For this Sponsorship Saturday post I am excited to share that in June we were blessed by the opportunity to take a trip to the Grand Canyon. What started out as a plan to take another trip with my youngest daughter while her older teen sisters were away, turned into an exciting opportunity to wait and take all the girls to Grand Canyon. I was so excited about this trip, as I’ve wanted to see the Grand Canyon for as long as I can remember. Life has not ever had me anywhere near that part of the United States, until now. After playing with google maps for several days, I decided that “now is the time.”
Colorado Springs is home to many places of beauty and interest. Stepping away from all the natural beauty one can find a dozen or more places that celebrate the strength and ability of mankind. The Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center one of those places and is located near the downtown area at
U.S. Olympic Training Center
1 Olympic Plaza
Colorado Springs, CO 80909
Take pictures with the Olympic rings
Tours are offered daily, every half hour, for a small fee. The tickets you receive look like this:
The Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center sits on the 35-acre complex that was formally the site of ENT Air Force base until 1976. It is one of 3 OTC in the United States. The US Olympic Committee headquarters are located just a little a couple miles away in the downtown area.
The center has sport venues and support facilities. Athletes in fencing, gymnastics, judo, modern pentathlon, shooting,swimming, tekwando, weightlifting and wrestling can stay at the site, train and receive support at the OTC.
During the tour you will be shown a short video of recent past Olympic highlights and a preview of the next games, which will be, at the time of this writing, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
After the video there is a tour of the site, including a couple of gyms, the shooting range and the swimming pool. While there we saw many athletes training in weight lifting and wrestling.
If you are looking for stay-cation activities and destinations or are visiting Colorado Springs for business or recreation, I encourage you to take a couple of hours and visit the Olympic Training Center. You may leave inspired and energized to tackle the next activity you have planned with Olympic focus!
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
There hasn’t been a single garden post this year. That is due in large part to the long stretch of rain and no sunshine we experienced in May and early June.
The few seeds we finally did plant only went in toward the end of the first week of June. Much too late for many things. Here is how things looked on June 17.
pretty puny for the middle of June, but I am hopeful that we will have a good harvest of squash, peas, lettuces and carrots. The weeds are sure flourishing though. Seems like they sprout back up day after every weeding.
I am so thankful for the return of the grapevine. It was very late to come back this year and I though we had lost it along with our peach tree.
The honeysuckle is increasing and starting to vine up just as I hoped.
purple clover
The days are much warmer now at the end of June and although we are still getting quite a bit of rain, plants seems to be growing steadily. And it is looking to be a wonderful year for wild flowers! Please share links in the comments if you have posted garden updates. I’d enjoy seeing how other gardens grow this summer!
What could a day with my Heavenly Father look like? Of course, as I try to write this post, the song “I Can Only Imagine” has started running through my mind. But I am going to try and meld together the two different streams of thought that this blogging assignment has stimulated in my mind.
It is said that most people relate to God the Father as a reflection of their relationship with their earthly father. That is certainly true for me. It is only in recent years that I’ve been able to even think about Jehovah God as a kind, gentle and loving Father. And now, I even wake each morning with “good morning Father” on my mind! A habit of saying it out loud was intentionally cultivated and I’ve discovered great joy in starting the day like that! Such a gift.
The other stream of thought that started rolling around in my mind with this assignment was what I think a day with the Heavenly Father looks like. Goodness, I’m not sure what this says about me, but when I imagine Heaven and those first moments with God the Father… I hope to crawl up on His lap like a little child and just hear what He has to say in those first moments. I know that my kids have great memories of that kind of thing and so much more. They each have wonderful times of bike riding, hiking, reading, and gardening, cooking and laughing with my husband, their daddy. So I do believe that as I continue thinking about this, more ideas will come to mind.
If you are interested in speaking life and love into a child who may be growing up with out the love and nurture of a father, whether because of the absence or neglect, due to the realities of extreme poverty please consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International.
Now I leave you with the music of MercyMe.
I Can Only Imagine
by MercyMe
What it will be like
When I walk
By your side
I can only imagine
What my eyes will see
When your face
Is before me
I can only imagine
Chorus:
Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine
The pace of daily life has changed with summer being upon us and I was pleased when I was invited to preview Money Saving Mom’s newest resource, Make Over Your Mornings. While working through that e-course, I found a new time and place to respond to the letters our sponsored children write to us. Now I have a manilla folder that holds each piece of correspondence until I reply to it.
The folder stays in one of the tote bags I keep by my rocking chair.
Each morning, when I settle in for my quiet time, the folder is right there. Some mornings there isn’t time to write a letter, but many more mornings there is time. And I’m loving having this activity attached to my quiet time, as I am finding that telling the children and teens about what I am learning from the Word comes much more naturally.
Letter writing and morning quiet times, those things go together in this season. How about for you? Let’s talk more about letter writing, child sponsorship and even quiet times in the comments!
May the grace and the peace of Christ be with you.
See those pretty crocheted earrings in the above picture? They were made by a lovely woman, displaced from her homeland and relocated to a town in the Southern United States. I won’t share her name or specific details here, as I don’t know all the details and it’s not my story to tell at this time. But I will tell you that these earrings mean a lot to me. After receiving the earrings I begain reading about the woman and ministry from which they came. I gave some thought to the opportunity to join in to further participate and have made a short term commitment to join the Fair Trade Friday monthly earring club.
If you haven’t yet, please click the video above to listen to a beautiful new piece of music by David Nevue. I was first introduced to David Nevue’s music by Ann Voskamp in 2009, and have enjoyed his music ever since. Just last year Mae played a piece, Be Thou My Vision, arranged by him at the IFCA youth convention, and this year she played Dance of the Muse for her Spring Piano Recital.
Now David has a new album and I want to ask you to consider preordering Winding Down today. There is a bonus if you pre order! You’ll be able to immediately download enjoy the song “Clockwork,” an awesome four-hand duet composed, arranged and performed by David Nevue and Neil Patton. Here’s to good music making your spaces more beautiful.
(fyi, I do not receive any compensation for sharing about this music, just the joy in sharing beauty with you!)
It is Saturday evening and this week’s end is rolling out sweet calm. I am enjoying a wee bit of quiet while each kiddo and teen residing in this home are scattered about the house soaking up fringe hours in each delightful way.
Last weekend we headed out of town for a quick trip back to my hometown, and arrived back home just in time for me to do the monthly bread run for a ministry I am involved in. The kids were a bit disappointed that we didn’t make it back in time for youth group, but all were thankful to be able to get to sleep earlier.
It is good to “go back home”, even when it is hard. I’m learning that. In the hot hard rubs of relational struggles I am slowing learning to look for grace, to dig for grace and to let myself be the conduit of grace. For sure it is a clumsy, bent conduit.
Life is confirming many things that I have been learning over the years and lately. A gentle answer does indeed take the sting out of a tense moment. Pausing to give one more kind word gets more done relationally than I can knock off the to do list in twice the time. Yes, this week I’ve needed to pause many times, dig quickly for more kind words and speak gentle grace over and over again. And not necessarily because others around me pushing hard, but more often because I’m not slowing enough.
Do you ever find that? That by slowing, pausing a bit, the gentle word comes more easily, kindness is more able to flow, and grace settles weary or tensed spirits?
It is good, in the sweet calm of a week’s end to spend a few moments reflecting. I would love to hear what you may be pondering in the exhale of a full week. Please, leave a comment and let’s encourage one another.
Ah, summer time! The sweet, restful days of early summer have arrived, and now are slipping oh too quickly by.
Less Time Driving!
The boldest taste of summer so far is the lack of time in the minivan! With the last final exam taken on May 21st, I’ve enjoyed so much less going, going, going.
no more carpool line for now!
A couple of bigger projects have been done during this time. Hubby was home for a week and the finishing touches on the basement remodel were completed (we only lack priming and painting the shelves in the new closets! ) The veggie and cutting gardens are planted! (yea for a few days of LESS rain and more SUN)
We are nearing the end of our second week of summer, and I realize I need to make over my mornings. #makeoveryourmornings While it has been fun to stay up late watching Downton Abbey dvds from the library and sleeping in, I’ve had enough of that “chill out” diet. It’s time t0 get my routines up and running smooth again. While continuing to enjoy the slower, more restful days of summer, I need to freshen up my morning routines and get back to living more purposefully. Goodness, this is the last summer we have with none of our teens working an outside-the-home job! Next summer looks to be mighty different, a brand new parenting season. So, pen and paper and calendar in hand, I’m making over my mornings!
I can’t wait to tell you more about the tool I am using to freshen up my routines and getting each day off to a great start. Look for a post on June 2!
Now that school is out for Summer, I am looking forward to actually doing some of the projects and making some of the foods from my pinterest boards. I’ve made a Did It! board and will be blogging about some of my successes, and a flop here & there is likely too.
This week I made Carrot Cake Pancakes. The batter looked lovely to me, but some of my kiddos walked in and sincerely questioned what I was making. Each of the kids did eat some of the pancakes but they were not a hit. The batter was too heavy, so I added water mid way through the batch.
Being a girl who enjoys carrots and pineapple, I did enjoy the pancakes. But for my kids’ sake, I will drop the pineapple off the recipe and try again the next time I have an abundance of carrots in the fridge.
Another fun Did It…GAK. This was a fun DIY and my grand daughter was not the only one who had a lot of fun playing with the GAK. I love how quickly this project was completed, maybe 10 minutes total!
All you need to make GAK is a 7 or 8 oz bottle of Elmer’s Glue, Food Coloring, Water, Borax, a large bowl and storage containers. Here is the recipe I used.
add the whole bottle of glue
Purple!
add borax
stir til dissolved
combine with glue and stir
Store in a gallon ziplock
I am really looking forward to this summer challenge, of DOING my pins. How about you? Do you regularly do what you pin? Or do you need some inspiration to choose some pins and do those activities?
By Quiet Waters 