Catching Up

Hi all, We're back in the States and will try to catch you up on what we've been up to. The last day of school was June 26th and so we closed up the house the next day and boarded a train for Beijing. Beijing is amazing these days...We actually toured an indoor / outdoor mall with movie theaters and all the types of shops we would see in the States. I watched "white" people all over the place with cups of Starbucks in their hands milling about and thought, "Well for years there was Chinatown in San Francisco, now there is a "Western" town in Peking."

Upon landing in Seattle, I was struck by the sheer amount of STUFF even in the airport. Perhaps this economic downturn will help Americans see that they don't need to have quite so much...crap! Anyhow, we landed in Boulder and were picked up at the Denver airport by our friends the Cates and immediately went to one of our favorite "haunts"...the rooftop of the Rio Grande restaurant. Sitting up there and viewing the foothills of the Rocky Mountains was heaven.



After a great week in Boulder (where we also got to connect with our beloved church family at Origins Church) we hoped in the car and began our trip out to Detroit with a few detours along the way. Namely Mt. Rushmore & Crazy Horse. When I was a kid my family and I used to drive out "west" and saw all of the history that part of the country had to offer...and I wanted a little of that for my family now.



Crazyhorse is amazing! They guy who started sculpting the mountain began in the 1940's and he died in the 1980's. His wife and 4 of his children are continuing the work which, impressive as it is, is far from done. It is a sculpture of the Ogalala Indian Warrior Crazy Horse who was stabbed in the back under a flag of truce. When you tour the American Indian museum at the site you realize this nation really owes the Indian population BIG!



Mt. Rushmore was wonderful and we had an amazing time as a family touring the monument with the audio tour provided. The engineering facts are really interesting and I was amazed to find out that although their were some injuries during the project, no lives were lost. I found that hard to believe when you see the film clips they show you of guys dangling on ropes over the side of the mountain with drills in their hands!



But as a baseball fan, nothing hit me as much as travelling through Iowa and stopping at the site where they filmed the movie Field of Dreams. Gabriel and I played catch and took turns walking out of the cornfield. It really is my picture of heaven. One day I wanted to have a baseball game in heaven with the farmhouse to the side, the sounds of children's laughter in the background, hotdogs cooking on the grill, and Ernie Harwell calling the play by play!! Anyhow, thats what we're up to.