Preparing For Minnesota

This Friday, December 18th (Sara's BD), we will begin our journey back to Minnesota to hang with friends and family for Christmas. We're doing our best to figure out how to keep the kids (and the parents) sane on the 20+ hour road trip each way. When we moved to Colorado we drove it in one shot, but we'll split each trip into two days this time around. We'll stay in Omaha, NE on the way there, and we'll make a couple stops on the way home: one in Sioux Falls, SD, and also in Kearney, NE. I'm not overly excited about the driving part, but will be nice to see eveyone once we get there.

School has been pretty laid back since Thanksgiving. It's been kind of a nice break. I'm incredibly thankful to find a little work through this season and some of which will continue into the New Year. I've been helping out the local FASTFRAME with some framing lately. It's been fun to get to know the owners a bit more and offer the assistance when I'm needed. I've also been leading people in worship on Sundays at a church called Summit Church in Castle Rock. They've offered me a weekly position there starting in January. This is a great opportunity for the time being, but it will most likely not be where I end up long term.

Hopefully we'll get to see most of you who read this blog over the next couple weeks. Here's a family pic that was taken on Thanksgiving morning. Have a Merry Christmas!

Gavin's Basketball

We signed Gavin up for basketball this year through the YMCA. I also signed up as his coach. Coaching 1st graders in basketball has been an interesting experience. Thankfully I had a set of parents step up to be assistant coaches to help me out a bit. It's actually been a huge help since one of them was a coach last year.

One thing I'm embarrassed to admit is that I forgot about our first game until the last minute. We rushed to get there, but were still 15 minutes late. I'm one of the most punctual people I know, so it just wrecked me inside to let people down like that. Luckily the assistant coach had everything under control when I got there.

We spend the last 10 minutes of each practice doing "circle time", which is basically sitting down with the kids and teaching them about things like honesty, respectfulness, responsibility, etc. For the practice after our first game I decided to use my poor example of responsibility as a lesson for the kids. I apologized to the kids (and their parents) and explained how we all have a responsibility to our team to be there for each other.

Gavin seems to really be enjoying it an he's already improved a bit and understands the game more than he did three weeks ago. It's fun to watch him and be involved more than I have in the past.

A Glimpse Into Our Morning