Journey's end

From Manitou Springs we set out on a day trip to the Royal Gorge. Ok, so it's a little tourist-trappy, but we enjoyed our day of walking across the world's highest suspension bridge, riding the steepest incline railway, and enjoying the requisite petting zoo, merry-go-round and little old-west ghost town. All right, maybe it's more than a little touristy. The real draw behind our trip here was the fact that Andrew and I whitewater-rafted the Royal Gorge 10 years ago and thought it would be cool to show the kids where we rafted and see the river from a different perspective. Seeing the rafters fly by - I had to stand there and say to our kids - see guys, isn't that so cool!!?!! Some day when you're all a bit bigger, we're going to come back here, but next time, we'll be in the raft!

On our last vacation day (I don't count driving home as vacation time), we drove up Pikes Peak. There is a reason Katherine Bates was inspired to write "America the Beautiful" from the top of this mountain. It is gorgeous. But I have to admit, although I'm not afraid of heights, the drive up was wild. At one point, it literally looked like we were driving up into the clouds.After we walked around the top for a little while (with our kids constantly insisting - "Mom, Dad, can we please go now?? It's SOOOOOO cold up here!!!") and took a bunch of pictures, we drove back down to the half-way picnic area. On the way in, we saw a cute little red fox standing in the middle of the road as if to welcome us in to the picnic grounds. Little did we know he was doing exactly that. We drove over to a picnic table, got out our food and up trotted this little fox who didn't look quite so little now that we were face to face with him. My kids (who by this time had heard plenty of ranger talks on the dangers of feeding wild animals) were very vocal with their, "Mom!! Somebody must have fed that fox! Now he knows to come get food here! How can people do that? Don't they know it's wrong?" ,etc. All of this disgust in people came to a quieting halt when the fox began inching it's way closer and the kids ran back to the safety of the van trembling with how close they had just come to nature. We are SUCH city-folk! Andrew recommended we pack up and head further into the picnic area, because, surely the fox wouldn't figure out where we are then, right? Not so much.

We had no more gotten our stuff out again, when up he trotted. At that point, Andrew commanded our scattering, chicken-hearted children to "Sit at the table and eat fast!! If we just ignore him he'll go away. EAT!" The fox wasn't buying our not-making-eye-contact bit. He inched closer (like less than 10' away), our children quietly made scared-to-death gutteral sounds and Andrew rose up to his full 6'2" hieght, grabbed a stick and prepared to fight off the beast should he decide he was done begging and just wanted that pb&j sandwich! At that moment, Lucas (I'm convinced his brain just hasn't finished making all the neural connections necessary), decided he really needed a better look at that fox. On tip-toe, he stealthily made his way nearly a foot past Andrew when he was caught! Andrew yelled out in a very commanding, I-am-so-serious kind of voice, "Get behind me!! When the fox sees me, he thinks big scary man! He sees you and thinks SNACK!!" It was all I could do to not pass my fox-coveted pb&j through my nose.

We love Colorado Springs! (Journey part 5)

We stayed in a cabin in Manitou Springs for 5 days and would have loved to stay more, but I suppose Andrew did have to go back to work at some point :). Our cabin was next to a little stream and tree with a rope swing that our kids loved. It was really a great place to relax and have fun with our kids after a full day of activities. We were also close to some of our day-time destinations; like Manitou Cliff Dwellings. The kids loved climbing in and around the cliff dwellings used by people over a thousand years ago. Andrew and I tried the in and around stuff too, but all I can say is, people must have been a whole lot smaller back then because the doors were an awfully tight squeeze! At least the kids had a good laugh at us.
We also spent part of a day hiking around Garden of the Gods. What a beautiful park, and best of all, it's free :) ! I learned a valuable lesson there - You see, those rock formations were so tempting, I just had to climb one...
...without climbing gear of course and as I was smiling for the picture, I was inwardly thinking, I'm going to break something. Lesson - going up is much easier than coming down. Let's just say I was not tempted to try it again, besides it's illegal - seriously. And no, I did not know that until afterward. Moving on.....

We loved the day we spent at Focus on the Family. When we were planning out our vacation, Andrew thought I was nuts to set aside an entire day for Focus. We got there at 9:30 and left ~5:30 and we could have stayed longer. There are great activities for Adventures in Odyssey lovers - if you have school-age kids and you aren't listening to Odyssey with them - Get Started! It's an awesome , Christ-focused radio series that you will come to enjoy as much as your kids. Enough for the plug. As soon as we got to Focus, we headed to the Welcome Center and downstairs to the kid area where we went roaming through the different rooms, trying on costumes from different characters and just having fun. Then we headed over to the Administration building. There we got an official tour of the building and heard about Focus' mission to help families. It was neat to see how Focus has changed in the 10 years since Andrew and I were there last. They still work diligently to support families, but now they have a very strong ministry to adopting families and Crisis Pregnancy Centers as well.

Before our tour began, we tried to get a hold of Andrew's cousin Rudy Haerr because we knew he worked at Focus and thought it would be fun to see him. After the official tour, not only did we get to say "hi" to Rudy, but he gave us a fantastic "back stage" kind of tour. For you Focus on the Family Broadcast listeners out there, look at the center picture in the collage and you'll see that I'm actually sitting in Dr. Dobson's chair! Too much fun!! Rudy also showed us the room where they make the sound effects for Adventures in Odyssey and gave us a lot of fun insider info about production of the Odyssey and Focus broadcasts and the voices behind our beloved characters. Then we headed back to the Welcome Center to eat at Whit's End - we even tried a WodFamChocSod - yum :). Our kids went down the huge ABend-a-Go slide at least a dozen times. We found the Wardrobe which led us into a small "Narnia" themed room that our kids thought was really cool and then we headed to the Kyds Radio booth where Timothy, Kayla, Lucas and I got to record our very own Adventure in Odyssey! After we finished the recording we were given a CD of our adventure to listen to in the van, which of course we did as we drove back to our cabin. Right before we left, I had to visit the Bookstore and as I wandered the aisles, I suddenly found myself standing face to face with Dave Stotts! Ok, so it was just a life-size cardboard cut-out of Dave, but pretty cool nonetheless. For those of you who don't love Drive Through History as much as we do, Dave Stotts is the nutty host of the series who, between his historical figures and fast facts, throws in just enough clean junior high humor to keep my boys' complete attention. My boys had to have a picture - and if you look closely at the boys' pic on the right (check out the bunny ears), you'll see evidence that Dave Stotts isn't the only boy stuck in a man's body. :P

Amazing Journey Part 4

From the Grand canyon, we drove through Painted Desert, Monument Valley (where we saw 1,000 ft high funky rock formations jutting out of the desert sand), 4 corners, and up into the mountains of Colorado. It was really an amazing drive. We stayed overnight in Pagosa Springs and got up nice and early to hit our first hiking destination - Treasure Falls.

10 years ago, Andrew and I stumbled upon this well-maintained 3/4 mile hike up to Treasure Falls. When you start the hike, you can't even see the Falls. As you get closer to the top, you start to hear them and then finally, you round a corner and see this -

Isn't it just gorgeous! We got to see it just as the sun was coming up over the mountain. We all just stood there and silently "wowed" for a while. After we had our fill of looking at the falls, we decided to walk a bit further onto a smaller trail where we found our first mounds of snow. Andrew was leading the crew and I was at the back making sure we didn't lose anyone when I got the novel little idea to send one of our sweet children up to their Daddy with a hand full of snow to put down his shirt. His surprised little yelp kinda shattered the peacefulness of the morning, but I think it was worth it :).

Did you know that the tallest Sand Dunes in North America are in Colorado?? Nestled in between 2 mountain ranges are the Great Sand Dunes. Our kids really enjoyed playing in Medano Creek - you have to cross this creek to get to the dunes and the water is FREEZING. After a while, you get used to it and it's a lot of fun. Because the snow melt water is rushing so quickly from the nearby mountain range, there is a very strong current. After crossing the creek, all you see is this -
Those dunes might not look big, but they are 750 feet tall! They only look small because they're standing in front of a 13 thousand foot tall mountain. Looking at them was incredible and climbing them was exhausting! We definitely didn't make it up the highest peak, but the kids had a ball climbing up and running/rolling down. I'm pretty sure we brought a couple feet of those dunes into the van with us.

For the next 5 days, our family stayed in Manitou Springs - a rugged little town just outside Colorado Springs that probably saw its heyday in the 50/60's - I kid you not, on our way in, Andrew and I saw a hotel sign that read "Air Conditioning & Color TV." Nonetheless, we really enjoyed our stay there. We had a nice 2 bedroom cabin where we could stretch out a little more and a full kitchen so I could cook again. I know it may sound crazy that I was excited about cooking again, but after 1 1/2 wks of eating out, I was really ready to cook some nutritious meals for my family. Plus, Manitou Springs is a fantastic location for so many of the things we wanted to do and see.

Amazing journey part 2

Ok, so these posts are taking me longer than the trip did. Oh well, c'est la vie!

Our next stop, after getting back into the States...after sitting in a line of cars for over an hour...with a 3 yr old that had to go to the bathroom so bad she cried for nearly half of it - not that she hadn't gone right before we left Magdalena, but anywho...our next stop was Tucson, Az.

Before we left on this trip I had pretty well planned out what each day would entail, the places we'd visit, etc. A few days before we left, Andrew mentioned to Fred Funk that we were going to be in Tucson for 2 days and told him our plans. Fred energetically told him to scrap our plans and went on to describe what we should do instead (dinner details and all). The change threw this type A a little off kilter, but I revived and we followed through on Fred's suggestions - he did live in Tucson for over 20 years after all. We had a fantastic time.

Tuesday night, after settling into our hotel, swimming and doing some much needed laundry, we headed off to Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse. It was definitely our most expensive meal of the trip, but good food and a lot of fun, too. PP is in a little "old West town" in the heart of Tucson. So, we got to take in a Western Stunt Show after supper too. The kids loved it.
Notice the ties on my boys? When you walk in the door to PP, you see a sign that says "No ties allowed." If you wear a tie, sometime during your meal, your waitress walks out, ringing a big ole cow bell and loudly announces, "We've got some law breakers here. What should we do with them?" The crowd yells out, "Hang 'em!" or some other pleasantry, and then after some coaxing, "Cut off their ties!" So, she then ceremoniously cuts off the ties of the offenders. The rafters of this place have literally thousands of ties hanging off them. Of course, Fred had told Andrew this, so they wore ties Andrew should have gotten rid of years ago. Our boys, on the other hand, were a little surprised! The looks on their faces were too cute once they realized we were ok with the ties getting cut.

Wednesday morning we headed to Desert Museum, which is much more a zoo/botanical gardens than a museum. Huge Saguaro Cacti. As we were walking along my kids more than once mused - Cactuses? Cactee? Cacti? to the confusion of the elderly people we passed who apparently don't appreciate Veggie Tales as much as our kids do. Fantastic place!
We were there until late in the afternoon. Then we met up with Daniel and Diane Wuthrich for supper at Oreganos. Our deep dish pizza was great, but the conversation was even better. We had a lot of fun catching up with the two of them and even got in a game of Adventures in Odyssey's "Answer That" which got D&D on my kids' good side permanently. It's always fun to be with people who love Adventures in Odyssey as much as we do.

We had planned on going to church with Daniel and Diane, but before we met, Daniel told us that Tucson church was having their yearly business meeting that night and since I don't even attend Morton's business meeting - it's never sounded appealing with 4 kids in tow - we decided to opt out and head back to our hotel to swim a bit more instead.

The next day we got up bright and early again. Did I mention that it took our bodies a good week to get used to the 2 hr time difference? We were regularly getting up at 6 (yes, this night owl just wrote up at 6......am) and going to bed around 8:30. One of the many joys of staying in hotels is that everybody gets to go to bed and get up at the same time - by our third night or so Andrew was kicking me out of the room to go walk the hallways while he settled kids down. I think he decided it was easier to settle down 4 energetic kids in 1 little room than settle down 4 energetic kids and their stressed out mother because of the 1 little room.

On to Sabino Canyon. Gorgeous hiking. Beautiful natural pools formed by snow melt cascading down the mountains and hills. Per Fred's recommendation, our kids wore swim suits and had a blast.

Amazing journey part 1

I don't have the brain power to do justice to our trip right now (more than 4400 miles), but it was truly amazing and I saw God's hand in so many areas that I'm just really pumped. So, I'm going to try to give you a picture of our first destination....Magdalena, Mexico.

First, I want to say thank you to all of you who prayed that the swine flu would stay at bay, the borders would stay open and our trip would be a blessing to us and those we visited. Each and every one of those prayers was answered. THANK YOU!!!

The whole reason for this trip was the orphanage in Magdalena, Mexico (Casa Vida Y Esperanza - CVE). We drove ~26 hrs over the course of 2 1/2 days to get there. During the 3 days we were there we met and played with the kids, talked and fellowshipped with the servant-hearted staff, ate some great Mexican food, shared the Lucas story, did a few very basic jobs to help out, and basically experienced life in "the House of Life and Hope." They have an amazing mission to reach not only the children who live there, but the entire community around them.

Sunday was really an eye-opening day. We got on a school bus at 8:30 and drove into Magdalena. We stopped at home after home and picked up people who wanted to come to church. We drove through some very poor neighborhoods and watched children, teens and adults coming out of small block houses, or smaller metal shacks. We picked up Christian Sisters, children who were excited to come to Sunday School, and many who are searching. Andrew and I were blown away as we drove down little winding streets and saw homes that Bill Schick had helped bring running water to, or built an addition onto. And with "Buenos Dias" , kisses and smiles, the bus filled up. We arrived at church just a little before 10. (FYI - the picture at the left was not taken from the bus, I didn't feel pictures were appropriate, but I took it later as we traveled back home).

After singing together (in Spanish of course - I tried, but I'm pretty sure I saw some girls giggling in front of me), the kids went to Sunday School (also in Spanish), Andrew stayed in the sanctuary for the men's devotional and I went to the lunchroom to give the devotion to the women. About that - Saturday afternoon Nicole Knobloch asked if I would be willing to give my testimony, I said ok and then later that night I asked, "About how long do I need to plan to speak?" "About half an hour," was her reply. Let me tell you, a half hour is a really long time to speak (even with translation time cutting into it). Thankfully, God provided and afterward I was able to spend some time talking to a few of the women, listening to their stories, sometimes in English, sometimes with someone to translate. One woman's son was nearly killed in an accident. She came to CVE for help with medical bills and not only did she find help, but she found Jesus and I am humbled to call her my sister in Christ. I heard several stories like hers. Many of the women have not yet come to Christ, but you can see God working on their hearts. It was such a tremendous blessing to speak with these women.

The rest of our time there we got to take part in birthday celebrations, do a couple little jobs around the orphanage and play with the kids. Lucas was able to follow through on his desire and give his money to Seth Gerber (accountant for CVE) who handled the gift with real appreciation and grace. I hope this experience leaves a real imprint on Lucas' young heart to keep dreaming big dreams for God. Our trip was definitely not a typical "work team" experience. Work teams are a fantastic opportunity to focus energy on a specific task to benefit others and I'm thankful to have been on one in the past. However, what we experienced was more, I think, what real mission work is all about...the every day. Every day the staff at CVE get up and decide to serve God in the laundry, discipline, cooking, hugging, cleaning, fixing and loving. They serve in the every day - and I had to think - can the same be said of me? That's my goal.

Romans 12:1 - I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.