Big Sky Country

We were out on a bike ride last night around 8:00 and I just looked around and said to John "I love being outside at this time of night in the summer!" It is just so beautiful the way the sun shines on the mountains and lights up the sky, and it is almost always nice and cool in the evenings. We really do live in a great place and we never get tired of seeing the beauty of God's creation around us. I just wanted to share some of that beauty with you.

This is the area where we often ride our bikes

Lake McDonald at Glacier National Park

Running Eagle Falls at Glacier



Flathead River

What It's All About

Lately, especially the last month or so of school, we've been feeling very frustrated and stressed with everything that is going on. Being a part of this ministry is not always easy. Actually, it is almost never easy. We see so many kids fail to "get it" while they are here, or they do well here and fall on their faces when they leave. God has been reminding me recently why I am here and what this ministry is all about. That doesn't mean it gets any easier, but helps me to remember why I am here. We had our graduation ceremony May 31st and we had 10 graduates- 7 Pinehaven students and 3 staff kids. That is a lot for our school. Some of the students were able to stand up and speak and share how their lives have changed. John led the whole graduating class in singing "Walk by Faith" during the ceremony. It sounded awesome, and that is exactly what our prayer is for these kids and for us as staff- that we would remember to walk by faith everyday. Its not always easy, and sometimes we don't feel like doing it, but we have to remember to give God control and let him be the one in charge. Pray for these 10 students as they are back with they are entering the "real world" that they would remember that. They are going to face more challenges than they can imagine.
Another huge success we have had recently was a young boy who just finished his freshman year of high school here, was able to return home to his family to finish school there because this program has worked for him, and everyone felt he was ready to go back home! This is truly why we are here and what this ministry is all about. Sometimes it is easy to overlook the success and only focus on the failures.

Lately...

Several weeks ago, the bike club in Polson hosted a bike race. I wasn't brave enough to ride, but John and I did some volunteering and took some pictures. It was a tough 50 mile, very intense, hilly course. We've been out training for our triathlon, but it has been hard to get on the bike this season for some reason. John finally went up to ride with the club tonight, and we both went for a ride yesterday. We have been doing the Friday Night Time Trial faithfully this spring and are having a blast. Its a race against the clock, on a 12.1 mile loop. We went the first week after a winter of riding a handful of times on the trainer and not really doing much other physical activity. We have only been improving since, needless to say. We've both dropped over 5 minutes off of our first times over the past 4 weeks, but there are still plenty of people there WAY out in front of us (especially me). One night we got to finish in the sleet. This picture is me finishing that night- cold, wet, and tired. The other picture is the same night. I love the light.
Gardening has also been on our t0-do list lately. We've been buying flowers and plants for our new yard. We didn't really get a chance to do anything last summer because we moved in so late in the spring and then we had only a yard of mud. This year we've bought some plants to line the sidewalk and the area in front of the driveway. We're kind of holding out on planting until the weather looks a little safer. You never really know in Montana.

And last, we had to break down and give Scout a bath yesterday. He smelled awful- like he rolled in something dead. He hates baths, but he is really pretty good. Once he tries to get away once and realizes he can't, he just stands there shaking with his tail between his legs, but at least he lets us do it. Unfortunately, this bath didn't really do the job and he still stinks. I'm not really sure what to do about it.Look at that poor puppy face. He looks so sad.

Triathlon Training

We've started to work on training for another triathlon this summer. It has been hard to get motivated because of the cold weather. We did a pretty good job of swimming weekly throughout the winter, but the running and biking have been sadly neglected. The cycling club in Polson has a time trial every other Friday night, and the first one was a few weeks ago. We didn't go at all last year, but thought we'd give it a try this year. Its a 12 mile loop ride with some hills. It has been really cold both times we've gone and we are seriously out of shape, but its still fun. We waned to do a sprint triathlon in Missoula this spring but registration filled up too fast, and now I'm glad we aren't doing it. We have 6 inches of snow today and who knows what the weather will be like in 2 weeks, the day of the triathlon. We definitely aren't ready yet. Now we are trying to find a training schedule that we can stick with throughout the rest of the spring and summer so that we will be ready to do another sprint triathlon in June and hopefully an Olympic length in September. We even bought wetsuits for swimming in the cold lakes! So, starting this week we are going to try to stick with this plan of swimming, biking, and running twice a week each. That will be difficult to fit into our "live at the school" schedule, but maybe it will help us get our work done faster so that we can get out of there.

Friday Fun

Friday afternoon was kind of a fun day for the kids at school. I took my class outside for some pictures, and then they got to go upstairs to see a cow's heart and lungs dissected. They had a blast (most of them) feeling the different parts.

What a bunch of goofballs.

Kaatje showing the kids the heart and lungs.

When I showed this boy this picture he said, "I was just so astonished!"

So Cute...

Bad News/Good News

We had an interesting day last week. We had been looking into getting a new vehicle and had found one in Kalispell that we wanted to go look at. On Thursday we finally convinced ourselves to go look at it, so we took some friends after school and went up to check it out. On the way there, we saw tons of deer standing around in fields and some crossing the road behind us. All of a sudden, there was a deer coming straight at us, and John swerved a little, but still hit it. It was pretty small, so it didn't do as much damage as it could have. The deer got up and ran away, but I'm pretty sure it still died.

Anyway, we continued to Kalispell and ended up buying the new car we were looking at. Its a 2006 Nissan Xterra. We're pretty excited about it. And now we have something to drive while the car gets fixed. We're already talking about some of the places we want to go now that we have a vehicle that we can drive places our car can't go. There are so many hiking trails in the mountains that are hard to get to. Even getting home when it is snowy is a challenge in our car, so we're glad to finally have 4 wheel drive.