This was our typical view each day. Driving around Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Desert Palms, you could see the dry desert mountains in the background, and the green sprinkler-fed grass and palm trees lining the streets. Crazy!

We went to the Palm Springs Air Museum one day. They have WWII airplanes on exhibit - one hangar with the Pacific Arena planes, and one hangar with the European Arena planes. And the docents giving tours/info were all WWII veterans. It was really neat to hear them talk about their experiences.

We spent so much time looking at all the planes and asking questions, that we ran out of time to look through their library. We ran upstairs for a quick peak and found rows and rows of bookshelves filled with WWII history books and other pilot diaries that only have 1 copy. I hope one day they can get those pieces of history preserved digitally so we don't lose them!

My favorite view of trees - looking straight up into the foliage.

Thursday night we went down to the Village Fest. They close down Palm Canyon Drive and hundreds of vendors set up booths and tents to sell their artwork or raise awareness for their causes, etc. I was so surprised how hot it was though. When the sun set and it was dark, it was still 90+ degrees and the streets were still radiating heat.

One of the days we got up at 4:30am to drive up to an overlook and watch the sun rise. This picture is blurry because Paul was trying to get our camera to do a special shot by keeping the shutter open. We haven't figured that feature out on our camera yet, but you can kind of see the cars driving up the mountain below us. The headlights make a S shaped line.

Here's the same shot with the normal shutter speed. The road curves at the bottom right of the picture.

The weather was really pleasant at 5 in the morning.

Taking fun pictures...though we didn't plan to wear red and green on purpose since we were dressing at 4am. Maybe we can still use one of these as a Christmas picture though...if I decide to send Christmas cards out this year. I'm so bad about that!

This one is the best in my opinion.

Then we went to the Living Desert zoo while it was still cool in the morning. After that, we headed back to the hotel to sleep during the hottest part of the day! Then we ventured out to go eat dinner and we watched the sun set, so that was pretty neat.

Zebras!

I love this picture because it almost looks like the giraffe is in it's natural home and we're not at a zoo.

There were several giraffes. Apparently they allow zoo visitors to feed the giraffes from your hand if the giraffes feel like coming up to the fence where we were standing...but they were tired of seeing people that day, so they stayed over the hill most of the time.

The dad of the group did come tease us by coming within 30 feet of the fence...but instead of eating from our hands, he awkwardly ate the grass. God sure does have a sense of humor with his creations.

These little guys were hilarious to watch. I don't remember their names. I feel like they were in the Lion King movie, though.

Of course the wolf was looking straight at me until I snapped the picture when he decided to look away. He was so quiet and still, we almost didn't know he was there.

One of the evening trips we took in Palm Springs was up the Aerial Tramway that goes up Mt. San Jacinto. It was pretty cool. The temperature dropped 20 degrees, so it was really pleasant at the top. I don't remember the guy's name who had the crazy idea of building it (by the way everyone told him it couldn't be done). But I'm sure glad he succeeded! It was beautiful at the top.

The tram car rotated 360 degrees as we ascended, so everyone got to see every view from the top.

After we left Palm Springs, we spent a day and a half in L.A. These are some of the wind turbine fields we saw as we drove back to L.A. Pretty amazing that they generate electricity. Paul read that on the new ones, one of the blades is as long as an 18-wheeler truck!

We went to the Tar pits just to see what it was. Pretty much, it’s smelly tar/asphalt that is bubbling up from the earth.

This is one of the excavation sites "Pit 91" that they look for fossils in. But right now they're working on another area, so this pit is on hold for the next 5 years.

They put these statues of elephants near them which shows 1 elephant getting stuck, while 2 others watch helplessly as he struggles. It’s really very sad if you think about it…so let’s move on. We also just drove around town and saw Beverly Hills and drove up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu and walked down the pier watching the street vendors/entertainers. The weather in L.A. was so much nicer (as in only 80 degrees) than Palm Springs, but the traffic and crowds were worse in L.A. so I guess you have to pick which is more important to you.

We went to the Warner Brothers studio and did the back stage tour which was pretty neat. Paul wanted to go to Paramount because it’s supposed to be a better tour, but it was already full.

This is Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino -the one used in the movie. Clint bought it, but he's letting WB display it right now for the tour.

The tumbler from Batman Begins!

We got to see the set used for Friends – the Central Perks coffee shop. It’s amazing how tv makes everything look bigger and better. Because in person, it’s really not all that impressive. But the camera angles and lighting make everything look better.

The Smithsonian wanted to buy the Friends set, but Jay Leno convinced WB not to sell it because he wanted to do an interview with the cast on the set. But he never got to do that interview. And WB decided they can make more money with their tours than the Smithsonian can pay them. A little selfish in my opinion, but no one cares what I think. :)

We flew back on a Tuesday, and were back at work on Wednesday. Now we’re in the midst of our fall retreat season which is a much slower pace, though still pretty busy. I like it though because I look forward to cooler weather and time to get away every now and then for fun.

We were off this weekend, and for Paul’s birthday (Saturday, Sep 19th), we ran a sprint triathlon with Philip and his friend Matt. It was interesting since Paul and I hadn’t done a whole lot of training since we got back 3 weeks ago (and we didn't do ANY training during summer).

We only have 1 before picture and 1 after picture on Matt's camera, so I'll post those together when I get them. It was a fun race...one that we were happy to finish. And now we're all in the same age bracket (30-39), so they ranked us together. I think I came in 9th in the women, though I don't know how many women in my age bracket competed. Paul, Philip & Matt came in 26, 27, 29 in that order out of the men in their age bracket. Our times were 1 hr 27 min (me), 1 hr 29 min (Paul), 1 hr 32 min (Philip & Matt). But the caveats are that Paul's bike chain came off at the beginning of his ride so he had to stop to fix that, and Philip was staying back with Matt since it was Matt's first triathlon race ever. Otherwise Philip would have come in 30 minutes before the rest of us, and Paul would have beat me. :)

Our long term goal is to complete the Rock n Roll ½ Marathon in San Antonio in November, and if we survive that, we will attempt a full marathon in Austin on Valentine’s Day 2010. We’re such romantics. Though I’m still scared about running 26 miles…13 was one thing, but 26 is just so long!!!

I’ll try to do better at keeping this updated so I don’t forget stuff. The next adventure that we have coming up is getting to stay with Lydia and Corban while their parents are at a 4-day conference starting Tuesday. We’ll get to see Lydia’s first softball game and go to piano lessons and go to swimming lessons and hear about their day at school and I’ll get to practice cooking dinner 4 nights in a row (though I have a feeling that one of them might be pizza, even if it’s pizza from the grocery store that we cook at home). It will be fun, and hopefully I’ll get to post some pictures. :)