middle of May

Hi there - yes, time flies out here!

Right after the last post, we drove to Orlando where Doug and I began our ten day Campus Crusade for Christ New Staff Training.  We have accepted God's call to join the ministry of FamilyLife in the Rocky Mountain Region. We will be based in Denver and be working with churches and families on all issues surrounding families.   Our training was RICH and filled with God's abundant blessing as we swallowed up the teaching and met special couples from around the U.S. headed into full-time ministry.

We were lucky that during the training, we were able to park the RV at Fort Wilderness Campground at Disney World.  My wonderful sister, Kris, and my parents, were able to come down in shifts to play with kids while we were in l-o-n-g days of training.  Everyone faired just fine and had a blast playing with all of the amenities at the campground.

ANNOUNCEMENT.....

I feel like I can't go ONE step further without making sure that anyone who is reading this blog post has heard the WONDERFUL news.....After 18 years of marriage, we found out in April that we are expecting our first baby EVER.  PREGNANT!  WoW!  Total shockaroony to say the least.  I can only sum it up by saying that I really think that I was getting too cocky in declaring that NOW I had God figured out, in the reason that I could never get pg before was so that we could adopt our five darling children.  I will never again say I have God figured out!! haha 

We are thrilled beyond measure and we marvel EVERY SINGLE DAY at the work of His hands.  Truly a miracle, odds in the millions.  I am feeling pretty pregnant - normal I guess!  I am about 13.5 weeks along at this point and everything appears to be just great.  Very thankful!

BACK TO THE POST....

Per the above, I didn't quite feel like getting everyone around the parks at Disney, so we enjoyed touring around resorts, Downtown Disney, etc.....  We had a great surprise when we found out that the IronKids Orlando Triathlon was happening at Fort Wilderness this past weekend.  Last year I blogged about Louise finishing the Boulder IronKids Tri.  Louise definitely wanted to do the Orlando event, and little brother, Andrew, was ready to start his Tri career (now that he's 6 - the minimum age ;-)) also.

They competed this past Saturday - wow, a lot of professional-looking youth Tri teams in Florida!  All decked out in their matching Tri suits and fancy bikes!!  I guess because they can train year round it is very popular here.  We knew it was going to be a little more competition than Boulder, more kids competing too.  Louise was first - she was verrrry hot and emotional when she finished - the course was a little confusing - she tried to come in after not enought bike laps, but we caught it and she headed back to finish of course.

Andrew had sprinted out of bed at 5:30am that morning, so we knew he was ready to go.  His heat got in the water about 9:15, so he had been waiting a while.  He was so brave in the open water swim - no problem!  He swam, biked and ran a super fast course.

Award time came......The top five finishers in each category are invited to Nationals in Des Moines in September....the top three in each category (age/gender) are given trophies in addition to their medals.  Louise was absolutely thrilled with a 6th place finish - she beat her times from last year (her goal) and finished in the top third in a tough group.  Andrew was all smiles to head to the podium with a third place finish in his category.    Louise will have another chance to qualify for Nationals at the IronKids in Boulder (and not sure if we would attend anyhow - we did not go last year, but it is fun to qualify ;-))  Fun day for all - fun crowd, fun healthy, athletic energy all about!  We all went back to the RV and napped!

We left Disney yesterday and headed straight east to the Space Coast.  This morning was a privelege to walk 5 minutes down to the river in our campground to witness the historic final launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor.  We were directly across the water from the launch pad.  Unfortunately, the cloud cover was pretty thick, so we saw it for a few seconds before it punched a hole in the cloud and faded from view.  Still absolutely unforgettable to watch the engines roll with fire and push it off the pad.  Definitely something I was hoping to see some day!  I have a very amateur (shaky!) video of the whole thing - will try to post it some day.  You can probably see a very nice video on www.nasa.gov!

Today is a school day for us, work day for Doug.  The kids and I are also working on necklaces to contribute to this event held by the Patterson Family in San Marcos, TX to benefit orphans.  We will be contributing glass tile neclaces with the event logo for their silent auction.  If you are in the area that weekend, you should check out the family event - it looks like it's going to be a blast!

The kids are out happily gathering lizards and crickets to fill their insect house....we better get started on some real school, huh?!! joking of course - hands on, roadschool ROCKS!

xoxo
jen