please look closely at this child.

this is bryce. we used to live across the street from him and his family in VA. when i went to visit my mother several weeks ago, our neighbors all had a picnic for us.



this is how bryce showed up. and he stayed this way the whole party. please notice the bluetooth in addition to the sunglasses, goggles, mardi gras beads and anklet.



that's his older brother alexander. he has a bit more style-sense. but not as much humor.

these pictures make me laugh to no end.

ahh . . . i have unlimited internet for the next 24 hours, so i will be catching up on some postings. these may be events or thoughts from the past month or two, so please be long-suffering as i post all of them. when i get internet i tend to post a LOT all at once. and then nothing for a long time. that's just the way it has to be at this stage in my life. perhaps there will be a time when i will never have time to post. so we'll take what we can get now, eh? here comes some of my deep and certainly not-so-deep thoughts from the past few months.

p.s. i thought no one had bee commenting and i was all bummed. only to find out that i had turned on the comment moderater. blah blah blah. so thank you for posting everyone. comments may now flow freely once again.

CUTEness!

i went shopping (or more like "looking") around downtown harrisonburg today. in the midst, i tried on the absolute cutest dress that has been on my body in a long while! unfortunately the price tag was outrageous. super sad. oh well, at least i got to flaunt it in the dressing room for about 5 mins!

lukewarmness and risk

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

been thinking about these verse a lot lately . . . how much i live in that state of lukewarmness. in a state of safety and comfort and mediocrity. it's sickening actually. and saddening. and flat-out ridiculous. from what i have been able to recall from scripture about how this life is to be lived, there is nothing about safety or comfort or mediocrtiy. in fact, it's quite the opposite.

seems as though "risk" has been a constant pop-up word in my reading lately. "the dangerous will of God." "a call for christian risk." matthew 16:25.

but the more i think of it, the more it makes sense. if my future - and by future i mean for all eternity - is secure, then why would i not risk everything in this life for the sake of "kingdom purposes"???

as piper wrote: "by removing eternal risk, Christ calls his people to continual temporal risk . . . It is risky to serve Christ in a war zone. You might get shot. You might not."

and for that, lukewarmness will not do.

i went strawberry picking for the first time!!!

tracie (one of my fellow speech therapists) went with me.

a little piper

from a piper devotional just recently read. written after the tsunami. applicable for any tragedy:

the point of every deadly calamity is this: repent. let our hearts be broken that God means so little to us. grieve that he is a whipping boy to be blamed for pain, but not praised for pleasure. lament that he makes headlines only when man mocks his power, but no headlines for ten thousand days of wrath withheld. let us rend our hearts that we love life more than we love Jesus Christ. let us cast ourselves on the mercy of our Maker. He offers it through the death and resurrection of his Son.

see luke 13:4-5 for a biblical reference.

lovely things



my girls at work know that recently i have been mentally compiling a list of things that i immensely enjoy or take particular delight in. i'm not sure how this list started . . . i think i've just been trying to be more aware of the creatively designed things that surround me, both by my God and by people . . .

i have taken a particularly interest in making myself aware of things that i love about this place that i live called the eastern shore. the eastern shore is a quaint little place. while it is growing by leaps and bounds, it still maintains much of its down-home goodness. i much enjoy that. this is particularly wonderful to me because, when i moved here, i never thought i would love anything about this place.

below you will find a partial list that has come up over the last week, some shore related, some not.

1. driving over the bay bridge and being at the same level with the birds.

2. strawberry picking

3. eating bananas divided into its 3 natural triangle-like parts (does anyone understand what i mean when i say this?)

4. hand-painted signs on the side of the road that advertize home-grown products sold right from the house (and especially when there's just a box where you leave your money - it is comforting to know that people are still trusting like that)

5. that the sky looks different every night as the sun sets

dissatisfying imbalance

Initially I was thrilled to figure out how to post pictures. Now, I’m not sure it’s not both a blessing and a curse. I’ll elaborate.

Since posting pics, yes, I agree that it has added a new dimension to my blog . . . maybe gained a few more viewers . . . certainly a few additional comments, but at what cost?

One thing that I liked about my blog pre-pictures was that it aired out my thoughts. It highlighted some cool things about life that I don’t always notice. It was a written explanation of how God let me see things differently or notice him in things or enjoy things i normally look right past.

There’s not much of that now. Just pictures with shallow narrative.

Color substituted for content.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Correction; I am sure how I feel about it. I don’t like it one little bit. Pictures – while delightfully fun to post and look at and preserve memories I otherwise wouldn’t – can’t replace musings.

I admit, this is my fault. Picture posting has made me lazy. I still have weighty thoughts; it's just easier and faster to post pics than try to hammer out ideas into words. There are plenty of people that have mastered the art of combining both pictures and thought for a more complete and well-balanced blog. I have not.

This is my new quest. Narrative that is depthy, yet not so long that I lose ½ my readers. Pictures that compliment, but don’t replace worthy words.

We’ll see how I do.

d.c. friends

i spent my weekend in the d.c. area visitng a few of my friends from college. these are some of my dearest friends from college. amy (who i always stay with when i go to d.c.) is married to pete. jessica (lives in gaithersburg) is married to kris and has a 1-month-old (april 10) named jack. below you can see a smattering of the events of the weekend, including our meeting of little jack!!!

the man of the hour - jack tyler

jessica (mommy) and jack

did you know that at 1-month, babies only can focus their gaze about 10-12 inches away?

amy and jack

sushi for dinner

pete taught me a new game this weekend: settlers of catan. well worth the time it takes to play.

need to bring this one to the shore.

peter predicting his next move (he played 2 hands). we needed 3 people to play, but amy didn't really want to, so pete played her hand.

ames and me
the happy couple at home
their cute townhouse; fresh knockout roses from amy's garden

baking cookies: amy and i share the same favorite - oatmeal chocolate chip. convenient!

you've heard of manna coming down out of heaven . . .
but what about fish?

we had small group outside tonight. why wouldn't we? it's a beautiful spring evening.

so in the middle of small group, as we are delving into the depths of our study, we are temporarily distracted by some commotion coming from the sky.

birds. no big deal.

until a split second later we see a large object fall from the sky and flop into the backyard about 15 yards from us. i glance at hannah quickly and then at anna, looking for some sort of confirmation that they saw the same thing i saw. the expressions on their faces tells me that they did.

"what was that???" was the overwhelming theme of the chatter that followed.

a fish . . . we think. but is that possible?

indeed my friends it is. a fish fell from heaven in the middle of our small group. and we have pictures to prove it. :-)

the joys of my monday nights
and many other times . . .

there names (in alphabetical order)

anna, elizabeth, hannah and rachel.

Sisters.

at easter dinner, there were a smattering of sister sets.

i don't have sisters, so seeing these girls all together was super fun.

the townsend sisters

(with me in between)

the huntington sisters

the harr sisters (2 of them)

harr and price sisters

the price sisters

FREDERICKSBURG:

a sampling of the weekend.

spring in my driveway.

the rappahannock.
spring "snow". blossoms were flying all over the city that day.

my daddy at carls. the BEST dairy bar in the world.

this great bookshop. fredericksburg is good for these.

wouldn't you love to work in a place like this?

bryce and cheetoes.

daddy and me.

for a complete viewing, see my flickr.

visiting my home of old

stay tuned for new pics on flickr and on here. this weekend i had a lovely visit to my old stompin' ground:
fredericksburg, va

it's so funny; when i lived there we used to affectionately call it "dead fred." now, i love going back there. in fact, i am convinced that i love that little town more and more as i get older.

i think it's just about
my favorite place to take my camera.
my favorite place to get a cup of coffee.
my favorite place to wander the streets.

words to describe it:
quaint
historic
ecclectic

today is was 80 degrees, cherry blossoms blooming and covering the sidewalks.

glorious.

i kept thinking today of all the people that i want to take there on a little weekend road trip. (all of you williamsburg fans would prolly be fredericksburg fans too.)

pics to come.