Sledding to Close out the Year

This is mainly just a quick post to share some fun pics and a few thoughts as 2010 begins.

First come the fun pics of Brock, Brody, Papa Orville and me having a great time sledding.

And a quick video of the fun:

And last, but not least, a few thoughts that have been rolling around my head lately.  (I know that most of you stopped reading after the cute kid pics and moved on to more important things, but for those of you still hanging around, I’ll mail you an invisible weightless pony!)

Little boys on Christmas morning are way cool.

Saying “I’m sorry” and asking forgiveness go a long way in a town where its not said very often.

Chainsaws are God’s gift to men.

Naps in the sunshine are God’s gift to Jodi.

Little boys can be tender and thoughtful one moment, and selfish and ruthless the next.  Do we ever really change all that much?

This is possibly the funniest and most accurate wrap-up of 2009 you will ever see:

5 Days ‘til Christmas? Time to Blog

So where has Brad been lately?  Why haven’t we seen any blog posts in, like, forever? What should I get my geek friends for Christmas?

Life has been amazingly crazy as of late.  Not just “busy” crazy, but more “Holy Cats, I think I’m living in the adult world now” crazy.

Yes, I’ve been living in the older-than-18 world for 16 years now (that makes me 34 for those of you who are kinda slow with numbers), but most of that has been in the post-college/newly-married/starting-a-family (PCNMSF – great acronym) phase. 

The PCNMSF phase is mostly fun, with a few challenges and growing situations thrown into the mix for kicks and giggles.  After college you start to figure out who you are outside of the protective bubble of college life.  Getting married opens your life to the idea of living to serve another and being loved by another.  Starting a family shifts your focus away from yourself in an entirely new way. In the PCNMSF phase, you want to see and know the best in yourself and those around you (your wife, young kids, and those closest to you).  For the most part, those people want to see and know the best in you as well. 

The PCNMSF phase ended for me sometime over the last several weeks… and I made the abrupt shift into the adult world. 

In the adult world, people are crazy… irrational… self serving… and crazy (yep, I know I already said that).  In the adult world, people act like bullies, say intentionally venomous things, and have no regard for the welfare of those outside their immediate family. In the adult world, grace, mercy, and forgiveness are hard to come by. 

My wife and kids are as awesome as always, and I still see and know the best in them.  There were several situations in our quaint little community that really opened my eyes to the way people are.  I didn’t like what I saw.  Blatant lies… verbal attacks… manipulative deception…  the list goes on (this was a fair number of folks, not just one bad apple).  I’m not being judgmental in that I don’t know the complete history of the people that behaved the way they did.  On the flipside, I want to raise my boys to treat people with more dignity and respect than what I’ve seen lately. The nastiness in down didn’t involve members of our church family… which was awesome. 

In churchy-speak, I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of the fruits of the Spirit… it was high season for the fruits of the flesh (Galatians 5 if you’re interested).

Am I a total pessimist now?  No, but I do see people in a different light.  I’m definitely a little less trusting. I’m more appreciative of the Jesus followers I know that I see loving on people and caring for others.  I’m also much more thankful for the wonderful things I get to experience in this crazy ride of life.

Enough about me… here are some fun pics of the great things in my life.

White Water Rafting, Rock Climbing, and Lost Keys – Part 2

Day #3: The Waterfall and Rock Climbing

On the morning of Day 3, I woke up to one of the most wonderful sounds of nature – my car alarm. Apparently the camp earlybird (Bethany) tried to get out the cooler of food we had locked in the car the night before. That set of the car alarm, which sent me into a scramble to find the keys and hope that the remote would turn the alarm off without me having to get out of my tent. It did. Lucky me.

The Waterfall

By the time the guys and I finally got up, Abby, Bethany, and Mariah had gone on a hike to scout out the waterfall we could see from our campsite. The boys and Vanessa and Sarah somehow stumbled out of bed and had breakfast while out fearless outdoorswomen were busy exploring the great outdoors.

The explorers returned and we all went on a hike to the waterfall. All of us, that is, except Vanessa, who decided to stay at camp and read and try to nap on a tree that hung over the “creek.” The waterfallers hiked up to the waterfall in short order to find that the waterfall was much larger than it looked from our campsite. Everyone but me took off their shoes and climbed onto a cool rock while I took some a few awesome pictures and video. After that, Zach and myself climbed up to the base of the waterfall, took off our shirts, and took an icy shower. We returned from our hike with just enough time to have lunch and head to Granite, CO for some rock climbing.

Video of the Amazing Waterfall

There’s Nobody Here…

As we began our drive to the rock climbing outfitter, I quickly realized that I didn’t have directions. Not a problem… I just called the place and was told to look for a place a few miles outside of Buena Vista on the left side of the road with a sign and several buses. As I turned into the parking lot with lots of Arkansas Valley Adventure busses, we all began to feel like we were in the middle of an old western. No one was there. There were several buildings, a few cabins with dogs tied up on the porch (I’m not kidding), lots of adventure gear (rafts, climbing stuff, mountain bikes) but no people. I called the outfitter again and told them that no one was there. After a few more minutes in the adventure ghost town, a car drove up and told us we were at the gear storage location… the main offices were another quarter mile up the road.

Time to Climb

Once we were at the right place, we got fitted with rock climbing gear. We all got helmets (which were way cool), harnesses (which looked very funny), and rock climbing shoes (which fit way tighter than normal shoes). Our climbing guides Cheyenne (a guy) and Jamie (a girl – you gotta love gender neutral names) taught us the finer points of climbing and belaying and let us have some fun on a 40 foot high slab of granite with 3 different climbing routes. Several of us even took up our guides offer to let us “free fall”… the guides gave us about 10 feet of slack in our lines as we jumped backwards away from the rock. That was a rush. (those crazy jumps are in the second video below).

There are so many amazing spiritual tie-ins with rock climbing, and most of them revolve around trust. Solo rock climbing is pretty dumb in that it’s one of the most dangerous activities I can imagine (swimming with hungry sharks has to take the cake), but climbing with a partner, proper gear, and using basic safety techniques makes rock climbing safer than crossing the street in Branson. Even with the boatloads of safety, there is an element of fear involved, and facing that fear is a bigger challenge for most new climbers than the physical challenge. As we follow Jesus, the most amazing parts of the journey involve risk, overcoming fear, and trusting Jesus. I could go on and on about how amazing climbing is, but tons of books have already been written about it. So here are a couple of video clips of our afternoon.

Rock Climbing Highlights – Part 1 (about 10 minutes long)

Rock Climbing Highlights – Part 2 (about 4 minutes long)

Don’t worry, the story about the lost keys is coming in Part 3 of this post in a few days.