Changes in Scenery

The last two weeks have been eventful to say the least. With about 1 week left of time in Europe, we got news that my Grams was really sick. She was in the hospital with double neomonia and a bad heart condition. When we heard this, we made a bunch of phone calls that turned into LONG conversations with airlines, insurance and ticket brokers. After a few days and a schedule that's new priority was "get home to grams," we stuck around the Frankfurt Airport to see if we could catch a flight. This is when it got ugly...but humorous. Over the course of 48 hours we were unsuccessful on 3 stand by flights and decided that we needed to save money and didn't want to stay too far from the airport. So what did we do?? Yes, we paid to simply sleep in our rental car in the parking garage of the Frankfurt Airport. It was about 12 degrees outside and after hanging a bunch of my clothes in the windows and waking up every 30 minutes to turn the heater on, we got arguably the worst night sleep in human history. See pics below...





The next morning we actually got the first flight back to San Francisco and after a short time back home in Santa Cruz, we packed up our car and headed down south to San Luis Obispo to see grams. By the time we got there, she had fought her way back to some better health, although still very weak and tired. It was great to get/give some hugs and kisses.



From there we were able to keep heading south down to North Hollywood and spend the night at my bro-in-law Jason's place. It was great to be with him, especially since he is leaving to move to Kansas City tomorrow. We soaked in our time together...



The next afternoon Janny and I drove up the mountain to Big Bear where I was speaking at a Junior High Winter Camp for the weekend. The weather was terrible on the way up(of course driving our Honda with no chains!), but once we got there, it ended up being a beautiful weekend. We were hooked up with a small cabin in the snow and had a great time connecting with students and counselors. Getting back in that context defintely sturred up some memories of all the years we had with our kids at Harbor Chapel. At the same time, watching all that the youth pastors did and were responsible for gave us great peace about our decision to step away from that role/context.

On the way back up north we stopped and gave grams some more love and now we are back in Santa Cruz trying to figure out what life will look like. We are both subbing and I will be coaching a local H.S. golf team starting in a couple weeks. Should be interesting!!