Colorado Chaos

Finally after getting up at 4:30am, overcoming 2 time zones, a couple of rounds of screaming on the plane, and a very tired family of 4 . . . we made it home!  The conference refreshed us in some ways and fried us in others.  We heard from Francis Chan, Rene Rochester, Dan Allendar (my personal favorite, seriously - if you haven't read any of his stuff, I highly suggest it!)  It was long though. Kids were tired. We were tired, and our sweet friends we shared an apartment with all came down with a stomach bug.  I don't know how we escaped it, but we did.  Just wanted to share a few fun photos of the adventures the kids had near the Rocky Mountains.

On the first night, we stopped by the County Fair filled with food, treats, rides and animals to pet :)  It was stinking hot though!  This is our Sweet Girl trying to escape the heat by hiding in the stroller.

Little Guy and I raced down the Super Slide.  From the looks of things, he won.

Sweet Girl could not WAIT to ride a pony.  Please note the slushee stain on the front of her WHITE shirt.  Love her heart - she's a messy one.

Okay, this is an important one.  Little Guy has NEVER ridden a horse, pony, or anything remotely close to it in his life!  It certainly pays to have an adventurous younger sister to keep up with!  He's loving it though.

I love this shot of Sweet Girl.  We enjoyed a fun morning at the splash pad with our friends and treated ourselves to ice cream afterwards.  Blair got a good shot of her in between the displays at Kilwin's.  I love the look of innocence, yet if you left her alone with those chocolate bars for more than 30 seconds, she would devour them.

 

Little Guy chose the blue ice cream.  I will say that this picture of him eating colorful ice cream is much different than a similar picture of him eating a chocolate cone at this same conference, same ice cream shop 2 years ago.  He's gotten much neater :)

Here are our kiddos with their dear friends.  Oh the fun they had sharing an apartment for a week and a half!

a moment in motherhood

Hello again from Fort Collins, CO!  Our conference is wrapping up.  The best word to describe my feelings is bittersweet.  It's so fun to be out here seeing friends and I've learned so much, but I am READY FOR MY OWN BED AND MY OWN PILLOW TOP MATTRESS! 

This evening we took a side trip down the highway to Denver to see some friends.  The meeting place was CB & Potts, a very yummy restaurant, kid friendly with a welcome sign advertising 3 huge cupcakes on it (my kind of welcome!)  Entering the restaurant my first thought was "it's cold in here!" -  92 outside but 92 below in here.  Thankfully I had brought a sweater, so I instantly put it on. 

I seated myself in between my kiddos, excited for some time with them since the conference has kept us away from them more than I've liked.  After Little Guy and Sweet Girl devour their mac and cheese, Little Guy keeps leaning against me saying "mommy, it's cold."  After hearing this sentence about 5 times, it occurs to me that I am wearing a sweater.  I have a moral dilemma often faced in parenting.  My Little Guy is cold and this sweater would surely warm him up, but gosh darn it, I'm cold too!  What to do?  I'm happy to say that I did give my sweet son my sweater, which made him feel much better, but sad to admit that I even had to think about it.   

Here's a pic of Little Guy looking very becoming in my ages old black sweater from Banana Republic . . .

New Name, Same Mission

The buzz around the first few days of Campus Crusade for Christ's national staff conference was, "What will our new name be?"  For the past few weeks we knew that a name change was imminent, but what would it be?  Tuesday night thousands of staff packed into the CSU gymnasium to hear the announcement.  As you may have heard, the new name will officially be Cru beginning in 2012.

                                       

Our thoughts were mixed, but after letting it marinate for a couple days we like it because we want to remove any barrier to people hearing about Jesus, even if that is our name.  A recent study showed that of people who said they were willing to have a conversation about Jesus, 20% said they would no longer be interested when they heard the name "Campus Crusade for Christ."  This is the reason for the change.  We are no longer only a "Campus" ministry and the word "Crusade" has very negative connotations in our world today.

Several in the media highlighted that we no longer have Christ in our name, implying that we are ashamed of Him or that having it in our name is a hindrance.  This could not be farther from the truth.  We exist to exalt Christ's name and bring people to Him.  Are we shrinking back from Christ?  Not at all, our mission is the same, to win people to Christ, build them up in their faith, and send them out to change their world for Him.  It's a new name but the same mission. 

If you have any further questions about the name change, you can go to Frequently Asked Questions about the Name Change or watch video of our Vice President, Steve Sellers explaining more about it on Fox and Friends here.  

on the road again

Hello from Colorado!  We finally made it out to our national staff conference yesterday.  I just had to document the trip a little because it was very looong with several memorable moments.  We started out with our flight leaving at 9:45am.  I was very stressed as Southwest doesn't have assigned seating and I had promised baked goods to our kiddos from Au Bon Pain.  So, we're waiting in line and they announce that the huge flock of boy scouts on our flight had requested to sit together so they were going to let them.  My sweet husband reassured me that we would be fine.  This is us waiting at the Orlando airport . . . don't they look refreshed and calm (at this point)?

Our flight was 4 hours, and I'll be honest - I was nervous.  I was pretty confident Little Guy would be calm, but Sweet Girl is a wild card.  We did bring her carseat along for her to sit in, in the hopes that carseat translates into "sit in one place."  I highly recommend it!  It worked well.  There were 2 or 3 ear piercing screams, but nothing a few airplane snacks couldn't cure.

We arrive in Denver on time, but not in enough time to catch the noon shuttle so we sit in the middle of the baggage claim area, eat McDonald's and wait on our 1:30pm shuttle.  These 2 pictures sum it up.  Little Guy sitting still . . .

And Sweet Girl crawling off into the oncoming traffic . . .

All in all we had 4 suitcases, 2 car seats, Mommy's purse, one diaper bag, one camera bag, Daddy's carry on, and one Lightning McQueen backpack.   Oh, and a double stroller.  Can you imagine us walking through the airport?  Well, the stroller actually served as a cart, so we piled it as high as we could.  Daddy pushed the "cart," Mommy rolled the suitcases, and Little Guy had to guide his baby sister.

Our shuttle was taking us to the rental car place in Fort Collins which is about an hour from Denver.  BUT, first we had to stop and let a load of people off in Loveland (another town on the way), then we had to transfer shuttles in Fort Collins.  THEN we had to take 2 people to their homes, some to a hotel, and FINALLY we made it to get our rental car.  Wouldn't you guess?  The only people on the shuttle with 2 small kids were the last stop.  We made it though and we're here safely.  The kids really did amazing!!!  The last pic of Sweet Girl and me kind of sums up how we were all feeling at this point.  Tired and a little shaky . . .

the family who doesn't do anything . . . oh wait.

I can only describe the last couple of days as stress, stress, and more stress.  We're getting ready to go out to Campus Crusade's bi-annual national staff conference on Friday after just having been here 10 days since our last trip up to Virginia.  One of my goals for the summer has been to be more "present" especially with the kids.  It's so easy to be doing something else like looking on the computer, looking at my phone, straightening up than to sit and just "be" with my family.  I'm not saying I've done a great job at all, but that's been my summer goal.  Of course, it's really hard to just sit and "be" when you have to get yourself and 2 little people ready for a 12 day trip (thankfully my wonderful husband knows how to pack himself!)  So, after a day of accomplishing a trip to the gym, having a house full of kids, 2 appointments, and major packing, I said, "Blair there is nothing for dinner . . ."  So, off we went to IHOP where kids eat free with an adult meal purchase.  This is us de-stressing in the car on the way home.

a fishy morning

Blair was home today and both of us decided mid-morning that we needed to get out of the house with the kids, of course.  It's almost a certainty that we will not make it on our 4 hour plane ride to Colorado this Friday without at least one Toy Story movie, which have become something of an obsession in our house.  We are probably one of the few households in America that doesn't own at least one of them!  So, we hopped down to the local Wal-Mart with a minor detour at 7-11 for free Slurpee day.  Little Guy went with the red, but we just don't trust our Sweet Girl not to make a mess, so she was stuck with Pina Colada.

But, any trip to Wal-Mart must always begin with a stop at the fish . . .

Although, I'd say 1/3 of the fish were dead, which was a little disturbing.  Thankfully, the kiddos couldn't tell.  Sweet Girl pointed to them and said "fish beeping" which translated is "fish sleeping."  Yes, you go on and think that Sweet Girl.

The morning took a turn for the worse though as we passed the iphone covers.  I had to stop Sweet Girl from ripping into one with Mickey's picture on it.  At this point, Blair and I had split up to look for child-size headphones (also a necessity for cross country travel on an airplane with 2 small kids).  As I scooped her up she began screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!!!" at which point I was sure someone would call the police and alert them to the fact that I had kidnapped an adorable blond headed girl and was dragging her through the electronics section at Wal-Mart.  Luckily, Blair made his way over to us (no doubt he could hear her screams) soon enough and at that point, I figured we looked family-like enough again that any suspicious onlookers would move on.  Blair and I just looked at each other and said "let's get out of here."  Turns out everyone just needed a little refueling.  Slurpees don't go very far.

First blog post

Well, here goes nothing . . . My first attempt at blogging.  Blogging has been a craze for years now, and I've never even followed them much less entertained the idea of writing one.  So, why start now?  I have been thinking a lot about why blogs are so popular and although I'm sure there are many reasons, the one I think applies the most is people want to be known.  So, that's why I'm starting, I want our friends, family members, ministry partners, and whoever else to know us - the Pippins, good and bad, pretty and ugly.  There's probably more ugly than pretty, but we want to be authentic.  We are living proof that you don't have to have "it all together" to love Jesus and follow Him.  In fact, it's better if you don't!

Here's an introduction to our 2 little crazy-makers . . . At first you might think, big brother is pummeling his little sister, but you'll get the gist in the middle somewhere.

You might also notice that Little Guy is wearing pj's that say "my big brother thinks I'm super cool." no, we don't have another child we're hiding from everyone.  those pjs were just on sale at Costco :)