Christmas Day Ski Trip!

Hello to all!

Shannon and I went skiing on Christmas day, and we had a blast! Thanks to all our family who helped us take the trip with gifts, it really was a blessing. I certainly have never seen conditions this nice with all the fresh powder. We went with our friends Ricardo and Jessica from church. I'm glad Jessica drove because the road there was pretty icy, and it really scares me to drive on snow and ice.

The views from the slopes were just breathtaking. I could see snowdrift on the mountains in the background, and the views were so majestic. I would say it took my breath away, but I think the cold did that when the wind came to Copper Mountain early afternoon :). Anyway, we're attaching some pictures of the day for yall to look at. Our friend Ricardo took some of them, and I also took some. Because he took pictures of us, you all get to actually see US in our pictures. I'm sure that will make the family happy. I hope the views inspire thoughts of God's power and intricate beauty. I know it did for me. I only wish we could have stayed longer!

You know, the difficulty wasn't that much more than the East cost for the intermediate and expert slopes, but they were just SO much longer than what I'm used to. I had to take breaks on the way down to rest my legs. It was quite the treat.

Christmas Skiing '08 - Copper Mountain

Love you all, take care, God bless, merry Christmas, and happy new year! We look forward to seeing those of you in Greenville in just over two weeks :).

-Matt and Shannon

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well everyone,

Happy Thanksgiving! It'll be very sad and strange not to be around family for the first time ever. But we do have some church family to spend a Thanksgiving meal with, and we're very happy about that. We bought a nice big turkey before we realized a family was inviting people over, so we're going to have our Thanksgiving meal Saturday!

But that's not all, as we were getting into the holiday mood, I decided it fitting to hike down the mesa trail and chop down a big old Christmas tree.



Well, that's not a terribly big tree, I admit. Plus, I think that carries about a $10,000 fine. So, on a second thought, we decided to go to King Soopers (that's Kroger in West-ese) and pick one up :)! It's about 3 feet tall, and we were quite excited. Evidently these trees sell out quickly because of so many apartments around the area. THEN, we went to Dollar Tree and Target for the decorations. The topper is an angel ornament my (Matt's) granny gave to Shannon last Christmas. Here are a few pictures of its radiance.

From Christmas Tree '08

Anyway, we miss everyone, and pray you all have a great Thanksgiving!

-Matt & Shannon

More snow pictures from Nov. 14

Here are some snow pictures from the Mesa Trail out back of National Center for Atmospheric Research where I work. The Flatirons look really cool with their outlining of snow along the edges. It's funny, about three of four hours after the snow, it had pretty much completely melted. Anyway, click the picture below to see all the pictures. Enjoy!

From Mesa Trail Snow Nov. 4, 2008

Shannon and I are doing well still. We're really enjoying the church we're going to up here, Flatirons Baptist. And tonight we're having dinner with friends :). We love yall, take care and God bless,

-Matt + Shannon

First Snow of the Year!

We walked outside this morning, and we saw this!








Well, we have to go to work, but just wanted to share with everyone :). We'll have more pictures of the snow later. I'm taking the camera to the Mesa lab today which is higher in elevation and should have more snow :). Take care, love yall,

-Matt & Shannon

Various Escapades

Oh, the million things that we could talk about. Its been an eventful few weeks. We have some pictures here of The Denver Aquarium, and our trip down Old Falls River Rd. which is in the Rocky Mountain National Park. While driving down the road we actually had some thick wet snow hit our car. It was really weird and really cool at the same time, considering it was in like August/September.



The aquarium was really nice as well. It had a huge restaurant downstairs (a pretty expensive one) and lots of very large tanks with fish I've never seen before. Other than this, we've been going about the daily routines of work...and work...and then some church. Its been nice. We miss home, but we are enjoying this time here. We would still love to hear from everyone back home...e-mails, phone calls, anything. We appreciate the thoughts and prayers, we are praying for y'all too.



-Matt & Shannon

Denver Aquarium

Old Falls River Road

Anniversary

Hello to all!



We know it has been a while since we've updated the blog. We celebrated our first anniversary (woohoo!) a month and a half ago in Colorado Springs. We went to the Cave of the Winds, Garden of the Gods, and the zoo! By the way, there's more to come soon!

Anniversary Photos

Hope you all enjoy the pictures here. Next post soon! Take care,

-Matt & Shannon

Trail Ridge Road

This time, ladies and gentlemen, Shannon gets to make a post.

Well, it seems to us that every time we go on another "adventure", it just gets better and more beautiful. This past weekend we took a drive through the Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road. We had no idea what we were going to be able to see. Here are a few pictures from the adventure.

trail_ridge_2008_06_29

So yes, Wendy, we got to play in the snow..and boy were we happy. It was surreal. On average, Boulder will get 70-80 inches of snow each year. Boulder, by the way, is about 6,000 feet below where these pictures were taken, so they get a lot more snow. I'm loving the summer, but without the beach, I cant wait to go skiing.

The tree-line that you see in some pictures is the level where trees can no longer grow. It happens at about 11,000 feet. It means that the average temperature in the warmest month is about 49 degrees. (I learned a lot reading the Park pamphlet.)

Other than that fun stuff, we have been going on as usual. Matt working, me doing school lessons and looking for a good job. (keep praying about that, I have replied to at least one promising nanny job).

We did buy a couple of bicycles. (randomly went out near midnight and bought some). We don't have pictures yet, but its been nice with Matt riding his bike to the shuttle for work, and me riding around town to find coffee shops and bookstores to work in. This is a very bike-friendly place. Most major roads have bike lanes and pretty much every road has sidewalks.

Thats all for us for now. We would love to get some e-mail or letters from you. We both miss our families and church family very much. If anyone gets a chance to come out here, we have plenty to show you! I just want to send a special "hello, and I love you!!" to grandma and granddaddy Lynch. You taught me to love the mountains.

Well, God Bless everyone, and have a great week!

Shannon....and Matt

Flagstaff!

Hello all!

I had a good and productive trip in DC, and thanks for all your prayers. After resting up from the trip, we decided to go do some more hiking today. We ventured up Flagstaff Mountain and we were able to get many more pictures of the mountain ranges and snow-caps for all those who are interested. It was a really fun little trip, especially the short hike from the summit out to the rocks at the very end. We hope you enjoy the pictures.

Flagstaff_2008_06_21

The view is absolutely breathtaking. We love you guys,


-Matt & Shannon

And to Jonathan, we BOTH wrote this one ;). Take that.

Washington DC Hotel

Hi everyone, this is Matt posting real quick just some pictures of the hotel I'm staying at for the Department of Energy (DOE) Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship (CSGF) conference. It is called the "Washington Court" hotel. They definitely gave us all a really nice hotel room to stay in, and the conference itself is held entirely in the hotel. I was surprised by how nice a room they got for the attendees, but then again, I'm sure the Department of Energy isn't hurting for money. Anyway, I miss Shannon, she misses me, and we have three more days of being apart :-(. But the room was definitely a blessing, and I have a feeling the conference will be as well. Here are some pictures below (click on the picture to see them all).

DC Hotel Room

Thanks again for the prayers and thoughts, and we'll be posting again soon I'm sure. Take care!

-Matt & Shannon

Settling In

Hi everyone,

We're encouraged hearing back from you :). This is just a fairly quick update to let you know that we're settling in, and things are going well. You can click below to see some pictures Shannon took of our apartment:

Boulder_apt_08

I finally finished my colloquium! If you don't know what that word means, neither did I, but it's actually in the dictionary believe it or not. It's basically a fancy word for "conference" if you ask me. It was like information overload, but I had a chance to meet some really big names in my field. It was certainly humbling because I definitely didn't follow a lot of the lecturing.

Monday (really early in the morning), I leave out for yet another conference in Washington DC. So you could definitely pray for travel to go well and even moreso for us (this is the longest we've spent apart). It's been a very busy first three weeks, and things will become a little more regular after next week (so we hope!).

We had an awesome time yesterday when we went hiking down the Mesa trail (probably 2-3 miles up and then the return trip). We've posted some pictures in the album below:

mesa_6_14_08

And finally, earlier today, we took a trip out to Boulder Falls (after a nice late morning sleeping in). Shannon cooked for me now that I think of it. I woke up thinking, "I smell bacon." It was nice :). But we really love this city. They have so much accessible to go and see and so many trails to go down. Boulder Falls is only about 8 miles up Canyon Blvd as you leave the main city. We've posted pictures below:

Boulder Falls

Well, we wish you all an awesome evening. Some encouragement from the word we've read recently:
"Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God." - 1 Corinthians 2:12

And finally, please keep us up to date with your lives and let us know how we can be praying for and encouraging you. Either e-mail one of us or post a comment to this blog (if you don't mind it being public). We love and miss you.

Goodnight!

-Matt & Shannon

Greetings to all!

Wow, there's a lot to catch up on! Things have been so busy the last few weeks, so apologies for the delay.

So, we arrived in Boulder, CO June 1 with only minor issues along the way. We had a bulging left front tire which we caught before it blew and replaced (praise God!). The drive was very nice and very long. Scenery was great, especially entering into Kansas. But then it turned into flat farming land everywhere for well, several hundred miles (not very exciting). BUT, we did see like 20 signs for the "largest prairie dog in the world." WHOA, we'll definitely be catching that on the way back. If anyone wants to video chat (or audio only perhaps), get a webcam and skype, and we're all over it (two hours earlier than you of course).

We arrived this past Sunday, and I started work the following day. We were actually staying at a nice lady named Helen's place for five days temporarily until the apartment we're in now opened up. God definitely provided a nice place for us in that time, and Helen was very kind to us. Pray for her by the way because she's experiencing some flooding in her basement (where we were staying) from groundwater not being pumped properly.

We love our apartment in which we're staying for 10 months. We'll upload some pictures of it soon. It's better than we expected, and the people we're leasing from are pretty laid back and very accommodating.

My work is going very well. It's structured right now as classes during the first half of the day and running atmospheric global model tests for the second half of the day (for last week and the coming week). We're performing an intercomparison between different models to see what strengths and weaknesses we can diagnose in each. We have so much that could be improved...it's good to know that (Lord willing!) I'll have a job for a while :). I'm enjoying it though, and I'm learning tons. I feel like I'm on an intellectual play ground, my mind spinning as people lecture on very creative topics which stretch the way I think. Keep praying that the Lord would send Shannon a good job. She may have an opportunity to work where I work, so we're especially praying for that!

Well, it's late tonight (later for you though!, ha), so I'm going to wrap this up. We went to a couple of churches today trying to find a good match for us. Please be praying that the Lord would guide our steps toward a good church! I was thinking over communion this morning how we can not take the Lord's supper lightly. To do so is to drink/eat judgment and to pass by a great opportunity for refreshment in remembering Christ and repenting and finding grace.

Shannon and I want the Lord's grace in our lives to help us to love His word, to pray for our family and church family (TCC), for fellowship here in Boulder, for the lost here in Boulder. We need His grace to witness lovingly and urgently to those around us. We need His grace to love Him as we should since that is the commandment (and the heart) from which all other commands seem to flow. Indeed, as I heard often at TCC, that is the heart of the gospel: not just to believe Jesus with the mind but to love Him with the heart.

We have pictures and captions posted up via Picassa Web. Just click below to see them. Please leave some comments! We want to know what you think :).

BoulderTrip

*Note that Picassa won't let you comment on photos without a google account (which are free). But feel free to comment on this blog post (which anyone can do).*

We love you guys, we miss you, and we benefit from your prayers and pray for you as well! Hope everything is going well, and we hope to stay in the loop so-to-speak.

-In Christ-

Matt & Shannon