Now that I'm in my mid-twenties, I find that holidays are a little awkward.

If you get down to it, most holidays center around children. At Christmas the kids dreams of sugar plums, at Halloween they get all dressed up to go trick-or-treating and at Easter they put on their frilliest outfit and go look for hidden eggs. The adults ohh and ahh at all the silly, precocious things their little tykes do, and then everyone eats a whole lot of food.

But as a single twenty-something, who lives far away from her family, my holidays look a little different. Sometimes holidays can be lonely, but often I get the opportunity to choose the family that I spend it with. Like alot of twenty-somethings, I don't have a family that looks anything like the traditional nuclear family. My family, those who I love and long for, are my friends, the amazing people that God has blessed me with and in His divine providence allowed my to walk the straight and narrow beside them.


So I get to do alot of fun, crazy things on holidays, like climb (and by climb I mean ride a tram) to the top of a mountain in the pre-dawn hours to gather and watch the sunrise on Easter morning ...





Shannon the Instigator ... this hair-brained idea was her master plan.

Oh, the enthusiasm that 5 a.m. brings!

Shoved in the tram like cattle ... Even though it was cold and dark and I couldn't see out the window, and we were hanging from a simple pulley system, I didn't get scared, really, not even a little bit, really.

Who goes to the top of a mountain at night in a snow storm?

We do!

The opposite of dusk ...

The sun came up, but we couldn't find it ...

But we did find snow, just what we were hopingfor ...

Penguin Huddle!

Ben the Canadian seeks wisdom and guidance from an Eskimo, sort of ...


All in all sunrise service was amazing, even if the sun did not grace us with its presence. After, we went down to the valley where the sun was shining and it was clear that springtime was on it's way. I won't make the super cheesy Hallmark analogy that life without Jesus is like wintertime, and life with Jesus is like springtime, full of possibilities. Wait, did I just make that analogy? I did, didn't I? Oh well, I stand by it.