8th grade dudes retreat

To see a slideshow of pics from our amazing retreat click here.

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I had the awesome opportunity to spend this past weekend with 14 of the 8th grade guys from our youth group at a student's cabin in Fraser. It was such a great time and as always I feel incredibly blessed to get to be a part of these student's lives.


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Rapids Game

This past weekend Becky and I went to our first Colorado Rapids game in awhile. A bunch of Becky's girls from church got to play on the field at half time of the game with their club team. We brought more students along to cheer them on and to enjoy some soccer in 30 degree weather.


Becky with her girls...one of whom got into an amazing wrestling match with a mascot.


Me with the dudes.


The non-adults in the above picture all took their shirts off at one point in an attempt to get on the scoreboard. While that attempt was unsuccessful they did end up on TV immediately after the first Rapids goal of the game. The camera focused in on them as they all twirled their shirts above their heads. It was legendary.

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Zoe turns 2!

Happy Birthday Zoe!!!

We celebrated Zoe turning two years old with a people cake and a dog cake. Zoe was so excited about her birthday bone that she wouldn't even pose for a picture. Joy, Maddy, and Ana came over to help us celebrate this special occasion, and because they love getting Zoe kisses. I (Becky) have become one of those weird Boulder people who really loves her dog...a lot (however unlike some Boulderites, I do think people are more important than dogs).



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Syracuse is terrible...but my wife is amazing

As most of you are probably aware, I am a big Syracuse basketball fan, so I was of course very excited about the team advancing to the Sweet 16 and their game against Oklahoma this past Friday. Becky and I had talked previously that we should own Syracuse shirts so we can feel like we are better supporting the team so she decided to surprise me by picking some up for us before the big game. After calling every sporting goods store in Colorado, she realized the only way to get a hold of any Syracuse gear was to purchase it online. The shirts were to be delivered to her work address on Thursday, which coincided with the biggest snow storm we have had here in over two years. Without explaining why, Becky said she absolutely had to go into work at least until the mail came. So we ventured into Boulder to work just until the mail was delivered to her work. After surprising me with our new shirts we headed home. The drive home, which usually takes 15 minutes, took us over 2 hours.

In the end, Syracuse played terribly and got smoked by Oklahoma but my wife is amazing.


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The Last Night

Since my grandma's passing in December, my mom, dad, and aunt have been very busy sorting through everything at her beautiful home on a lake in central Florida. This has meant several drives from New York to Florida for my dad over the past three months. This past weekend was my dad's final night in the house which holds so many great memories for all of our family.

It just so happened that his last night in the house was the same date as the most recent shuttle launch. Of all the many trips to visit my grandparents I only witnessed one shuttle launch and it was amazing.

From the back yard of my grandparent's house on his last night there, my dad saw this incredible sight.


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Retro Ski Day

This past Saturday we took seventeen 8th graders (along with some very helpful parents) up to Eldora Ski Resort for a great day of skiing and snowboarding. It just so happened that our 8th-grade ski day coincided with the Eldora Retro Day which we were of course happy to participate in.

Becky and her good friend Nicole posing with their retro outfits.

Becky with some of her girls.

Me and the dudes. Please note Josh's amazing hippie outfit: he tie-dyed his jeans and shirt with food coloring so every time he sat down he left behind a very colorful pattern in the snow.

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Skiing, A Frozen Dead Guy, and Matt Wertz

This past Saturday we had a quite an eventful day. It began with a morning of skiing at Eldora.


Immediately after skiing, we met up with our friend who lives in Nederland (the town Eldora is in) and went to a local festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days. The following excerpt from Wikipedia summarizes the story which was the inspiration for the festival:

In 1989, a Norwegian citizen named Trygve Bauge brought the corpse of his recently deceased grandfather, Bredo Morstøl, to the United States. The body was preserved on dry ice for the trip, and stored in liquid nitrogen at the Trans Time cryonics facility from 1990 to 1993.

In 1993, Bredo was returned to dry ice and transported to the town of Nederland, where Trygve and his mother Aud planned to create a cryonics facility of their own. When Trygve was deported from the United States for overstaying his visa, his mother, Aud, continued keeping her father's body cryogenically frozen in a shack behind her unfinished house.

Aud was eventually evicted from her home for living in a house with no electricity or plumbing, in violation of local ordinances. At that time, she told a local reporter about her father's body, and the reporter went to the local city hall in order to let them know about Aud's fears that her eviction would cause her father's body to thaw out.

To this day, Grandpa is still frozen inside a Tuff Shed in Nederland and the Frozen Dead Guy Days apparently celebrates this bizarre situation. Neither of us had ever been to the festival but had heard that the coffin races was the most entertaining part of the weekend. The races were actually quite similar to "The Push" - the shopping cart race which started during my time at Hope College, where the point of the event is the hilarious costumes and not who wins.

This is the NASA team. Unfortunately the coffin crash-landed in the first round and they were eliminated.

My personal favorite was the Double-Dare team, which celebrated one of my favorite childhood TV shows.

The most hilariously dressed team was the Octumom team called "Eight Isn't Enough." Inside the coffin was a woman and eight baby dolls and the people carrying the coffins were all wearing diapers.

Saturday night we then went to see Matt Wertz at the Fox Theatre in Boulder with Laurel, our friend from Hope, and her boyfriend Dominic. This was the third time we had seen Matt Wertz at the Fox as he is Becky's favorite musician and he always puts on a very good live show. He also has to be one of the nicest guys in music as he uses the stage as a platform to share about the mission work in Africa he is involved with, and allows fans to take a CD from his merch table if they sign up to give to the mission. You can kind of see him between Laurel and Becky's heads.


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