Gathering with Friends in Estes Park

Eleven couples. Two leaders passionate about seeing marriages thrive. One crisp, but sunny, overnight in Estes Park, CO.

Steve and Linda Nuss gathered us together like a rooster and mother hen guarding their chicks last weekend. Some of us were from their current marriage home group (format includes Jimmy and Karen Evans’ DVD, “Building Emotional Intimacy”), which will end in a couple of weeks. (Chet and I participate in that one.) Some of us were from the group they hosted last fall. Others were from GriefShare: Recovering from the Losses in Life that Steve and Linda started  in our church. At one point they oversaw about eight small GriefShare groups within the larger circle. Who knows where the other couples came from???

Between 3 pm and 5 pm Friday afternoon, we gathered on site at the Estes Park YMCA, which has a lot of construction popping up all over the 800-plus acres with new buildings, lodges and cabins mushrooming. We stayed in one of the nicer lodges, Wind River Lodge,  and the atmosphere around the weekend was casual and loose. It included lots of fellowship with family-style dinner together at three tables in the Dining Hall (buffet) Friday night and breakfast on Saturday morning. 

In the dark on Friday night, about eight vehicles caravaned around the property trying to find our fire ring  – backtracking a few times. We finally found the spot and settled on benches and our lawn chairs in front of a roaring fire stoked by three of the guys. Chuck Greenfield plunked beautiful worship songs on his guitar as some cuddled up in blankets. I led the charge on roasting marshmallows for our S’mores. Interestingly, it was the guys who did most of the talking, or led out on songs. I guess the women folk had used up their 50,000 words already with the excitement of meetin’, greetin’ and eatin’!

After breakfast the next morning, we packed up our stuff, checked out and headed for Meeting Room C, around several tables pushed together like a board meeting, where Steve and Linda passed out a handout and Ed Smith delivered a teaching via tape  relevant to developing intimacy in marriage.

The sun beat down on a gorgeous spring day and I did not want to leave Estes Park right away. Chet and I serendipidously met up with some of the gang and met at “Kind” coffee – found the perfect table with a full picture window view of the creek and path out the back. We casually sipped our lattes and smoothies and attempted a few games of Mexican Train Dominoes (though without the Mexican nor the train, because we couldn’t figure that part out).

Our little group (the Greenfields, Ketters, Chet and I) enjoyed a wonderfully relaxing afternoon before heading back down to Denver again.

It was a great way for me to spend my birthday.

Thank you, Steve and Linda, for all your hard work and for organizing an awesome marriage building get-away!!!

Out of Her Hands Book Launch!

Please come celebrate with us! This is Megan DiMaria’s second book release in 2008; the first was Searching for Spice. This debut, Out of Her Hands is real fiction, with real characters living real life.

Kudos to the Faithful Bloggers!

I congratulate those of you who faithfully add to your blogs day after day! It ain’t easy! I have written a thousand blog entries in my head since I started this blog in May! Very few of them have made it into WordPress.

I don’t like to write simple entries. The insatiably curious journalist in me will not leave well enough alone; if I start writing about something – say, the interesting color of the rocks in Copper Mountain, I want to know how they got that way. Was this town founded on mining copper? Do companies still excavate? How many tons of copper were lifted from the place at its peak? And as I observe the rocks seem to be more extraordinarily colorful and striated than other rocks I’ve seen throughout many hikes throughout Colorado, I want to know if that is merely my imagination, or if I have discovered a true gem of information.

See what I mean? I can’t leave it alone! Then I have to go out on the web, searching and searching till I find these answers. And, of course, in the process, I will discover many other nuggets (no pun intended!)

And, of couse I want YOU to know what I know, I so I add links to these websites. I also realize that if I were to actually write out all the information I find, my blog would be way too LONG – one of the cardinal sins of blogging. And besides, I’d like to give you the option of clicking on the link – or not. You may not care like I do!

Do I have the time to do that? It entails not simply downloading photos, but putting them in the computer and logging them in so I know where to find them later.  And  of course, uploading them into the blog; a blog entry without photos is a boring blog! No matter how fantastic  the writing, people like pictures! Since I carry my camera around almost everywhere (got a huge purse for that very reason), taking the photos is not usually the problem. But taking the right photos, the photos that illustrate my blog points, now that takes some thinking! Or I have to write my blog around the photos I took. This takes some storytelling technique. Plus – and this is where I get hung up the most – do I know where my downloading cable is to download the photosrrect spot on my hard drive with the correct labels so I can find them later. (This is a photo I took yesterday while hiking with Chet in Copper Mountain. More about that later – if I can get around to it!)

And even though you may have the latest and greatest computer equipment and internet connection, it may still be painfully slow waiting for even one image to upload! You get tired of finding other things to do while you wait!

Phew! By now, no matter how many times I’ve written that blog entry in my head, the chances of it getting into my blog are very small!

Can you relate AT ALL???

Maybe not.

Which is why give those of you who actually complete a blog entry a CYBER STAR for your faithful blogging!

Tree Dudes Attack the Beetle Trees!

Our wonderful friends, Steve and Linda Nuss offered to come to the family cabin in Allenspark, CO to cut down trees marked by a state forest ranger. As most of you know, the pine beetles have ravaged the Grand Lake area, on the west side of the Continental Divide. We are all working hard to try and fend off the devastating effects on our side.

The two Tree Dudes - Chet under the masterful tutalege of Dude Steve – felled over 125 trees Friday afternoon and Saturday, May 30 & 31! Very few of them actually had pine beetles. Part of their mission from the ranger was also to thin the forest. They did not have to cut branches and chop the trees, nor wrap and stack them. The National Forest Firefighters offered to come by and chip them with their huge machines.

I am going to attempt to post a brief video shot of Chet felling one of the larger beetle trees behind the cabin at the end of these photos. It was the first time I’d ever taken video with my new Sony digital still photo camera, and had no idea if it would work, or even if I would be able to get the tree in the shot! But I think you will enjoy the Tree Dude Victory and the Victory shout!

(I have run out of time and can’t get the video posted – will have to do so at a later time – come back and watch the Big Fall!!!)

CYCLING SISSY, Part 3 – Gripped By A Heroic Inspiration

 

She sat in the circle of around 12 women in the grass, legs crossed casually, smiling. Her talk would be the catalyst that would propel me into signing up for Rev (cycling or Spinning) classes only 6 weeks after my knee surgery.

The women’s mentoring group I serve with had several “real life parable enactments” as a part of the Fall 2007 Determined Pursuit Bible studies. One of those enactments occurred at a park in Broomfield.

And we sat in the lush grass listening to Marianne Svec tell us about her positive experience as a first time athlete in the Tri For the Cure Triathalon, just a few weeks before, first weekend in August. Three thousand women swam, biked and ran for “Susan G Komen for the Cure.”

Marianne truly inspired me. The fact that she is 50-something and said “YES!” to an opportunity way beyond her comfort zone touched a spot in my heart. Her supervisor at work, an experienced triathelete, mentored her. They trained throughout the year, logging in about four days a week at the nearby rec center in swimming and Spinning classes. They also ran together quite a bit. Marianne ended up swimming the 750 meters (1/2 mile), biking 20k (a little over 12 miles), and running the 5k (3.1 miles) in an hour and fifty-five minutes, including transition time.

She read Philippians 4:13 to us: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” and II Timothy 4:7-8: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord…will give to me on that day…” (New King James Version) 

She concluded by saying: “You can train together the whole time with someone who’s been through it before. But in the end, you’ll have to run your own race.”

Something in my heart leapt that day: I wanted to take indoor cycling classes like she did and ride my bike in some long rides, maybe in the summer. Marianne inspired me.