On Sunday Clark, Swathi, Sruthi, Soren, Benji, Janine, Liem and Pao all went to Lily Lake and hiked around. They were running on Eastern time, so getting a start at 5:30am was no big deal for them. We, on the other hand, slept in.
They have beautiful pictures which I downloaded from Swathi, but I am not sure which pictures match this particular hike. Here is my best guess!
Once my mom and our crew were up, we headed to the visitor center for Rocky Mountain National Park, got some advice from the ranger, and then headed to Sprague Lake. (The night before while we were getting ice cream in Estes Park, the ice-cream-scooper-man had told us that there was going to be deadly lightning for the first time in eighteen years on Sunday. Hence the need for advice and reassurance from the ranger.)
Abe impressed us all with his incredible rock skipping abilities, and my mom even skipped rocks! Pao also had some great talent in the rock-skipping arena. Janine has a video wherein she caught Abe skipping rocks halfway across the lake, and then she also caught my mom make a rather impressive rock-skip. As soon as I can, I will upload that.
After our hike, we had some of Janine’s delicious chicken salad sandwiches, and then my mom, Mary, and I hustled to church while Abe looked after Ammon and Lydia at home. Ammon needed to nap and Lydia was sick.
It turned out that Ammon refused to nap, and Lydia begged Abe to go play with Ammon. Abe was resting in bed and agreed, unaware that Lydia intended to get Ammon out of his pack-n-play. Unbeknownst to all of us, Ammon had figured out how to open doors. When I pulled into the condo parking lot after church, what should I see but Ammon running gleefully into the parking lot. I was shocked and terrified out of my mind. Conscientious little Lydia was busy inside strapping on her shoes so she could run and chase her brother, but before she made it out of the door I rescued him and brought him back in to a horrified Abe.
I spent the next several hours feeling panicked, and it was only later in the evening when I was talking to Janine that I calmed down. She exclaimed over the miraculous timing of it all and clearly pointed out the hand of God in my arrival just at the moment Ammon entered the parking lot. It had crossed my mind before she pointed it out that God had helped spare Ammon’s life, but I was so focused on my own emotional terror that I couldn’t process that. But with some space, I can definitely see the hand of God in this timing and praise him for helping me arrive before Ammon killed himself in the parking lot.
We used the high deadbolt religiously for the rest of the trip.