Thanksgiving

In an effort to give our boys an authentic and historical perspective on Thanksgiving, we took a new approach this year. To start with we adorned their heads with the most stereotypical hats possible (see picture to the left). Any history book will tell you that all Pilgrims wore hats with brims 4 inches wider than their shoulders and slapped a Big Tex belt buckle right in front. Beck decided, or it was decided for him, that he would represent the native American Indian. We went with this design of headdress after watching Peter Pans' Lost Boys get captured by the Indians. We were inspired by the "How did the red man get red" politically correct song. We went with two feathers to represent his age...oh shoot he is only 1 this year. Oops.

Anyway, once we were appropriately dressed, Courtney explained that we celebrate Thanksgiving because the Indians helped the first Pilgrims survive their first winter. Apparently they waited 8 months after winter to make sure they had really made it. Now that we were all confused the only thing left to do was to get the food ready. I took the boys out back, gave Nash a gun, he shot the Turkey, Beck plucked it, Courtney pulled out the innards and I deep fried it just as they did low those many years ago.

Just another holiday at the Giles house...

Adventure Man

Nash has been cracking us up lately. He is so cute! For his birthday he got a little explorere kit which had a backpack, water bottle, lantern, whistle, etc... Once we opened it he would not put it down. He wants to either "go exploring" or "go on an adventure". The other night he wanted to go exploring in the dark. So we packed his dinner, and sent him to his room to explore. So he went into his room, set out his meal, and ate by lantern light. We are so proud!

Cruise 2008

Lance and I just got back from our vacation to Mexico. We went on a 5 night cruise from Galveston with our friends Danielle and Cass. Five glorious days of no responsibility, no kids, no making meals, and no one calling out "mommy, mommy". Disclaimer - I love my kids and did miss them dearly, but I think that Lance and I are going to be better parents because we took the time out for ourselves. I will have to only hit the highlights of our cruise or this post would be too long to read. Needless to say we had a blast! We had so much fun with Danielle and Cass and laughed until it hurt everyday. What a rejuvinating week.

The four of us getting back on the ship after Cozumel, Mexico.

Formal night on the Ecstasy. Ok girls - check out the earrings. Aren't you impressed that I wore them.

The four of us at Chichen Itza.

Here we are ATVing in Cozumel. I know, I know I got over some fear and went out on an ATV. We went through the jungle on a very rocky path and had a great time.

Lance and I on the beach. I was thinking at this point that it was crazy that Thanksgiving was like three weeks away.
I will write more about the cruise in the coming days but I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped keeping our boys. We could not have gone without the help of Marilyn, Autumn & dean, and Gary and Linda. Thank you, thank you.

Halloween Party

Last Saturday night Lance and I went to a Halloween party. No kids allowed. We had a blast. The big thank you goes to my friend Tammi who made our costumes. Seriously she did them in one night. I wish I had that kind of talent. By the way this might be the first time I have worn a costume since Sing Song in college.

Cousins

Last Saturday and Sunday my mom, brother, sister, and I traveled to Louisiana for my aunt's funeral. It was heart wrenching watching her husband, kids, and grand kids suffer and grieve. My memories of my aunt unfortunately all revolve around me being a small child. My extended family has not seen each other very much since we grew up. We used to get together all the time with all the cousins but time and distance seems to keep us apart. So even in the sadness it was great to see all my cousins again. He we are all grown up.

I will say that we are missing our cousing Shannon who could not make it from North Carolina. We missed her.

Most People Would

This picture is special in many regards. First of all it was our annual trek to the Texas State Fair. Secondly the picture commemorates another fabulous Ford family story. Let's set the stage. There we were (mom, Autumn, and me) at the end of the Birds of Prey show. Marilyn wanted a picture with us, so as all good groups do, we stopped a passerby to take our picture. The guy that we hand the camera to kind of chuckles and says, "Well this is a first for me." We are confused but proceed with the picture taking. Not until he is walking away that my mom recognizes him as someone we should all know. He is walking away when my mom yells down the stairs to him, "I know you're a singer but I can't think of your name." As he walks away - too far away to get a decent picture, he calls back "Micheal Buble." Yeah, I know most people get their picture taken with famous people, but not us. We get our picture taken by famous people.

Before and After

It has been a while since we cut Nash's hair. The 14th of September to be exact, but after seeing these pictures I knew I had to post what a dramatic change it actually was. Here is the before

Here is the after

Beck's First Birthday

I can't believe that Beck is already one. We celebrated his first birthday on the fifteenth of September. Let me just take a moment to talk about how wonderful Beck is. Beck is the happiest child. We thought that after Nash we would never be lucky enough to have another easy, independent child. We were so wrong. Beck is just as wonderful. We are so thankful for the blessing the Beck is in our life. I will say that he is way more curious than Nash was, so we always have to make sure we know where he is. Here are some pictures from his birthday party that we had with family.

Collection

I had always heard that boys like to collect things. Well now I know it is true. Nash is obsessed with acorns right now. As you can see we have officially started his first collection. He is so proud of this jar of acorns. He wants to take it everywhere and show everyone. It is really sweet. He also hated posing for pictures - hence the goofy faces.

The House Part 1

Most of you who know us know about the angst we have with our kitchen floor. For those of you who don't know our house as well here is the short version. We live in an older house that is pier and beam. We have a linolium floor that is made out of the stck on tiles and they have shifted badly over the years. We also have some soft spots under the linolium that feel as they might fall in at any moment.

So b/c of all that we are redoing our kitchen/washroom floor. We started this endevour on Thursday by pulling up some of the floor so that we could replace the subfloor before the tiling begins. By the way when I say "we" I mean the contractor that is doing all the work.

Here are some lovely pictures of our house being deconstructed before it can get fixed.

This is the boys watching Ted fix the hole in our living room floor under the carpet. As you can see he is down in the hole. I would be way to grossed out.

Adoration

I love this picture, but more than that I loved seeing this moment. Lance was practicing his guitar in the office when both of the boys came in as quickly as possible and started to climb up to be with him. It is a testament to what an awesome dad he is. Nash and Beck love being around him.

Olympic Challenge

As many of you out there - I really am not giving up on blogging, I am just watching the Olympics every free second.

This blog comes to you from the mind of my awesome husband. We have not taken on the challenge ourselves, but I think all of you should. To fully appreciate the amazing accomplishments of these athletes we have come up with the Olympic Challenge. As soon as possible go with a friend to the nearest track and time yourself in the 100 meter dash. Keep in mind that the women are running it in about 11 seconds. Next take yourself to the nearest lap pool and time yourself swimming 50 meters. Double your time and then put it up against the mens 100 freestyle which is about 53 seconds.

After you do that you can sit back and enjoy the rest of the Olympics. I know we are!

Home Again

Well we are officially home again. It is always bittersweet to come home. We are definitely ready to come home and see friends and family, but leaving the beauty (and beautiful weather) of Colorado is sad. To mark our coming home here are some things that I personally will miss about Durango.



* The clothes I get to wear. No one cares what you are wearing there. I think I wore athletic shorts and long sleeve t-shirts everyday for a month straight. That includes going out to dinner and everything.



* The clothes other women in Durango wear. I mean how often in Dallas do see Birekenstocks and Chacos with every outfit including dresses.



* The weather and the fact that Nash can play outside all day long. Here we can go out from about 8:00 - 10:00 am and 7:00 - 8:00 pm.



* The high school sign. It reads (and I kid you not) "Have a safe and sober summer". I mean this is a great message, but the kids there are all 18 and under and are not supposed to be drinking. Would any school around here be able to pull that off?



* Mainly I will miss our awesome staff. It is like leaving part of your family. It is also nice to always have someone to play games with at night. Our house is quite quiet once the boys go to bed.

I am going to try to keep the blog up, but it won't be as exciting.

Courtney B. Giles

Since Courtney is usually the one posting on this here blog, there are seldom stories proclaiming her greatness. So I, her loving, handsome and Mr. Universe-esque husband, have decided to highjack cyberspace and make it known how freakin' awesome she really is!

The picture to the left is Courtney dominating an 70 foot rock climb called "the Itch" which is rated a 5.9+ (editors note: I realize the vast majority of this blogs readers have no idea what 5.9+ means. Just say to yourself "WOW, that sounds hard! Courtney must be a tremendous climber!). So far, she is the only member of our wilderness staff to complete this climb clean (again, let's not get bogged down in climbing terminology. However, it means she didn't fall or use the rope in anyway). That's right, this girl is the mother of two and has not climbed anything in two years. And still she out climbs our staff. Including the writer of this post, which I would like to remain anonymous please.

This week she is out camping and leading one of our three groups. She is overseeing over 55 people camping, hiking, rock climbing, rappelling and rafting. And still has time to "never ever let me forget I'm a man. Because she is a woman." I don't know what that means it just used to be a TV commercial and got stuck in my head. She pretty much does everything for the ministry of Compass, she is an incredible mother to our sirelings and is the best wife a man could ever ask for. All this and she cleanly climbs a 5.9+ after a two year layoff! Unbelieveable this woman!

Anyway, I am getting tired and should go to bed. The bed that is in the condo that I am in right now while Courtney is out camping in the wild wilderness.

The Condo

Some of you may have heard about how lovely the condo is that we live in. Now don't get me wrong, we are blessed to have a place to stay for the two months. This is the only place in Cascade (where we keep our groups) that lets you rent monthly. That said the place is NOT the Taj Mahal. We have one room for the all the girl staffers (5 of them). Another room for all the boy staffers (another 5). One room for the married couple, one room for Lance and I, ane 1 room for Nash & Beck. It is tight quarters and the decor is what really takes the cake. One of the big motifs in Durango is the Southwest theme, and this condo fully embraces it. I will let the slide show speak for itself.

Now in the main living room, the mantle decor is just large rocks and what some would call a "flower arrangement". Upon closer inspection the vessel that holds the "flower arrangement" is actually an orange juice container with the handle cut off. I think that sums it up , no more explanation needed.

Brotherly Love

Nash is really starting to like Beck now. He keeps asking to hold him and hug him. The holding is ok, but the hugging turns into more of a tackle. I got this picture this morning at breakfast when they decided they loved each other. It pretty much melts my heart.

Seriously

For most of you that have visited or lived in the mountains you know that it is somewhat common for it to rain most afternoons in July. It really is known as the rainy season. That being said this year is insane. We have had rain almost every day for two and half weeks. This week has been the worst. Usually the rain come in during the afternoon and stays for an hour or two. Today it started raining at 9:30 in the morning and has been off and on next day. As we consult weather.com we see that it is supposed to keep raining until at least next Saturday. Yeah!! We have two camping groups next week. We might never dry off.

Mini Golf

We found out this past week that Nash loves mini golf. We went to play with the Giles family while they were here and he has asked every day since to go play again. He does kind of make up his own rules though. He takes the golf ball, walks to the hole, and sets the ball down somewhere close to the hole. He then uses the putter for the first time to hit the ball into the hole. I'm pretty sure he is the next Tiger Woods.

Cad and Vicki - I guess this means that we are ready for the mini golf outing.

The Bar D

You must say "The Bar D" with the thickest country accent you can muster to really get yourself in the proper mindset for this post. On Monday night (yeah I'm late) the Giles family went to the Bar D Chuckwagaon show and dinner. As most of you know I am not really a country girl but I love the Bar D. That said I can only go every 2or 3 years to really appreciate it. What is the Bar D you might ask? Well the Bar D is a dinner and show all set out under the stars down on the outskirts of Durango. This summer they are celebrating their 40th year of entertaining families. You go and have a chuckwagon meal, which consists of some kind of BBQ meat, beans, potato, applesauce, biscuit, and spice bread. You can either drink water or lemonade. I think you are already getting the feel of the place. After dinner the Bar D Wranglers all play their guitars, fiddles, or bass and sing cowboy songs. Some of the songs are funny, some are gospels, and some are just country. The entire time we were there I had this feeling that one of my friends would fit in great here and after a while I realized this is the place for Lindsey K. Dowdy. (I mean I can totally see your family hanging out here.) I had a great time even if I did stick out like a sore thumb.

This is our attempt at being country. Even with the hats we still fail.

Hiking with the Giles family

Lance's family has been here on vacation since the 5th so most of the week we have spent with them. This worked out really well because we only had one Compass group this week and it was 14 people. The family members that came are Linda & Gary (Lance's mom and dad), Brent, Dawn, Benjamin, and Matthew(Lance's oldest brother, wife, and kids). We have had a great time with them. They have wanted to go hiking almost everyday so of course we happily oblige. Here are some pictures of the Giles' family on their many hikes.

July 4th

On the fourth we always go to Silverton to watch the fireworks. Usually we do not have groups in town the week of the fourth but this year we did so they just came with us. Silverton is the town north of Durango and is best known for being where the train ends. That is pretty much its whole existence. Needless to say Silverton is tiny. It has a population of around 300. That said they have the best fireworks display ever (next to Disney probably) so we keep going. The town gets packed with people and it is so cool to see everyone with their friends and family. It always makes me a little home sick, but instead of wanting to go home I want everyone to come to Silverton. Here are just a couple pictures of the boys during our time there.





The last reason that I love going to Silverton on the fourth is because of this picture. How many of you got to dress like this to watch fireworks?

Compass Ministry Part 2

So we have had two more weeks of groups since I talked about the ministry side of things. After coming off two awesome weeks to start the summer we had high expectations. Things did not go as well as we had hoped. The hard thing about running a ministry in which we only see kids for a week is that sometimes we do not see the work that the Lord is doing. These past two weeks were like that. We know that the Lord was working and that things were changing in these kids hearts, but we did not see the fruit or even any outward expression of things changing. It gets discouraging for our staff in these so called "dry spells" but we have to be faithful and keep doing what the Lord has called us to do. We might never know the impact we had long term for these kids. All that to say we would love some prayer for the next four weeks of groups that will finish off the summer. We have a group arriving as I type and then three weeks after that. Please keep our family, Compass, and our students that we minister to in your prayers.
Courtney

Back to the Eighties

My sons might never really know what the 80's were like, but they sure looked like it the other day. On Saturday some of the staff were bored so they decided to use their video camera to make some music videos. They used the clothes they had to make some lovely outfits and went down to the parking garage to dance their hearts out. Nash wanted in on the action so the included him too.



Not wanting to leave Beck out, when they returned they gave him one of the bandanas to wear. Here he is with Alyssa.



In a rare instance of playing together here is Nash and Beck in their bandanas.

Nash's First Climb

Today we took Nash rock climbing for the first time. We had bought him a harness about two weeks ago, but had not found the time to take him until today. He climbed up the bottom of a very easy climb with Lance showing him how to get his feet on the wall. We were nervous that he would not like it and would be scared hanging on the rope, but he loved it. After we lowered him down he asked if he could go again. We had a great time and it seemed like he did as well. Hopefully this is the start of a love of climbing.

Ice Castle

This picture is from way back during staff training. We were hiking the Hermosa Trail which is behind Purgatory Ski Resort. This is the trail that we used to take all our groups on way back in the day. About 5 - 9 years ago. It is a great trail to talk to people on because it is somewhat wide. Anyways - Lance and I knew the trail well enough to know that when there is a really wet winter that an "ice castle" appears underneath one of the overhangs on the side of the trail. We were not disappointed. Here are the pictures of what we found.

This angle does not do it justice


This shows it in all its glory - much better. That is our staff eating lunch over to the left of the frame.


As you can see it is HUGE. Hope you are enjoying our views as much as we are.

Compass Ministry Part 1

I haven't talked much about the actualy ministry we are getting to do up here in Durango so here goes. We have had two full weeks of groups so far.

Our first week we had only one church which was nice so that the whole staff could be together and that the newbies could learn some of the ropes from the returning staff. That week went really well. The feedback from the students was encouraging and from what they were saying God was doing some great stuff in their lives. One of the students even got saved while they were here. That is the ultimate for all of us doing camp.

Last week was our second week of camp and we had two groups. A camping group and a condo group. I was the lead on the condo group so I got to see what was going on there. Again the Lord was really moving among the students. Their Thursday night share night was really great. They kept sharing from about 7:00 until 10:30. They then went into small groups and kept sharing until about 11:45. There were several students struggling with areas in their lives that our leaders got to help them navigate. Again one of their students accepted Christ. This was a huge step for this student who was continually struggling with doubt and reason vs. faith. What a awesome thing for us to be involved with.

I did not get to see much of the camping group, but from what the youth minister said they had a great time. This was not a typical group. They had wanted to come on a 3 day Texas trip, but when we realized they were from El Paso we also figured out that it was actually closer to Durango than Mineral Wells. Who would not rather come to Durango than Mineral Wells, TX.

Today started two more trips. Again we have on in the condos and one camping. It would be great if anyone reading this blog would pray that the Lord would work through is this week to reach students. And any prayer for safety is also appreciated. The activities we do inherently contain risk and we are constantly praying for the Lord to keep us safe.

Thanks for keeping up with us while we are gone, we miss everyone so much.
Courtney

J. BO's

Friday nigh for my birthday (I know, I know, I just get to keep celebrating) the staff all went to town to see the boat parade for Animas River Days and to J. Bo's for dinner. Let's start with Animas River Days. The Animas River is the river that we raft with our groups every day. This weekend is a big town festival celebrating all things Animas. Friday night was the annual boat parade. Let's picture together a bunch of drunk people, in costume, in large rafts, going down the river together. It was hilarious. We watched from somewhat up the river and not at the main rapid, but next year we are so headed to the main rapid to just watch people flip. I will try to get some pictures up of the parade soon.

After that we went to J.BO Pizza & Rib Company. I just love to think about how someone comes up with that combo. I mean Pizza and BBQ in the same place is odd to me. Here are some pictures of the boys from there so that the family will lay off of me.

This is Blair with Beck - He is digging the attention


The is Alyssa, who is our amazing part-time nanny with Nash. I cannot tell you how awesome she is with our boys. Lance and I might not get anything done without her.


Me & Beck


The Giles family out to dinner together - the lighting is bad which is why it looks blurry.

The Staff

Here is our staff - who I have failed to introduce up until now. Starting on the back row from left to right is: Garrison, Lane, Jared, and Justin(Lunny). Next row down from left to right is: Alyssa, Marquette, Blair, Nash, Lance, Me, Beck, and Krista. And down in front from left to right is: Sam, Hannah, Seth, and Shayne. That is our wonderful staff. Now when I talk about them you can put a face to the name.