the conclusiatory colorado chapter

nick & i's colorado trip included so much more than you would imagine in just a short week...
my favorite part of all was coming in the first night and hugging all my nephews and nieces and cari -- it's so fun to see them after a whole year!

peter will always and forever be my first nephew. not to say i don't love each and every one of my 10 nieces and nephews, but peter and i have a special bond.

i sure did enjoy ryan this trip, also! he's turned into a 'kater' (no, that doesn't mean 'someone who loves kate' -- he's still working on the 'sk' blend) and has recently acquired two 'kateboards' through the wiles of his cuteness and charm. one from a neighbor boy and another from the sympathetic enthusiast at a skate park we went to. this skate park was amazingly cool! i found myself wishing for skateboard skills, but memories of a black eye kept me safe this time. nick was my skating guardian.



dan was ryan's. he needed one -- he's quite the fearless skater sometimes, especially for being four years old.

cari, kira and i played it safe, but i think with a little practice, kira could be quite the skater chick.

peter even joined in, but definitely was all about the playing it safe!


can you believe some people go all the way around that bowl on their boards? upside down?!!
crazy.

in other news, the whole big gang of us went camping out by a town called fair play for 2 days and a night. it was the most beauty i've ever seen in my whole life! we were at a spot where you could see the mountains that made up the continental divide!!
i've never been a big colorado fan, not understanding the big deal, why everyone loves it so much. this time of the year with all the green-ness combined with these amazing views helped me understand, at least just a little.


dad, krista, nick & i went on a hike that was pretty killer. that altitude is bad for hiking. well, at least for hiking pansies like me.

nick & krista knocked over this tree with their bare hands!
it's true.

this was on the way back down... looks like smooth sailing, i know. we found a road. the way up was rigorous, i promise!


this was our outhouse -- nice, eh?
(see our reflection?)

nick & dad got some good fishing in -- made their fishy hearts happy.


all in all, it was an excellent trip, with many plenteous good memories.

there are a couple of really cute kid pictures still on my camera, but alas, i left my camera cord in colorado. not only will you be deprived of their cuteness, but if i can't find another cord, it's as if i'm camera-less! a camera's useless without the cord these days. at least for my purposes.
if dan & cari happen to find it and mail it on over, then i suppose i can resume blogging. (hint hint)

boy meets family

the classic event of taking a boy home to meet the family is so cliche it's not even interesting.
or so i thought.
you make introductions, you field questions (so, what exactly are your intentions toward my daughter?), you get drunk...

wait a minute! drunk?

there were a couple factors that surprised me about an event i'd thought was pretty standard.
i did not in any way expect my sister-in-law to ply nick with alcohol while shooting the hardball questions at him!
okay, so they weren't drunk, per se, but they were definitely loose. nick said it was a lot easier to open up and be himself (i'm sure!). dan didn't get back from work (fighting fires, saving lives) until the next morning, but by the time cari was done with nick, he wasn't even nervous about meeting dan!
in all honesty, cari asked great questions, and led the conversation in a way that brought out some ideas i hadn't thought through before. things like core passions nick and i share, if we mesh well with each other's goals in life, what role we might play in our ideas of the future. she was direct and to the point, and sometimes that's just the best way.

another thing i didn't expect was my own emotional response during the visit. i'm a very intuitive person to begin with, very much a feeler, not so much a logical rationalist, i've known this. so as the week progressed, i found myself feeling very distant from nick for no particular reason that i could identify. then as the rest of the week went by, people got more friendly, more loose, more themselves, and i found myself being drawn to nick again. after thinking it through later, i realized i'd been putting more stock in what my family thought of nick than i'd expected to. turns out, their approval is pretty important to me after all. at first, watching them be so polite and considerate was nice, but i was waiting to see if nick was going to fit in, in a real way.
it makes me wonder how some girls can marry guys against their parents' wishes -- this coming from me, the girl who sees her family maybe once a year?

it was reassuring to me. our roots are hard to see. they're theoretical, intangible. half the time you don't know how important it is to belong to a family.

maybe those roots are hard to see because they run so deep.
they're a part of everything about me, whether i like it or not, whether i admit it or not, whether i realize it or not.

whether i realize that's a really good thing.
or not.

i've discovered that in spite of my own shortcomings, they are a true family to me. i can be too independent at times, i don't keep in touch like i should. regardless, i can count on them to be what keeps me grounded.

garden of the absent gods

i've accomplished one of the things i want to do before i die.

garden of the gods has always been on my list, and for all the trips to colorado, you'd think i would have figured out a way to get over there by now!
it must have been meant for this trip.

nick and i drove out to colorado for a week to meet more of my family. i'll write more on the emotional/mental/spiritual experience of the visit later. i'll just say for now that it was really great.

i'm afraid to say we saw no gods on our adventure, but we did see the most beautiful of gardens -- if you can call gigantic red rocks a form of a garden. not only was the large perspective beautiful, but up close it was just as beautiful. i suppose you would call that the macro vs. the micro. both were breathtaking.
we may not have found any gods, but we definitely saw signs of one.




it's just impossible to adequately communicate the beauty -- pictures don't even do it justice -- i've seen them from time to time, and i tell you what, being there in person, it was so much more amazing.

i hadn't really thought about how many people would be there, or how civilized of walking paths they'd have around the area, but it was quite the tourist attraction. there were other trails leading off the paved walking paths though, so nick and i did a little off-roading and found some spots where there weren't crowds of amazed tourists.



after the hiking fun was over, we hit the nearest touristy towns to see what they had to offer. manitou springs is about 5 minutes away from garden of the gods, and it's the coolest little mini-town, tons of quaintness and cute stores. my favorite was the black cat book store -- they had window nooks full of pillows and chairs all around. it was very cool.
by the time we made it to the other little town close by there (old colorado city), nick and i were both tuckered out, so we found this quiet spot in the middle of the town park and read our books we'd just bought. there were stores and whatnot in that town also, but it just didn't measure up to the charm of manitou springs.

there are a bajillion more pictures from our trip and much more to be said, so i'll be giving you the installment version...

next, here on bate's klog, the psychological ramifications of taking a boyfriend home!

stay tuned.

i'm it.

the term 'tagging' is getting a lot of play these days. it can mean so many things!

anyhow, i've been tagged by laura to tell you the 5 things i dig about Jesus...

#1: his humility
#2: his strength
#3: his good ideas (i never would have come up with that whole salvation thing...)
#4: his presence
#5: his compassion

he's a good one, that jesus.

six months!

nick and i have officially been dating for 6 months, if you can believe it!
on one hand, it seems like we've known each other our whole lives, but on the other hand, it seems like time has just flown by! that's what you call a contradiction, i suppose.

we celebrated by getting gussied up and going out on the town...
we went to zio's for supper -- it was very great! i had shrimp limone (angel hair pasta in a lemony sauce with shrimp, mushrooms, artichoke hearts & tomatoes) that was something new -- i always go for the blackened chicken alfredo at italian restaurants for some reason, but this time i was brave and it was well worth it.

then we went to get tickets for the movie in the park. while we waited for the sun to go down we wandered around and had fun playing in an adjoining park.


we played king of the hill, but without the pushing and rolling... mostly just standing and saying, 'i'm king of the hill!!' while holding arms out in emphasis.

the moveable metal man caught nick's fancy...



an outdoor classroom brought out our inner spidermen...

then the brick wall brought out our inner gq models... i think i hit the 'what is the meaning of life after all?' face dead on. unfortunately that's not a very attractive look for me... nick's lookin' good though.

yeahp, there it is again.

conveniently enough, the park we were in is connected to the park the movie was played in by a lovely walkway, bordered by greenery and flowers... this spot by the bridge proved to be a significant spot later on... i'll tell you why when i get to that part of the story.

founder's park is where they showed 'a prairie home companion', which turned out to be really good! we both enjoyed it. the park was strange though -- a random, abstract assemblage of concrete blocks stacked haphazardly. it reminded me of a place you'd dash through, avoiding mines and bombs...
we had our own little concrete block.

the movie ended around 11 p.m., so we started meandering back to the car via the park walkway (remember the shadowy picture by the bridge?) and on the way nick put down everything he was carrying and said he had something to tell me. he looked around and declared it a romantic enough spot -- not where he'd originally planned, but it was too late in the night for other plans...
he then said something along the lines of, 'don't feel like you have to say anything in response, but i've been wanting to tell you for a while now that i love you.'
now, just so you understand the import of this declaration (besides the obvious) up until this point, he's only ever said, 'i like you', which is a good thing, it's good to be liked, but we've had discussions about how saying, 'i love you' is a pretty big commitment for him, not one he's wanting to take lightly.
i smiled a big smile and said, 'i don't know about what you expected me to say, because it's pretty obvious that i love you, too.'

it was the perfect end to a very perfect date.

we're still both the same people, but articulating that commitment to each other has made me feel like a different person. i feel more secure in our relationship, and more aware of his solid dependability. it's like his good qualities have been increased in my awareness, and my ability to trust them has grown as well.
nothing practical has changed, but i feel a shift in our relationship.

a very good shift.

exciting and fun thing to report! eric bolger is publishing his book, 'journey into intercession' and he asked me to design a cover for it!
this is what i came up with and he likes it greatly, so we're both pleased. now it just has to be scanned in, assembled with the title and author, etc.

what the what?

this last thursday was a particularly harrowing day for more than just myself. i was nannying, as i usually do in the mornings, and i was on my way to meet angie ann (the mom) with her three youngest kids, andrew, francesca and mimi. we were in the minivan, calmly tooling our way along when the peacefulness of the drizzly trafficy day was thoughtlessly interrupted by a bone-shaking crunch of metal on metal. after the jolting and slamming around ceased and we're just sitting there staring in front of ourselves, watching smoke pour out from under the hood, i hear francesca say in a panicy sort of voice, 'what happened?! my neck is broken!!' i look around to find them all still safely buckled into their seats with no signs of broken necks (or any other injuries), and attempt to convince her she's fine (it didn't work... she continued to assert, 'my neck is broken!!' a few more times)
instead of trying to walk you through the steps that led up to this fateful encounter, i drew a quick little sketch here for your comprehending ease:

the part that says 'me' is us in the minivan, going across 4 lanes of traffic plus a turning lane in the middle. there were those two lanes of backed up traffic that had stopped and made a way for me to cut through them, kindly enough, and no cars were coming from the other way, so i start to go across. sadly, there was a car zipping down the turning lane that happened to cross my path at just an untimely moment. he told the police that he was turning left there were i was going (not down at the stop light, which is where i'm pretty sure he was turning) which would give him the right to be in that turn lane right there... however, the question this assertion raises in my little brain is, why would he have been going 30 miles an hour down the turning lane if he was turning right there? wouldn't he have been just about stopped by the time his car reached mine?
i should think so.
suffice it to say, no one was issued tickets, but the van was totalled and i made a visit to angie ann's husband's office for a cat scan. it's in times like these that it's very handy to have a radiologist hook up. i had a giant goose egg from bashing my head against the inside of the door and i was really light headed and loopy for the rest of the day. the cat scan looked alright though, so i just went home and did a lot of sleeping. i'm glad to report that the goose egg is receding, slowly but surely.
poor andrew may take a little longer to recover from the trauma. he's almost 3 years old, and he's taken to screaming and going rigid every time he has to get inside a vehicle of any sort. they just left for vacation and angie ann said he was terrified the whole plane ride. hopefully his trauma will also recede, slowly but surely.

self-absorbed or self-entertaining? you decide.

babysitting when the babies are sleeping -- what's there to do? take pictures of myself of course!
nothing self-absorbed about that. (right??)

then to further the fun, i discovered a new feature on picasa -- 'soft focus'. it's so cool!

expectations, vbs, nerts & a hot dress...

hi guys!
how's life treatin' ya?
things seem like crazy land here. have you ever noticed that the more free time you have, the less free time you seem to have? yes, you might think that's an idiotic statement, but i meant every word of it. it's summertime, i'm only working part time in the mornings, but somehow every single day gets chock full of people and places and things -- it's insane!!

i think it goes back to expectations. that's the theme of my summer, i've decided. i expected it to be a leisurely summer with leisurely things happening from time to time, but mostly not a whole lot of anything happening all the rest of the time...
it's turned out to be not so leisurely, but not like i'm getting run ragged or anything -- it's just so not what i expected that it's throwing me for a loop. i have the same conundrum happening with the people in my life as well. i expect them to be a certain way toward me, and when they aren't, and in fact are much different than i expected, i get, once again, thrown for a loop. i always prided myself on being easy-going, not expecting too much so as to not be disappointed when life didn't meet up to the expectations. i'm realizing i've always had those expectations, i just was in denial about them. turns out i'm pretty demanding of how things should be.

i love it when i'm expecting one thing, something totally other happens, and instead of freaking out (as i do 98% of the time) i actually revel in the moment of something surprising and see god's good character in that new thing i wasn't expecting.

you'll have noticed i only respond that way 2% of the time.
hmm.
perhaps this is the summer of noticing responses and attempting to see god a little more often, instead of languishing in pitiful puddles of disappointment.

in other news, erica got a fancy shmancy new camera (which i'm sure she'll tell you about in her blog) and here's some of the highlights from her shutter-happy last few days. she's been experimenting with the video option also, so here's some little clips that i have no idea how to turn around. sorry guys. just tilt your head.





i title this, 'tally tallster hanging with the little people'...

maren and i made this glorious creation for our church's vbs. doesn't it just make you want to be a kid again?!

i don't know what this is, but it made me laugh.

super fun girls' game night including nerts and mad gab...

carissa was the self-proclaimed champion of nerts but begrudgingly shared her victory with erica who gave her a run for her money.

i was dubbed the shining star of mad gab. i cherish my dubbing.




and speaking of shining stars, i found this dress at a thrift store for $5! can you believe the bargain? i feel beautiful, that's all i'll say.





i really wish i could share a video erica took of nick's role as little jimmy in the skits for vbs. it cracked me up! for some reason it won't upload though. i'll try to work on it and get back to you. i'm sure you'll all be anxiously awaiting that one!


hey, and speaking of people, i've brought maren into the blogging fold!! i'm gradually inculcating everyone i know to succumb to my ways.
it's very gratifying.
her link's in the list o'er yonder.

that's all i got.
peace out, yo.