Only Lucas...

Today looks like a typical kind of day. Actually I got up a little early, because I knew I had a lot to do. I helped kids get breakfast, did Timothy's spelling test, got Alyssa going on a chore and the rest of the kids settled in school work.

Then I head for the shower. Ahhh, hot steamy water and silence. Within moments, the door opens. Kayla wants help with sentence structure. The door shuts...and opens again. Lucas needs math help. Kayla reenters, more sentence problems. The door shuts again. Finally. I'm alone.

Or not...I hear the scratch of a pencil.

"Is somebody still in here?"
"I am," says Lucas.
"Do you need more help?"
"Nope"
"Then you can leave now."
"Why can't I stay?"
"I'm almost done with my shower and I'm going to get out."
Silence
Apparently, I needed to be blunt.
"And I'm not wearing anything."
"That's ok mom, I've seen people bare before. I won't laugh."

Every day is beautiful

Last Wednesday night, as wind chills dipped below zero degrees, Andrew prayed at the couch with our 3 youngest (Timothy was at a Christmas party) and we heard each of them begin their prayer with "God, Thank you for the beautiful day...". Actually, they usually begin their prayers this way, but that night when they were finished, I overheard this conversation.

"Guys, I heard every one of you thank God for the beautiful day, but, have you looked outside today? It's really cold and yucky out there." He looked at them for some understanding of what he was saying. Blank stares. "Well, ok, what does a day look like that is NOT beautiful?"

Lucas quickly piped up, "It's when you lose your job and we don't have any more money and we can't stay in our house any more and we don't have food to eat." The girls are nodding as Lucas speaks, Andrew looks at them and smiles, "So, then every day IS beautiful." Lots of emphatic nodding. Andrew and I give hugs and kisses and tuck them into bed and then sit down on the couch together - Wow! Lord, give me that kind of thankful perspective.

Desperate to be healthy

Ever since we came home from our annual Florida vacation in mid-October, one or more of our kids has been sick. No H1N1 that we know of, just nasty, hacking coughs. The kind of cough that makes people turn in horror that you brought that sick kid out into the world. Add to that the nasty rain we've had the whole time and it's easy to understand how we are going stir crazy around here! A couple days ago , Andrew heard a radio health program that said most Americans are vitamin D deficient, especially during the winter, because we do not get enough sun. Without enough vitamin D, we can't properly absorb vitamin C. Too little Vitamin C - and you get colds! The guy went on to explain that 10 minutes a day is all you really need. Armed with this sanity-saving information, my dear husband came home announcing the above and that as soon as we could see sun, we were all going to sit outside in it for 10 minutes.
Ahhh, I can feel the health emanating from our bodies already :)

Let's talk about....Truth.

After I became a Christian my sophomore year of college, I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out my spiritual gifts. I thought I finally had it, and with excitement I told a dear Christian friend who had known me most of my life, "I think I'm a mercy giver!" She couldn't help herself. She seriously broke down laughing. When she had finally gotten control of herself, she said, "Sandy, you are definitely not a mercy-giver. You are a prophet - a truth teller."

My emotions were a jumble. Part of me felt hurt and defensive because I had actually spent time thinking about this and really thought I had my spiritual gifts figured out, but on the other hand, I also knew my friend, and deep down, her words resonated within me. She was right.

I am passionate about truth. More precisely, I am passionate about teaching Truth.

The video of Rep. Joe Wilson that has been circulating the web and various news outlets has gotten me thinking. Why don't more people care about the truth? Not just the truth of the proposed health care plan or other political matters, but the Real Truth. More and more, I see how too many people are willing to dismiss Truth and wave it off just as Pilate did nearly 2000 years ago with the non-question, "What is truth?" As if to say that Truth does not exist. And yet it does. Pilate was standing there looking at Truth incarnate and was unwilling to recognize Him.

In this day - when truth is so quickly blurred with lies, my greatest desire is that my children, and all children I have the opportunity to teach (at CBS or Sunday School) are solidly rooted in Truth, and my prayer is that they become passionate about truth and more importantly, the person in whom all Truth resides - Jesus Christ.

The end of Grandpa's journey

Andrew's Grandpa has been battling cancer for more than 10 years. It looks like his battle is nearing its end. Why does death have to be so hard??

Today, like a number of other days, we spent some time visiting Grandpa. But this time, I knew I had to prepare my kids a little bit for what they might see. That Grandpa might not look a lot like himself, or act like himself, but he's still Grandpa and needs to know we love him. The visit has been on our minds and hearts all day. Especially tonight, when we prayed. Tears came to my eyes as I listened to my children pray for Grandpa and Grandma, especially when Lucas slowly and thoughtfully prayed -

"Jesus, Thanks for making a special place in Heaven for Grandpa, and we hope he is happy there. And Jesus please help the doctors to help Grandpa get all better so he can be with Grandma again. And Jesus, it’s Your choice."

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