Baby Love...Japheth Paul Gilbertson

This is a little promotion for my hopeful photography hobby/business...I love babies!  Thank you Vallie Gilbertson for letting me shoot your beautiful son, Japheth!

Beauty is a life well lived

I can't believe how much time has passed since I've moved here!  June will be 5 months that I've lived in this condo...seems like just yesterday that I was sleeping on an air mattress with my boxes surrounding me...oh wait!  That's what my room looks like still!  Haha!

Actually I finally ordered a bed!  Reid and I randomly visited Mattress King and tested every bed they had for fun...which then turned into picking one for me!  I love it and it is going to be delivered tomorrow!  Can you tell that I'm excited??

Other updates...Reid will officially be my neighbor by the end of the month!  He is moving into the basement of a house two streets down from me!  I'm going to meet the single mom and her son that own the house tonight!  Apparently he's a cute kid, according to Reid. :)  It will be nice to know that if he runs out of sugar, he can just walk over to my place now!

In mid-April, Reid and I took two weeks of vacation...I brought him home for a week and he got to hang out with my family for the first time!  It was so neat to see him fit right in with them.  I brought him to all of my favorite places...Panino's, Caribou, Key's Cafe, Caribou, Annie's Parlour, Caribou, etc.  And of course he met my best friends, visited my University, and just tooled around Minnesota.  He has never been to my home state, so of course we had to visit the Mall of America too!  

Here's my favorite of him finding Lego Land legos!  :)

 

 On friday, I had a bridal shower to go to, so I had organized a guy's night for Reid...I had one of our mutual Lost Valley Ranch friends, Mike Garry, come down to visit so I could send them to a Twins game...but of course the game was rained out!  He had fun anyway...it was Mike's birthday!

 We visited Summit Brewery to try out Minnesota's beer.  I love this picture because I'm squishing him!

After Minnesota, we drove down to Las Vegas to stay with Reid's best friend, Chris!  It was a week of relaxation...and sunburn, but oh well!  We didn't do much, but we did go to the city and I saw ELVIS!

One of our favorite spots was the chocolate fountain!  I love their expressions in this...Chris is mesmerized...

And of course the cute picture of us!

After Vegas, I flew back to Minnesota to be a mom for my nephew, Lucas, so that my brother and sister-in-law could go on vacation for a week!  It was such a blast!  He never fussed, never was sad for his parents, and we played every day!  I love my nephew!  Here are a couple photos of the week...

Lucas loved my new sunglasses!

Annnnnd then back to work...the month of May has been an interesting one.  I only work on weekends which have been booked for fraternity groups...I don't think I EVER want my kids to go to a frat after seeing those kids behave so poorly.  So sad.

Plus, my sister came to stay with me a few days before she started working at Lost Valley!  Reid and I of course, brought her skiing!  We went to A-basin, which is open until the snow is gone, and in the past two weeks I've gone, they've had powder days!  Amazing.  Here's Lael and I at A-basin!

So much to update!  Aly Burt came to visit me last week and we watched American Idol, even though I had no idea what was going on in the show...haha!  She lives a half hour away from me, so we are already planning on hanging out all the time and hopefully visiting our sisters on the ranch together!  I'm so glad that one of my ranch girls is nearby...

I've also joined a club!  It's called Females & Ales.  Crazy Mountain Brewery, which is literally right down the road from me, puts it on every other tuesday.  Tomorrow we are talking about Beer cocktails...these women are so great!  Conversation is good, beer is good, and my friends from work are coming with me next time!

Summer soccer is hopefully starting soon, but in the meantime I've had a tough time getting out to exercise...besides skiing, running trails near my house, etc. :)  So I decided to consistently bring my best friend, Tucker, to the dog park!  He loves it so much!  You can see all the photos on fb if you like...

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.578781510689.2098980.63800069&l=fefa99df1a

And that's all I have for now...I probably left out some stuff, but hey, it's been two months since I last updated you!  All I have to say is that it's true that "beauty is a life well lived."

Cordillera

JUST AN FYI, THIS IS A POST FROM MARCH THAT I NEVER PUT UP!  ENJOY!

I am sitting here at work and have not served more than 10 people all day.  It's a huge change from serving 75 people in the morning alone last week!

My job, if you don't know already, is a server at Cordillera Lodge and Spa in Edwards, CO.  Having been a server for almost 4 years now, I have come to appreciate this job.  I've decided that I love people too much to move on to a desk job.  I call this season of life my "love food, love people" season.  :)

Cordillera is Spanish for "Range of Mountains" and the surrounding Sawatch Range, Gore Range and others are the exact reason for the name.  Every morning I work I am in awe of the sunrises that unfold.  They have been different every day.

I haven't brought my camera inside the lodge yet, but I did get a picture of the view from the parking lot!

 

 You can see Vail's back bowls in the distance...I am so blessed to work at such a beautiful place.  I will try to get pictures of the Lodge hopefully soon!

I'm not a morning person, as many of you know, but somehow I've come to love the mornings here!  I set up by myself so the quiet of the morning and the sunrises give me time to focus through prayer.  I've never been able to start my day like that and I feel much more awake and happy when I take that time for quiet reflection.

My shift is from 6am to 3pm so I usually only work 4 days out of the week unless we have a lot of guests.  This past month of March I was overtime every week because of how many guests we had.  March is called "Spring Break Month."  It's literally "Kids Gone Wild" month to me.  Good thing the Ranch prepared me well to love and serve kids!

After getting a call when I was home for Christmas, I was interviewed the day after I moved to Edwards and was hired on the spot!  My new roommate (who I had found through an ad for the condo) works down in the Spa area of Cordillera so she was the one who told me that there were positions available!  I still can't believe I didn't have to wait longer than 24 hours to find a place or a job!  Kind of ironic that I still can't manage to find a desk and a bed after all of these months.  Haha!

Work since then has been a whirlwind of activity.  Cordillera is a hotel, so I know how to deliver room service...most interesting of jobs because of the unusual situations you can find yourself in...We also serve people in the spa and at our pools, so a busy day could find me literally running from one end of the hotel to the other while also serving tables in the restaurant...I'm so glad that I am a multitask-er or else I would've been forgetting things left and right!

The clientele that stay at Cordillera are usually on the upper side of rich.  There are 750 homes in the gated community of Cordillera, but only 20% of those are year-round.  Not only do we serve our in-house guests, we serve those surrounding homeowners and our members of the Cordillera Club as well.  I have handled the "unlimited" credit cards in my hands on more fingers than I count.

The curse and blessing of tips have been introduced to me as well.  When I started working I hated the thought that servers were only nice to the guests because they were trying to get a better tip.  It was a competition in the end to get the higher tip out of the guests.  There is no going around the fact that I rely on those tips as payment now, but I hate it!  

This is just one of many sunrises I get to see!  I love Colorado.

A New Life

Just a few photos from my recent move to Edwards, Colorado...a new life begins!

Halloween: Baby Style!

This year's Lost Valley Halloween theme was "Above the Clouds," so I went as a baby carried by a stork! I couldn't find a girl outfit, so I had to be a boy baby, but it made the costume even better I think.It was a night to remember, hahaha.

Not much has happened since my last post not even a week ago. But, my birthday is coming up in a few short days! Mom sent me a package, but I can't open it until Sunday! It sits next to me as I type this, and it is teasing me.

Staff meeting tonight made me again think about the sovereignty of His will. Even though we have free will, He is sovereign. Even when we make a "bad" decision, He is sad and disappointed for us, yet He knew that we would make that choice, and He still uses that bad choice for His glory in the end. We need to continue and strive to live every day under the direction of His moral will. Only when we truly follow Him will we gain the peace and freedom that follows. In EVERY decision, little or big, I will strive to follow His will.

I am reminded...

I am reminded daily of His detailed design of His creation...

Well, it has been quite awhile since I've written in this blog, and for that I apologize.
The picture above was taken on a rare morning where the frost stuck around the ranch until almost noon. So I grabbed my camera and went for a walk.

Let's see...the spring ended very eventfully. I had two of my best friends leave the ranch unexpectedly, sending me into some hard times emotionally. But we go through it, and because of those events, I am closer to them than I expected.

Summer came and went with a hurry, just as I expected. The summer staff that is hired always makes me be on my guard a bit more because they tend to be a little more fake. Fake as in not going deep in relationship with people because they are only here for a few months. It was hard to get to know a lot of the staff because of that mentality, but I did bond with my roommates. They were great girls who kept me accountable and we shared our testimonies together.

Fall has also flown by, but in a different manner. We aren't as busy as the summer, and we don't have a lot of programs at night anymore, so our time is spent in fellowship with each other, and everyone knows that when you have fun, time flies by. I remember feeling like that last fall as well. You get to spend more time with guests as well. The Klopfensteins came to stay for awhile, Don Jessup basically lives here, and a lot of other regulars to the ranch are welcomed friendly faces.
I've been able to read more, draw and paint more, e-mail more, write in my journals more, call people more, and just relax more! I've also been able to finish some things that I've wanted to finish for a long time. Like hike Sawtooth, skinny-zipline, ride horses more, run more (although I haven't been too great at that right now). I still need to cross skiing, tubing, and hiking southern comfort off my list when I get those done.
One large thing that I became good at over the summer and into this fall is photography. I was one of the main contributors for our summer slideshows, taking pictures of the two rodeos a week, and nightly events. This fall, I met an actual professional photographer named Nadine, and she personally gave me advice, tips, and told me what I need to save up money for my next camera purchases. Through that, I learned that I am well on my way to create nice photos, but I'm also learning that it takes A LONG TIME to get a finished product. And unfortunately I don't have a ton of time these days, unless I use my days off to spend it in front of my computer editing. I'd rather simply try and take the best pictures I can on my camera and just download them. But, I have been able to work with some of my "artsy" photos I've taken to try out editing things. Here's one of those pictures...
I basically increased the contrast and color saturation using the simple windows editing program. With my other pictures, I am continuing to use photoshop CS3, which I found out is only one step below the pro level! Awesome. While Nadine was here, we had a nice snowstorm that gave us some beautiful icycles right outside our staff room. When I talked to Nadine, I showed her the photo I had taken only a night before, and she was amazed! She told me that I should never give up photography because I have the "art eye." It was a huge compliment coming from her. Here's that icycle photo...

Anyway, that was a fun little project.

And now, a week from turning 24 (which sounds weird to me), I am living at a beautiful ranch where I wake up to an intense orange sunrise that seems to put our ridge on fire and turn our clouds pink. The beauty of the Lord is shown in everything around me, and it is in those morning moments where I look up to the sky and stand in wonder at His creation.
Where will he bring me next? I supposedly have the next year or so figured out...going home to a hopeful job in MN, but after that? Who knows. I am thankful that God gave me a heart that is content wherever it is placed, and right now it is here at Lost Valley Ranch.
1 John 5:14-15

I only wish

"I knew only too well how easily the longing accepts false objects and through what dark ways the pursuit of them leads us. But I also saw that the Desire itself contains the corrective of all these errors. The only fatal error was to pretend you had passed from desire to fruition, when, in reality, you had found either nothing, or desire itself, or the satisfaction of some different desire. The dialectic of Desire, faithfully followed, would retrieve all mistakes, head you off from all false paths, and force you to live through...a sort of [experiential] proof." -C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress

I look around this place, life, and I see people who have abandoned their heart alongside the road of their journey. They're stopped in their tracks by despair, loneliness, resignation. I understand them because I have been there many times, laying on the side of the road in the deepest parts of the ditch, not even wanting to survive through the night.

But I will not, refuse not, to let my desire die alongside that road any longer. Although I know that to have desire is to accept all the pain and sorrow it will throw at me in life, it also can provide truth and true happiness, and to that I cling to.

I see people around me clinging to gossip, lies, deceit. But two years ago I promised myself that I will live a life that is so honest and open, that people will wonder why. Why do I subject myself to love everyone I come in contact with, even if they hurt me in return? Because I want them to know the God that loved me through all the fists I shook at him.

"And knowing how hard it hurts when we fall,
We lean another ladder against the wrong wall...
And climb high
to shake fists at the sky.
Others have their excuses,
I have my reasons why."
-Nickel Creek, Reasons Why

That is why I listen first. That's why God made me with a big heart, it seems. To desire for others, and myself, to succeed in life...to see others grow closer to Him, to come alongside those who are hurting and walk this crappy life on earth until God brings us home. If only all of the people I walk with will hear me listening to them. But I cannot change their hearts, only God can, and that knowledge hurts more than a lost love, because I can do nothing but watch them struggle in that ditch and only wish that I were there in that ditch with them so that they may understand His love.

I only wish.