Quick trip south

A few weeks ago Mark and I were discussing how we could celebrate our kids' birthdays differently this year. We came up with a plan to travel south and visit Albuquerque for a change of scenery and some needed family time. 

We left early Friday morning and got in ABQ at lunch time.  We thoroughly enjoyed eating at resturaunts we don't have in Durango.  Our first stop was Chick Fil A. Yum! 

After lunch we headed to the ABQ zoo and aquarium.  I'm so glad we did. They don't really compare to the ones in Denver but they're far better than the ones we have in Durango (we call the local fish store the Durango zoo!). 

The kids especially loved the shark tank.  I think we all could've sat and stared for quite a while! 

After the aquarium we wandered the zoo and loved seeing the polar bears and seals get fed. The zoo doesn't take long to see everything. It's quite compact! 

Look at the sweet baby chimpanzees! 

From there we left and found our hotel.  We had heard about Hotel Cascada from some friends. It's a hotel with an indoor water park. I had hoped to go down not on a weekend (take advantage of our homeschool schedule and avoid crowds) but they have different winter hours and were only open on the weekend. Bummer.  So we swam with a few hundred of our closest friends ;) I'm pretty sure there were a dozen or more parties happening there this weekend. It's the place to go! 

*Not my photo 

We had a great time though. The hardest part was that Mark and I were both battling colds the entire weekend. Makes swimming a bit more cold and challenging. It definitely motivated us to get the kids into swim lessons ASAP. 

We swam part of the day Saturday then went shopping for some clothes for the kids.  And I bought my first pair of skinny jeans. I just had to throw that in for the record. It's taken me several years to succumb to this trend...here's hoping I don't look like I poured myself into them! 

Anywho, after shopping we took the kids to Cracker Barrel (not helping me at all with the trying to not look like I was poured into my pants!). I forgot how much food they give you! 

We thought for 10 seconds about swimming but decided going back to the room and watching the food network sounded way more fun.  My kids love Chopped! Unfortunately we had some late night partying neighbors move in next door on Saturday so getting to sleep was a bit challenging. We had to call the front desk when they wouldn't get quiet after Mark asked them to (I promise we waited until after 10pm although I probably could've been asleep at 7). 

We got up and ate breakfast in the room.  I let my kids pick cereal for the trip before we left.  Lesson learned.  Sugar on top of sugar is what they picked.  Oy! 

After breakfast we went and swam for another hour before showering and heading out. We ate lunch at Red Robin - Mark's favorite - and drove home to 7 inches of snow. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that there was no snow in New Mexico and as soon as we crossed the border - bam.  Snow. Beautiful snow. 

Now to unpack and start laundry.  It was a great weekend of making memories. 

Hello?

Hello.  This is me.  Jill.  Slinking back to my blog that I abandoned 7 months ago.  I didn't set out to abandon it.  It just sort of happened.  Life happened and I stopped blogging about the life that was all consuming.  I have some regrets for stopping and I have some fears about starting again.  For the 3 of you that read this please accept my apologies for being MIA.  My goal is to start writing regularly again.  Part of my reason for this, besides wanting to let my parents know what's happening down here in D-town, is that I joined a writers group a couple months ago and I need to practice writing.  It's something that I think I really enjoy doing but when you haven't done it in forever, you definitely get out of practice.  Like riding a bike.  So I'm getting back on the bike and taking a ride and praying that I can stay on, improve and maybe even say something meaningful!

So let me start with filling you in (briefly!) on the past 7 months.  Since June I have had another lasik surgery to correct my over-corrected right eye (which worked wonderfully and I love being able to see!!), hired new staff, had a birthday and went camping with my love, started all the kids in extra-curricular activities (will share more on that in a moment), went to our denomination's conference in Keystone, Co., stayed an extra few days for vacation with the Palmer side, spoke at our women's retreat about women's identities, started a life group for young adults, went to Denver for a fundraising dinner, did premarital counseling with a couple, went to Golden/Boulder for Thanksgiving, had a crazy 3 weeks of December doing kids programs, women's programs and special services, had our youth pastor step down, hired another one, went back up to Golden/Denver for Christmas and New Years, came back and started a 21 day Daniel fast (only fruits/veggies/beans/nuts), got the flu, took care of Jack who had something nasty and finally got back into school just this past week.  Wow! 

That's not everything of course, but it's a quick overview.

All 3 kids have started extra curricular stuff.  Kale and Jack did Jujitsu for a couple months.  Kale loved it and is still doing it twice a week, Jack was great at it but was bored so we moved him to gymnastics which, so far, he loves.  He's also great at that.  Kate has been doing gymnastics since September and is really excelling and moving through the levels.  Thanks to me, however, she missed this round of classes because I signed her up too late.  Ouch!  She's taking it really well though thankfully!

We spent several weeks doing Occupational Therapy for Kate again.  She was struggling with her SPD and we felt like we needed some extra help.  It was a real blessing and she loved the therapist.  Unfortunately our insurance doesn't cover it so we had to cut it short.  But we got a lot out of it before we had to be done.  

Mark is really thriving in his role as lead pastor.  There are many parts to it that are a struggle for both of us, but God has gracefully surrounded us with amazing people to encourage, support and love us even in our imperfectness.  God is refining us in this role and pouring out tons of vision and hope into Mark for this next season in our church.  New classes.  New beginnings.  New staff.  Everything is new to us! haha!

School, for us, is finally back in session after taking almost a month off for vacation and illness!  All the kids are doing well and even though they don't always enjoy it, they get it done and are able to spend much of the day playing and doing things they love.  I still love to homeschool.  Not every single day but overall I see it as the gift that it is to me and my kids.  

My goals for this year are to learn how to rest and rest well.  
Take time for myself and take care of myself. 
Learn how to do things that I love to do (and frankly discover what that even is!).  
Write more.  
Listen more.  
Read through the Bible.  
Be present.
Print my old blog posts.
Maybe change up how I do this blog.
Upload a couple beautiful family photos that were taken of us this year...stinking blogspot!

Like I said at the beginning of this, I have joined a Christian women's writers group at the encouragement of my husband and another friend. This, by far, is the scariest thing I've done - which is surprising to me since speaking at our women's retreat this past October was nerve-wracking.  But calling myself a writer, actually writing, thinking that I may say something that people may actually want to read in the sea of great writers...terrifying!  But I'm wanting to step out, scare myself a bit, explore this path that God has put me on and see where it goes.  Blogging is going to be a big part of this.  Blogging here as well as my other blog (link in upper right of the page).  So here I go!

Sneaking back onto this page...hoping people will join with me again on this journey of motherhood, marriage and ministry :)

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I hope I have this figured out. All photos taken by one of our favorite photographers (we have a few!) Carol Cardwell. 

Our awesome staff. We have such fun with them! 

Coming 'round the mountain (lots o pictures)

A couple of weeks ago a sweet couple handed us an envelope at church. I didn't look in it until later that day and when I did I was amazed at what I found. Not only had they very sweetly encouraged us but they blessed us with 2 train tickets to Silverton and back. Our executive pastor and his wife got the same envelope so we chatted about what we could do. Mark and Steve came up with the plan and we decided to go together. Today was the day! 

You've got to understand that although I've lived in Durango almost 20 years, I've actually never ridden the train. We did the polar express a few years ago but that only goes to the end of town. This was a first for me. And we did it up and back. I was a bit nervous about an 8 hour train ride on my still somewhat sore bum but it was actually fabulous and we had a blast. 

Mark had the window seat on the way up and he took 230 pictures. I thought you might think that was an exaggerated number so I had him send me proof. 

He sent it with the picture of his head out the window and a ton of arms and cameras hanging out behind him. Hilarious :) you'll notice its number 50 of 230....

He did take a few amazing pictures though. So I'll highlight those for you.

This fartsy artsy one 

These sweet ones of the train

This awesome one of a guy named Klondike Mike who is a prospector and lives in a teepee that you can see from the train. He prospects his claims up there and rides the train to and from his teepee.

This beautiful one of Silverton skyline :)

And this neat one of the train. 

On the ride up the conductor came back shouting that there was a moose running next to the train up ahead. We stuck our heads out the windows (totally against the rules) and we saw it. It was too far away to get a good picture but both Mark and I were able to see it running ahead. Pretty cool.

We had lunch at Handlebars (of course we did) 

Then walked around a bit which felt nice. We got some fudge and hopped back on the train. I got the window seat on the way down and wasn't as camera happy as Mark was - much to his annoyance. He kept wanting me to snap a picture. I was pretty sure that if 230 pictures didn't capture the beauty of the mountains then nothing would.

So I tried a few different angles. 

Up

Down

Front while the engine was blowing steam 

Front by the river

Front with Mark hanging off (we had stopped for water)

Back. Notice it's a lot like front but with a caboose instead of an engine. Lori pointed that out for me ;)

Side with the pretty red flower thingys

And one of the beautiful colors (that were barely starting to turn sadly- we had hoped to see more) 

Here are Steve and Lori. We've now been to Phoenix, Branson, Orlando and Silverton together. World travelers we are! 

And us. So cute yes? 

Wonderful day. So blessed!

What else have we been doing?

Life has kept on going on even as it has changed quite a bit for us.  I'll blog more about ministry later but I thought I'd post a few pictures from our adventures over the last couple weeks. 

Kale had baseball tryouts a couple weeks ago.  80 8yr olds were on the field to hit, and field a couple grounders.  He wound up on his old team, The Red Sox, but we decided to move him to a different team because his old coach, Jerome, wasn't coaching.  He's now playing for the A's.  A whole new team.  All new kids.  A new coach.  This will be an experience for all of us.

 

A random picture of my littlest with eye black on during naptime...

  

Mark's parents were in town for our busy Easter weekend.  We had a Good Friday worship service and then our church hosted our first Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday morning.  It was a great success.  Over 200 people came.

 The hunt itself was total chaos however!  And unfortunately some kids didn't get eggs.  So we talked to our kids about sharing what they had found with those who didn't have any, and much to my surprise they willingly shared almost all their eggs.  We talked to them about how God takes care of us when we give generously.  The crazy thing was after they did that, God proved this to be true.  Both Kale and Kate won cupcakes in the cake walk and Kale won a bag of chocolate mints from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory...I finally asked God to hold off on the generous amounts of sugar he was blessing my kids with....But I smile to think of God showing my kids what it means to be generous.  What an awesome God!

 Easter itself was wonderful.  They announced our new job to the congregation like I mentioned before.  Mark did an awesome job with his sermon.  We had a delicious dinner of pot roast and potatoes and pink "salad" afterwards.  And another egg hunt in the back yard.  I have no idea why I have no pictures from any of it.  I think Mark got them all on his phone.  Bummer.

Mark's 38th birthday was last Friday.  We got up and went out to breakfast.  Here's our proof of that.  After breakfast, we walked around downtown for a bit and found Mark his birthday present (new hiking boots).  I had to work that afternoon and we had small group that evening so this was the celebration for the day.  We did have pie and ice cream and played spoons at small group though!

 

 I posted this picture on facebook last week.  I took a picture of the map I'm using, in addition to Kale's curriculum, to teach him about the US.  This isn't the actual map - it's the outside picture that you see through the packaging.  But I laughed at the state we supposedly live in...Thankfully the actual map is much more accurate.

And lastly I thought I'd share another issue we had with our trampoline.  Last year we had a huge gust of wind that just turned it over.  Kinda crazy.  Well last week we had another huge gust of wind and when I looked outside to where the trampoline was supposed to be I found this.  The brown spot is it's normal location.

When I looked around I finally saw it over on the other side of the fence!  Can you see it there behind that tree?  Grrrrr!  Unfortunately it got a small hole in it.  We've got to figure out how to patch it :(  Apparently we need to stake it down with tent stakes or put sandbags all over the bottom.  It's a huge, heavy sail and I'm afraid someday it'll wind up in our neighbors yard!

And that's what I had on my phone for now.  Don't you just love how I come up with posts for you based on what is on my phone?

Future Fun Friday Adventures!

 Thanks to Uncle Sam, Craig's List and a little deal hunting, we were able to finally (after several years of wishing and hoping) to get ourselves a little trailer!

It's not a 30 footer with slideouts and tempurpedic beds (haha! as if!) but it's our little cabin on wheels and we're thrilled :)

 We are looking forward to camp outs, marshmallows by the fire, hikes in the mountains, creek walking and little mini-vacations.  The possibilities seem endless to us at this moment.  

We realize this ain't tent camping no more!  It's a bit more work than just setting up a 5 person tent.  We figure give it a couple tries and listen to the advice of the numerous wise campers we have in our life and we'll survive and have a blast getting out of Dodge every now and then.

Adventure numero uno is at the end of this month for Mark and Kale.  There's a men's retreat in Moab.  The maiden voyage is coming up!