Snow and Neighbors

SNOW. . . Today’s adventure is God’s outdoor library takes us out in the snowy weather.  What does snow mean to you?  I think most people either love it, or they hate.  There seems to be no in-between on how people feel about the fluffy, white flakes.  For me, snow is all about wonderful memories past and present.  I remember several years in the early 1980s when we got a lot of snow in our area.  My parents bought me and my sister a red, Radio Flyer sled that we used for several years.  We lived on the only double hills in Hartford and it made for great sledding adventures with our neighbors.  Many wonderful memories were made with Gallen, Sherri, Johanna and Billy Stokes.  We would meet at the top of the hill by their house and a couple of us would watch for cars while the others would sled down the hills.  Our moms, Shelia and Ginger, would always have hot chocolate and snacks ready for us when we would take a break to get warm.   A snow day was not complete until Johanna and I bundled up from head-to-toe and walked to town in the snow to buy food for our families.  I remember one snowy winter Gallen built an igloo and we all took turns hanging out inside, pretending we were Eskimos.  I think snowy winters, more than any other season, remind me of what great neighbors we had in the Stokes family.  It seems that in today’s society, neighbors like the Stokes family are few and far between.   As I cherish the memories of past outdoor snow adventures, today I continue making new memories with my family.

Creek Behind Our House

Our Snowman Has Fallen And He Can't Get Up!

No Fear

The date is quickly approaching for our family’s next great outdoor adventure in the mountains of Colorado.   Our ski adventures always include my brother-in-law, sister-n-law and their two kids. Our youngest son was 6, our oldest sons were in their early teens and our niece and nephew were 7 and 4 when we took our first Carroll family ski trip.  I will never forget how fearless all of the kids were when they strapped on their skis.  They did not worry about going too fast or wiping out.  I was the only adult in our family who was not an experienced skier and I was afraid to go fast and was worried I might break a bone if I crashed.  My husband, brother-n-law, sister-n-law and all the kids saw a lot more of the mountain on that trip than I did because they were not fearful of the steepness of the slopes or the moguls they might encounter.  If I want to see more of God’s beautiful mountain library on this upcoming trip, I need to approach the slopes with less fear.  We didn’t stop our kids from skiing challenging and fast slopes and the way our kids approached skiing on that first trip reminds me of how we should be with our Christian faith.  Just as Jesus doesn’t want children stopped from coming to him, nothing should stop us from sharing our faith. 

The Holy Bible
Matthew 19:14New Living Translation (NLT) ¹⁴ But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”

 

The Carroll Family

Tumbling Tumbleweeds

I will never forget the first time I saw a tumbleweed was when my husband took me to visit his family in his home town of Liberal, Kansas.   Bill told me about attending Seward County Community College and using a tumbleweed as a Christmas tree in his dorm room. I became fascinated with these rolling, rambling balls of jumbled up weeds.  I always get a souvenir from places I visit and can you guess what my souvenir was from Liberal, Kansas?  You guessed it……a tumbleweed!  Driving down the long, barren stretches of highway in Kansas, I kept my eyes peeled for that special tumbleweed I could take back home.  “Oh, there’s one” I would shout to my husband.  He would pull the car over and I would take off running along the highway trying to catch a tumbleweed.  I am sure if we had recorded my tumbleweed chasing adventures we might have won something on the show America’s Funniest Home Videos.  When I was finally successful in wrangling a tumbleweed to take home, I was shocked to find out that they are very prickly.  Also, they are a lot bigger than they look, especially when you are trying to fit them in the trunk of your car.  That beloved tumbleweed had a special place in our home for many years until I decided it was time to return it to the wild.

A tumbleweed is formed when a mature Russian thistle plant breaks loose from its roots.  As Christians we need to make sure we have strong spiritual roots so that we do not break loose from our faith and tumble aimlessly through life like the tumbleweed that rolls aimlessly across the land.