Friday, March 21, 2014

Bring On The Madness:)

     Wow!  I can't believe it's been two weeks since I've posted anything here!!  It's not that I've been so busy I haven't had time to write anything, I've just been too lazy and every time I think about updating my blog I find a reason to put it off:)  Classic me!  The good news is I won't bore you with a long winded recap of all that's happened in the past few weeks, I'll just give you the highlights.

     A couple weeks ago Curt and I flew into Phoenix for the weekend to help finish the new garage at mothers winter oasis.  Dad's done an amazing job of building not only the perfect garage for their needs down there, but a nice little art studio alongside of it.  Mother has already set up her easel and picked up the paint brushes again!  Of course we allowed plenty of time in each day to get in 18 holes of golf.  We played every afternoon that we were there and it felt fantastic to blow the cobwebs off of the ol swing and take in some of the nicest courses in the area!  The weekend went fast though as they always do, and I came home to the chilly spring time temperatures while Curt went on to Vegas where he rejoined Jen and the kids to visit her parents for the rest of the week.  We had a great time but Curt and I agreed that if we repeat this trip next year we should leave our tape measures at home and only bring the golf clubs:)

     Last weekend we laid low and had a couple fun dinner outings with friends and family, always a great way to decompress!  Much needed decompression leading up to this week which sparked the kick off to march madness!!  I'm a sports junkie and I get really excited over quite a few different sporting events each year.  Most of you know I get pretty fanatical over anything related to my beloved Dallas Cowboys, even getting into heated rants over free agency transactions they make this time of year, but don't get me started on that!  I also consider the Masters to be the only recognized four day national holiday of the year, tune in to this page in about three weeks if you care to see just how much Masters week means to me.  From watching baseball all October, to NBA basketball in June, there are plenty of opportunities for me to get excited about sports throughout the year.  Right up there as one of my favorites though is March Madness, the NCAA tournament is one of the greatest sporting events of the year and this year we have been blessed with an instant classic!  It all started yesterday and in the first day we got to see four overtime games, a new record!  As I sit here writing this day two just started and I can't help but wonder if it will live up to day one, I sure hope so!  Even though they cause chaos to many of the brackets I have filled out I just never get tired of watching the upsets!  There just isn't too many things more exciting than a mid major school knocking off one of the top seeds.  

     So as I settle in for another anticipated day of excitement I only hope that you all have found as good of a way to ring in your spring as I have!  All I keep thinking about is if March Madness is this entertaining than what kind of a Masters are we in store for?  I for one can't wait to find out!!

Remember, with all of the great sports action on TV don't forget to get outside and soak up some of that good springtime vitamin D:)

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Hidden joys

     One of these days I will learn my lesson.  Even after years and years of my feeble attempts to try and do what I think is the smart move only to have it blow up in my face, I continue to learn life's lessons the hard way!  My last post was a couple weeks ago and if you recall it referred to one of these life's lessons when I chose not to listen to Kelli's logical idea of leaving Seattle early which ended with us stuck on I-90 for 2 1/2 hours.  This week I had a meeting to attend over in Missoula on Tuesday and since Kelli didn't have to work until Wednesday she came with me.  We went over on Sunday and spent a couple days with Dan and Donna in their snow infested part of the country.  The whole area had been hit with a pretty heavy winter storm, leaving I-90 a little hairy at the peak of Lookout pass.  We made it over safely and almost immediately the temps began to melt the snow and the rain began.  This drastic change in the weather caused a few avalanches to slide onto I-90 which closed it down in both directions until the conditions got more safe.

     This was the first time I could ever remember the interstate being closed for an avalanche!  Making matters worse they couldn't tell when they were going to open it back up again because they weren't even sure how they were going to make the conditions safe.  Luckily though they had opened up a detour across the far Northern edge of Idaho so we could still make it home in time for Kelli to work.  It was just going to be about twice as long as the interstate would be.  So even though things looked interesting I still held out hope that the trip home would be pretty smooth.  Once again though my efforts to outsmart things backfired on me!  I decided when we left Missoula that I'd shorten our trip time by taking a cut across to the detour highway instead of taking the interstate all the way to St Regis where it was closed.  Things were going pretty good and then when we got to the intersection between the detour from the interstate and my short cut to the detour, we saw a couple of highway guys working on the detour sign.  I told Kelli I hope their not taking it down because the interstate had opened back up, she said no they couldn't be so we continued on up the detour.  When we got to Sandpoint, ID we stopped for dinner and got a text message from the Dobson's saying they opened up the interstate at 4 pm, had we taken the interstate we would have been there almost exactly at 4 pm!!

     But after many years of life's little lessons like this one we have taught ourselves to find the joys in these moments.  Even though this can be difficult at times, if you look really closely there's joy in every single one of them!  I believe that God puts us into these situations precisely for the reason of reminding us that there truly are some wonderful things in this world if we just pay attention to them.  It's not a good one because it was taken while we were moving but the picture below is proof of the hidden joy in our life's lesson.  We may have had to take a detour that we could have avoided resulting in us getting home, ironically like the last trip, 2 1/2 hours later than expected, but we were rewarded by one of the most beautiful sunsets we have ever seen!  The picture doesn't do it any justice at all as we couldn't stop commenting on how stunning it was!  Finding the hidden joys in situations like these just makes accepting them as part of this wonderful journey called life a little bit easier!

Remember, every detail of our journey is worth remembering, even the ones that are a little hard to handle on the surface!