Going Home - Part 1

Going Home – Part 1

When I began telling everyone at work what my vacation plans at the end of July held, I started to get people telling me “good luck”.  It soon dawned on me that maybe our plans where a little unconventional.

We were renting a large van and heading west to Denver, then on to Yellowstone National Park, then to Helena, Montana.  Seems pretty reasonable right?  I guess it was because the “we” included my wife, our three children, and my wife’s parents.  For many people spending ten days with their in-laws may seem like a bit much, but for us it is a good opportunity to connect in ways we may not otherwise.

An hour past the departure time we had hoped for we headed west.  One thing that I think that brings harmony to a trip like this is that all we have to take care of is everyone that is with us.  What I mean by that is all we have to take care of is just the crew we are with.  Everyone is together and as long as everyone is doing alright, then everything is alright.  It’s much different than our day to day when we have so many other things competing for time, on a road trip like this there is no competing, just being.

The van held all of our many things very well and had a dvd player for the children to watch whatever movie they wanted.  It was a perfect way for our journey to begin.  Another awesome benefit for a trip like this is the amount of time everyone gets to spend together.  Our children got to spend a tremendous amount of time with their grandparents and parents together.  This is a rare occurrence these days, that is not lost on me.

We got in to Denver somewhat road weary around 3:30 a.m.  We stayed at my wife’s uncle’s house.  After the one long drive we were going to hang out in Denver for a couple of days before our adventure headed north.

While we were in Denver we had the good fortune of being able to spend time with friends we don’t get to see as often as we’d like.  I marvel at how good it can be to simply spend time with others that we care about, no matter how short the time is. 

A couple of unforgettable moments happened in Denver, here they are in short form:

S’mores (smell this!), the Broncos practice that didn’t happen, Casa Bonita, Uncle Curt and the Bison attack, Oscar playing with his first set of Nerf pistols, IKEA, the conversation at Pablo’s, all the other awesome times I am forgetting.

Fast forward in time and I asked my father in-law what his top items from the trip were, the first two things he said: the best pancake he ever had, and seeing Pablo.

I wanted to go into more detail about the visit with Pablo.

We wanted Pablo to baptize our youngest son, which he was gracious enough to do.  After the baptism we sat and just talked openly about everything.  Pablo has been our spiritual anchor for many years and he has a natural way of getting people to open up.  This provided some pretty serious laughing from everyone, as well as some introspective sharing that we may not have had otherwise.

Much of the laughing came from the conversation around my wife and I as parents and what we’re like.  We will admit that we can be pretty over the top on a lot of things, we have high expectations for ourselves as parents and when we are with others those expectations seem to apply to everyone with us.  My father in law talked about getting the evil eye from my wife when he wasn’t doing something that measured up to those expectations.. It was a very fun exchange that I’m not sure would have happened otherwise.  Here is what he looked like while telling his story:

What was really cool about this was the easy going peace he had while we were talking.  It was nice to see him enjoying himself and having fun.

More to come soon.