Amanda's Birthday

For Amanda's birthday this year we decided to make it a day of doing fun stuff around town.  To start off we went on a tour of Mile High stadium where the Broncos play.   I love learning little trivia and fun facts and our tour guide gave a full helping of it!  Things like how much the players get paid for pre-season ($500) and post-season ($22,000 for first round, more for succeeding rounds) games and how much the best seats in the house cost (executive suites cost at least $80,000 a year!).  

For dinner we went to a great little restaurant called Vesta Dipping Grill - super tasty!  My co-worker, Amy, suggested it a few months ago and Amanda's friends also mentioned it.  Great recommendation.  The food was very unique, the atmosphere was eclectic, and the dipping sauces were new and fun to try.  The biggest problem was how to stop eating - it was so good!

Today was also Stake Conference and one of the talks was about making leaps of faith.  There was a story about a guy who went for his usual walk in the mountains and instead of returning home the way he always did he decided to take a different route that had him going over several ledges.  Eventually he came to a ledge that he realized he could get down, but may not be able to get back up.    He looked as carefully as he could to make sure there wouldn't be anything beyond the ledge that would stop him and, not seeing anything, went ahead.  Sure enough, eventually he came to a ledge that he couldn't get down.  He tried to go back, but couldn't.  He tried to get down, but couldn't.  He realized that he hadn't told anyone where he was going and that he might die out here.  In desperation he kneeled down to pray and a thought came to his mind: "Jump into the pine tree".  He went back to the ledge and sure enough, there was this giant of a pine tree, but it was quite a ways out (he'd really have to jump out), and still a long way down (about 100 feet).  "There's no way I can do that!" the man thought.  But he realized that was his only way down.  After chickening out several times, he finally jumped.  He hit the tree and after scraping and bouncing through it he eventually came to a stop.  Covered in tree sap, scraped up, and bruised, he finished climbing down the tree and fell to his knees and thanked God for the inspiration.  He hadn't seen the tree before he prayed, and was terrified to make the jump after he saw it, but he did it, and he lived.  The speaker went on to say that often we have times in our lives where we feel stuck and unable to go any further.  But if we'll stop, pray, and have faith, the answers will come.  Will we be brave enough to jump, though?  

After hearing this story I turned to Amanda and said - hey, that's like us with adoption.  I'm amazed when we talk to our friends and see their hesitations or misconceptions about adoption and realize that we used to be the same.  Now, though, since we've made some of the jumps and have been richly rewarded for it, we look forward to making even more jumps, even if we come out of it bruised and scraped and covered in tree sap, it's always worth the ride!