the colorado adventure

so the colorado adventure began this morning. it was a long drive, but very beautiful. i honestly never realized that you could drive that long without seeing a gas station. i honestly didn't know you could drive that long without seeing a house.....or a school, or another living soul. at first i was mezmorized by the windmills standing beautifully everywhere i looked....but i had to eventually quit taking pictures of them all. our trip was beginning to look like the great windmill tour of 2010....

and this was the picture i took right before our "need gas" warning went off...

that's pretty much when i freaked out. randy was not worried...he said we were almost to a town. and we were...a town of over 300! there was no visible gas station. i saw a man sitting in his truck...we stopped and asked him where a gas station might be...you know, should they have one in the town of 300. he said the mercantile store might have some....since it was SATURDAY and all....awesome. thank goodness they did. and we were able to get gas. and here is what it looked like....

neither randy nor myself have ever gotten gas at a place that looked like this....so we took a picture. from the window of the van of course. we did not want to offend the locals.

i cannot remember if this was before or after we got stopped for speeding. the police officer was nice. we deserved our punishment. we were nice to him....even though he gave us a ticket. in randy's defense, it was the first ticket in 7 months of itineration.

so then we drove on....onto new mexico. which was great, considering randy had told us that we weren't going to be driving through new mexico. i'm still not sure what happened with that...i didn't press the issue too long. i'm silly, but not stupid. anyway, we made it to parker, colorado. we were able to freshen up a bit and then have dinner with the pastors, john and angie hamp. they are so great...we really enjoyed getting to spend some time with them.

sunday morning we were blessed to get to share our heart for swaziland with their congregation at discovery church there in parker. we really enjoyed the service and the people. we were also blessed by a surprise visit to church by our friends steve and kim knott. the knotts were in our church in allen, but relocated for their job back in may. that night we got to hang out with them, our friends daniel and sharon, and will and melissa. who knew we had so many friends in colorado?!?!

that monday we got up early and drove up the mountain for a quick ski session. it was a beautiful drive...but the snow slowed it waaaayyyy down.

we did eventually get there. i promise this is olivia about to go skiing. her hair eventually froze to her scarf. and i had a fear of frost bite on my face.....that's when i went into the lodge...for the remainder of the day.

the drive home was a bit stressful....it was 26 degrees outside and snowing...

colorado was cold.....VERY cold. and wet...i did not have snow boots. crankiness may or may not have settled in while i was tracking through the snow. i decided i'm glad i'm going to africa!

we really enjoyed our trip. it was so good to visit discovery church. it was so good to see old friends. it was good to go skiing. it was good to make it down that mountain alive.

here's us and daniel and sharon. dear friends for life...