Well, the time has come to say goodbye to Alaska.  We are excited to get home and see our dog (who we haven’t seen in like 10 days)!  We are excited to get back to our bed!  We are excited to get back to our beach and weather!

But, we are sad to see the end of vacation.  Sad to say goodbye to all of our family again (still haven’t convinced them all to become Californians yet).  Sad to see me get beat out of the Spades tournament yet again.  Sad that Jessi Girl won’t get to see her aunts, uncles and grandparents for a while.  Sad that I won’t get to see my brother for several months.  Sad that my wife and sisters won’t get to hang out and have girl time (whatever that really is).  Especially sad that I have to use Delta again.

It has been an amazing trip.  I think I have gotten to do everything I wanted to do (except for a few things that need a different time of year).  Alaska is beautiful and fun, but my family is way better.  I can’t wait until family vacation next year!  The location isn’t quite as pretty but it will be hot and there is a lake and boat involved!  I’ll have to teach the little one how to wakeboard (15 months old isn’t too early for wakeboarding is it?).

But for now it is back to our real lives.  We are flying back to Orange County today so please pray for safety and a happy baby (she doesn’t like the descending part).  Family, I love you all.  Thank you so much for another amazing vacation!  Mom and dad, thank you so  very much for everything.  We absolutely couldn’t have done this without you!  Love you guys!

Well, since we are on vacation still and I have never had a golfing experience like I did a couple days ago, I thought I would share it all with you.  I wish I would have gotten better video of the whole round, but here are a few highlights from someone else’s camera.  Keep in mind that I’m a terrible golfer (I know I suck so I go to have fun), moose are huge, bears are fast, bears are strong, glacier water is cold, I’m a terrible golfer, and this was Moose Run Golf Course (Creek), which is listed as the #49 hardest course in the US (as well as the world’s northernmost 36 hole course).

Our Alaskan vacation is nearing the end, but we are still staying in the “I Can See Russia From My House” state for a few more days.  So that means that today those of you at Kingsfield will be jamming with Colton again!  Today for me, though, offers a couple firsts.

In the morning we are hitting up the Big Wild Life Runs (giggle) 5K in downtown Anchorage.  I have never done a run (although we are gonna walk) like this before and I have never had the desire to do so.  But, for some reason my wife has a run like this on her Bucket List so we are gonna get it knocked out with a bunch of family!  Then after we have settled our Lance Armstrong (minus the bike) adrenalin down we will be heading out to Alyeska for our first night away from our 4 1/2 month old daughter.  It will be weird not having her around for that long and we will definitely miss her a lot, but it will be great to get some time away and to ourselves.  Doesn’t hurt that Alyeska is beautiful and we might get to touch a glacier.

So since I am gone again from the normal Sunday morning at church, here is a little bit of the expected soundtrack to my Alaskan Sunday.

All Manner Of Disney Songs (because that’s how my family rolls)
Spamalot (if my sister, Reagan, goes on the 5K with us)
Bon Jovi (pretty much a staple)
Foo Fighters (if we actually run some of the 5K)
John Mayer’s Album Battle Studies  (because that’s the only CD that’s been in my wife’s car for months now and I am not sure what a road trip would be without it now)

Yeah. That’s right. I said it.  I didn’t go to church on Sunday. We are on vacation and just didn’t go.  We are out in Anchorage, AK and I’m sure there are some great churches around here, but we didn’t attend one.  We didn’t even try.  Occasionally it’s nice to have some different God time (like the amazing scenery in Alaska for instance). Then I started thinking.

I wonder how often we as churchgoers or Christ followers, however you prefer to look at this, go to church just to go to church.  We aren’t going to serve someone.  We aren’t going to pray.  And we really aren’t going to meet with God.  We just go because it’s church and that’s what we are supposed to do.  Maybe you grew up in church so you have just always known that on Sundays you get up and go to church.  Maybe you go just to see your friends and instead of with a godly heart.  Maybe you feel like you need to be there because it makes up for the other bad things you did last week.

Don’t get me wrong.  Church is a great thing.  The messages and community that is hopefully found in your church is a HUGE blessing.  But for me as a follower of Christ, I wanna go to church because I am hoping and waiting to hear from God there and not just because that’s what we did when I was growing up.  I wanna be there to serve others and not just talk to my friends.

What about you?  Why do you show up on Sundays?  Is it just because or is it because He is there?

Every year for as long as I can remember, my family has taken a vacation together.  And for as long as I can remember we have taken that vacation with a few other families, recently dubbed the Family Fun Network.  We have been to the mountains, the beach, the lake and many other random places in between.  We board, ski, hike, climb, camp, cook, play Spades, play Hearts, play ladder golf, hang out, make fun of each other and love each other.  Not bad if you ask me.

I didn’t know that this wasn’t normal until college when I started meeting people whose families had never done anything like that before.  I didn’t know how blessed I was to have such a large family around me that would sacrifice time and money in order to get together like that every year.  I’m so thankful that we do since we don’t live near them anymore and don’t get to see them very often.  The families are growing larger and larger and we can barely fit everyone together under one roof, but it seems the more the merrier!

This year in Alaska has been no different than years past.  We are only halfway through our trip and it has been amazing.  I think that if God could pick the model for family community, this would be it.  Totally loving and supporting.  Take some time today to thank God for the family He has placed around you and pray for them.  If you don’t have family around you, pray that He will help you find it.

Right now as I am writing this we are driving along the Alaskan coast.  On one side of me are mountains covered in green with touches of snow.  On the other side is the ocean separating us from more gorgeous mountains.  It is definitely an amazing sight.  But usually when I see this kind of thing or any kind of creation, I don’t think to myself, wow, we have an amazing God.  I am not just drawn closer to Him because of the amazingness around me.  I think to myself, that’s cool or that’s awesome, but not He made that.

Many of us live our lives oblivious to the God around us.  God is a Sunday morning/small group/study type of God and nothing more.  We can see the amazing mountains or beaches or oceans or kids or whatever but we don’t see God in them.  We might appreciate their massiveness or awesomeness or complexity or beauty but we are acting ignorant of the Creator since it isn’t a Sunday morning at church!  We might as well be like my 4 month old baby.  As we are traveling around Alaska she just sleeps through all the scenery and all the wildlife.  She doesn’t know she is supposed to see and appreciate what’s around her yet.  She may see the creation around her but her understanding of the beauty and complexity of it is not there.  And so are we.  If it isn’t during the prayer time or while we are reading the Bible or while the pastor is driving his point home we miss God.  We miss the truth and deepness that the creation around us teaches us.

My mom is not this way.  She sees the things that God created for what they are: evidence that there is a powerful, amazingly creative God out there who has chosen us out of all the things He designed from scratch to love on.  That’s pretty amazing.  So while we have a week left in this gorgeous painting, I hope to see it for what it is and not just more cool sightseeing spots on a map!  I pray you do the same!  It doesn’t have to be mountains or oceans.  See him in your kid’s face.  See him in the complex human race.  See him in the trees and bushes.  He is there.  We just have to stop acting ignorant and arrogant and look for Him!

As some of you may have noticed this morning, I am on vacation and therefore not at church!  My gorgeous family and I have trekked up to Alaska to vacation with the Family Fun Network (or so it has been named) for family vacation this year.  We are only 3 days in and we are having a blast.  So since I’m not there and I don’t have setlist for this morning, I thought I would give you a few songs that I’m loving right now for you to check out!

We Will Shine – Nick Thurmond – Not Alone
Beautiful Things – Gungor – Beautiful Things
Wake Up My Soul – Andy Kirk – Wake Up My Soul
Our God – Chris Tomlin – Passion: Awakening

Welcome to Alaska!

Last night we got to surprise my dad with meeting his first grandchild.  He has Skyped with her before but never been able to hold her.  Poor guy.  Last night he finally got to.  We were originally scheduled to arrive in Anchorage, AK for the start of our vacation on Sunday, but my wife found a pretty cheap way to get us there a few days earlier!  So we worked out all the details (including keeping my dad out of the loop) and then boarded the plane on Thursday instead!

After a couple flights, a pretty good baby (only had issues on the decents because her ears were popping and hurting her), one plane ride in the front row, one in the back row, a smelly neighbor (couldn’t possibly have showered or brushed teeth in the last week) and popping ear drums we finally arrived to play a game we like to call Show Off Your Daughter!  Her Poppa was definitely not expecting the bundle of worn out, tired, hungry and probably a bit overwhelmed.

So now here we are.  Vacation has come a few days early.  There is no snow on the ground but there is one happy Poppa eagerly trying to fight off the hounds (my mom and sisters) so he can hang on to Jessi just a little bit longer!