New York City

New York City in March is a great trip. We went and stayed two nights...in Queens. What an experience! Actually, we had a great time with no incidents at all. New York, New York! Here's the Chrysler Building in the background, and the quintessential New York taxicab.

Empire State Building from its base

Central Park

Erin in Times Square

Nathan in Times Square

Statue of Liberty...and the New York Water Taxi

United Nations

Grand Central Station

Washington DC

A Day in Washington DC

On the tail end of the trip to Virginia Beach for a funeral

Here we are in front of the Capitol building. I didn't even know where we were until I finished that cup of joe in my hand...

This is as close as we could get. There were guards and gates all over the place. The guards were carrying M-16s...Oh America, home of the "free" and land of the brave. This is Nathan's opinion: Whatever happened to the notion put forth by Benjamin Franklin - "Those who give up liberty for safety deserve neither liberty NOR safety?"

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument behind us. "Jen-ny!"

The bro, Matt, fake-snowboarding in front of the Washington Monument.

Matt, Erin's brother, was with us as we walked around the entire Mall area in DC. It was a great day to get to hang out with him and get to know him better. Here is a pic of Matt and Erin on the street in front of the White House.Here's a pic of us in front of the White House. This is actually the back of the White House. And no, we did not meet the President!

Although we had to be in this part of the country for a sad reason, it was nice to be able to see where so much history in our nation had occurred. Please pray for Erin's grandmother. Her husband died, and that is why we were on the east coast. We think she will be just fine, and we are looking forward to our next trip to see her under better circumstances.

Stay tuned...we've got another trip planned to an undisclosed location in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled!

Matt Sliding on Ice at the Washington Mall

Erin Sliding on Ice (in her own way) at the Washington Mall...

Vacation, January 2007

Vacation, January 2007 - Departing the snow for palm trees, sun, sand, and warm waters...

Following is a pictorial journal of our time at Universal Studios Orlando and our first cruise on Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas for 7 days.

Also, while we were on vacation, our niece Alexandra was born to Matt and Ashley Chambless, Erin's brother and his wife. There is a photo of her at the bottom of this post.

Here we are at Universal Studios, Orlando. We arrived in Orlando a couple of days early and took advantage of the time by going to this fun amusement park. We really needed this time together, and this vacation was a real blessing from God. We were both needing that time to let our hair down and not worry about things of work and whatnot.

Erin watching as we depart Port Canaveral for a week in the eastern Caribbean Sea.

Erin and Nathan on the cruise ship.

NASA Vehicle Assembly Building. This was visible from the cruise ship as we departed Port Canaveral. This is an enormous building in which NASA constructs the spacecraft that have taken men to the moon and which put men and women into orbit on a regular basis. What an amazing sight!

Mariner of the Seas. This is the ship on which we spent a week relaxing, reconnecting, and decompressing.

Caribbean Sunset

CocoCay in the Bahamas. This is Royal Caribbean's private island.

B-b-b-b-barracuda!

This snail kept coming out of his shell and trying to get us to drop him.

Beach time in CocoCay, Bahamas

Tribute band to The Temptations. There were shows in the theater on the ship every night. This was a totally different experience from anything else we'd ever experienced before.

Waking up in Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands.

Nathan in the water

Relaxing on the beach with a good book. This beach in Saint Thomas was our favorite beach of the entire cruise.

Reflections of a St. Thomas (U.S.V.I.) Sunset

St. Thomas Sunset

Erin on the dock in Sint Maarten (Dutch Virgin Island). Behind her are two Royal Caribbean ships. The one on the left is the one we were on, the Mariner of the Seas.

Nathan on the dock when we first arrived in Sint Maarten.

The world famous Orient Beach on the French side of Saint Martin Island. This beach reminded me of what a beach in southern Spain might look like.

Top Deck of the Mariner of the Seas . This ship has three regular pools, and six hot tubs (that we know of)

The Royal Promenade. This is like a mini-mall in the middle of the ship. Our room had a window overlooking this.

Map of the Ship. Our room was on the 7th deck.

This is a view of the main dining hall. The attention to detail on this ship absolutely blew us away.

Our dinner table mates, Chris and Karina. They are both chefs. Karina is the pastry chef at Arrows Restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine, and Chris is a kitchen chef at Arrows' more relaxed restaurant. Here's a link to Arrows: http://www.arrowsrestaurant.com/. We had a really good time getting to know them over the week. What interesting people!

Towel Monkey - Every night we had a new animal either on our bed or above it that was crafted from a clean towel. This was definitely something unexpected and fun!

Erin watching Pirates of the Caribbean

Just waiting to return to the frozen state of Colorado...

Our beautiful niece Alexandra, who was born while we were away.

Our beautiful...uh, I mean crazy dog Boomer.

Blizzard!

Two nights ago, it started snowing...a lot. Then, the wind picked up, and we were the hapless victims of an official blizzard (according to the local meteorologists). I (Nathan) didn't suffer to much for this weather (due to the fact that DIA closed all traffic, I didn't have to go in to work), but Erin still had to make it in to the hospital to work. It's too bad hospitals are one of those places that can just never close! Anyway, she had to stay there today and try to get some sleep after her shift, and she is still there, helping to usher new lives into this world.

One of the local news stations did a story on her department at UCH that you may find interesting. You can view it here. Go Erin!

Our friends overseas may recognize this car...the scrape is from being rear-ended. The car still works great! Anyway, the Civic is almost totally buried in snow drifts after our recent huge blizzard. According to the local news station, we got 26 inches of snow. The drifts make it seem like we got far more than that.

Our contracted snow removal company didn't come out immediately, so disgruntled owners called the HOA and received results...BIG results, as you can see. There's nothing more comforting than seeing a 15 ton front-end loader sliding around in the parking lot. Ahh, the relaxing beep of a reverse warning! I've got to say, this operator knew what he was doing. He finessed this snow removal job and did such a great job...I've never seen snow removal happen this quickly here before.

Yep, you're seeing it correctly...that is the right tail light of a car that was unfortunately parked exactly where snow wanted to drift.

Here is the walkway to our stairs. As you can see, the snow definitely created some challenges, but none too difficult.

Here is the snow that drifted onto our retaining wall that is at the foot of the stairs. It makes us city slickers feel at least a little like those who live in the mountain snow every winter!

Here was the sunset tonight after the storm dissipated. Wow...God's awesome creative fingerprints are all over His creation!

San Diego Zoo

October Trip to the San Diego Zoo

Erin and I went to San Diego for a day to go to their world famous zoo. We were so unbelievably tired that day...good thing we took pictures! Otherwise, I have no idea how much of that day we would have remembered. Erin worked the night before, and neither of us were used to waking up as early as we needed to in order to get to the airport on time. Nonetheless, it was a very fun day out on the west coast.

Polar Bear looking for his toy...

This hawk swooped over our heads as it showed its impressive diving ability.

This golden retriever and cheetah live in the same cage. In fact, the dog is the cheetah's security blanket. She relaxed noticeably when she saw that her dog friend was there with her.

Late Posting

Here it is, late at night when I really should be sleeping. But I was just inspired by my friends Matt and Clint. It's important that we don't just post things that are inherently selfish, although I'm not sure how to avoid that tendency. We live life, and we want to share it with you, our friends. But to jump away from mere experiences that we'll continue to share with you, let me share a little about the struggles of life that I've been encountering.

1) Being a husband...what an adventure! It's hard to put into words the difficult, perplexing, and utterly fascinating aspects I find in understanding the particular woman that God graciously gave to me. She is the most amazing person in the world, yet we don't have a perfect relationship. We can have a beautifully relational day, and the next day seems to open an ocean of misunderstanding between us. Most of the time I finally come to understand that the misunderstanding is something that I've done/not done. Those are the days that make sense to me. However, the utterly perplexing days are those on which I can find no logical reason for our emotional and interpersonal separation. And I believe that is where I go wrong...I'm not supposed to understand it logically. I need to come to grips with the fact that life is so much more interconnected to Erin than it will ever be for me, no matter how emotional of a person that I am. That is what makes her the wonderful gift from God that she is.

2) Working full-time. This is a mind-numbing sensation sometimes. I can empathize with Clint in his lack of motivation in his job when I think about the landscaping job that I had the first couple of years that we lived here in Colorado. However, the new job that I have brings a new aspect of vibrancy and clarity to my life...not to mention the fact that it opens the country and the world up to us with incredible travel benefits. This new clarity brings me to my next point...

3) Flight school. I am doing what I dreamed of doing as a small boy. This job with Frontier Airlines has reawakened my passion for flying that I've always had. I fly several times per week, and I learn more about what it means to be the responsible pilot that I aspire to be. I wanted to start flight school last year, but the timing wasn't right. Erin and I had to go through the journey of discovering that God did not design us to live and work in ministry overseas at this time in our lives. It is important that I always remember that my job here on this earth is to obey Him in whatever He leads us to do. Flight school was dumped in my lap, and the Father has given me peace, as well as a fully supportive wife to pursue this path. He placed this passion within me. Therefore, I am confident that He is leading me.

These three aspects of life cause me to want to know more about what you, the reader thinks of one or more of these pursuits. However, I am mainly interested in knowing what three things (excluding your assumed (hopefully!) walk with Christ) are the most important to you at this time in your life. How does it all fit together?