Telling, Isn't It?

I remembered tonight that I hadn't taken any pictures of the girls while playing summer league volleyball. After their game I asked them to pose for a picture, so I would have at least one of them in their team shirts. "Do we have to act like we like each other?" Abigail asked. "We need a picture of how we really feel," responded Rebecca.

And here you have it...

Read This Book

I just finished this book and you need to read it, too. I bought it because 1) It was $2.00 and 2) I loved Stephen Baldwin on the TV show "Young Riders." Yes, I know I am dating myself. He talks about his conversion to Christianity and how he is part of a generation of people that God is raising up to minister to the teen culture of today.  He is very frank and "in your face" but everything he says is absolutely true. 

An excerpt...

  "God dropped us in the middle of this huge vast universe that is so much bigger than we ever thought before, and He put us on a planet where a piece of the ocean floor can shift and stir up a wave that wipes out hundreds of thousands of people on two continents, and where a thunderstorm forms off the coast of Africa and it scoots across the ocean until it parks in the Gulf of Mexico and grows large enough to turn a major U.S. city into a Third World country, and in spite of all of this we have convinced ourselves that we are in control."

Read it.

How Hot IS It?

Heat, ma'am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones. ~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir



Ah, good ol' summertime -- swimming, watermelon, soaring temperatures, broken air conditioners...

"Does it feel hot in here to you?" I asked the girls on Wednesday morning. We had just come in from outside, so I knew it should feel cooler than it did. A quick check of the thermostat revealed the AC set to 79 degrees, but the temp in the house showed 84 degrees. I felt that little niggling at the back of my brain that warned me Jeff would be out of town for the week and something always goes wrong when he's gone for a length of time. (I'm not kidding. Some day I'll blog about all the natural disasters that have befallen us when he's not here.)

Quick check revealed the outdoor unit was not running, the fan not even stirred by the slight breeze. Second check revealed all breakers to be functioning. (I've done this before.) Okay...deep breath, it's probably just some small "something" that I'm not noticing, but everything will be fine, right? WRONG! I won't bore you with the details of the rest of the story, but to say that we have to purchase a new outdoor unit that is horribly expensive, and it won't be installed until Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday, June 30 -- 3 days from now. Lord, help me.

So, my point in calling you all here today is to talk about HEAT and what it does to a person's brain when they are constantly bombarded with it. Let me just start out by saying, that God definitely dropped me into the right time period in history, because I would have survived all of six minutes in a covered wagon rolling across the prairie. Call me a wimp, a whiner, a Southern Belle, but just keep me cool.

Errands and outdoor (pool) activities kept us cool during the day, but the nighttime came with its stuffy, thick stale air. We managed the first night, bringing the girls downstairs and sleeping under fans. By Day Two, I felt like the heat was insidiously crawling into my brain and making me crazy. By 5:00 I was packing my bags and heading for the closest hotel. (See Southern Belle comment from previous paragraph.)

As we returned home to feed animals, water plants, etc. the thermostat downstairs read 89 degrees. Just for kicks (hah) I put a thermometer upstairs last night. That was a mistake. 98.4 degrees! (And that point 4 is important, people!) I seriously thought I would see paint running down the walls. A candle in a glass jar in Rebecca's room was completely melted -- melted, I tell you.

There is a silver lining to this story, and it is this: We are blessed.

1. Many people have offered us cool places to stay.

2. Two families (Davis and Skiles, God Bless You All) gave us window units, by which we are currently surviving.

3. We still have fans and lights.

4. In a previously mentioned post, I complained that we had not been swimming enough. That is no longer the case.

5. We found a wonderful AC guy (Thanks to Melissa, again) and he is putting in the new unit for less than half of what our old AC company quoted us.

6. When Jeff walked in on Friday night and said, "I don't know. It doesn't really seem that hot in here," I didn't kill him on the spot.

Stay cool.

Just a Little Bit of Summer

I don't know about your summer, but ours is flying by at such a rapid pace I'm afraid I'm going to miss it! Looking at my photos from the summer so far, we've hardly been home, and definitely haven't spent enough time in the pool. In fact, I don't even have any pics of swimming, except for what Barb took last weekend with the girls. Geez....what have we been doing? Well...
since you asked...wait...you didn't, but here goes anyway.

1 College Visit
3 Days of Basketball Camp
6 Chiropractor Visits
5 Days of Youth Camp
1 Girls Retreat
1 Wedding
3 Days of Kid Power Camp
8 Volleyball Games
2 Days of Children's Camp (3 to go)
6 Flats of Flowers Planted
2 Orthodontist Appointments
5 Search Committee Meetings
1 Eye Doctor Appointment
2 Days of Volleyball Camp (3 to go)
5 Piano Rehearsals
56 Books Read

And I wonder why we don't have any pictures in the pool? Happy Summer Ya'll. Hope your bathing suit is getting more use than mine!

Happy Father's Day

To one of the greatest fathers I've ever had the privilege to know:

Jeff, you're not my father so I didn't buy you a gift. (Ha!) But, you do deserve praise in so many areas:
1. You're a great provider.
2. You're a hard worker.
3. You're a genuinely nice person.
4. You're servant-hearted.
5. You're fun!
6. You care about others more than yourself.

I could go on, but your ego is big enough already.

I polled a few (all three) of the people who live in our house that call you dad and asked them to describe you in just three words.

KATHERINE:
1. Baseball-ish (Is this seasonal?)
2. Genius
3. Epic





REBECCA:
1. Amiable
2. Prudent
3. Meticulous
(Someone's been working on their vocabulary this summer.)

ABIGAIL:
1. Fantastical
2. Awesome Computer Man
3. Superb
(Or, more than three words.)

Southern Hospitality is Alive and Well

"If I never have another piece of fried chicken it will be too soon," I said on our way home from Buna last Sunday.

The minute we walked in the door of Jeff's parents' house last Thursday, Mrs. Holmes said, "Oh, good! Come in and help me eat this food." Four pizzas and two large boxes of fried chicken to be exact.

When unsure of what to say when a beloved member of a small-town community dies, it's best to just stop by and bring food. Of course, I completely agree with the philosophy that food does indeed make everything better. Well, food and chocolate. (Do you consider chocolate food or candy? No, Rebecca Holmes, candy is not food.) Anyhoo...

Within minutes of our arrival, in came the casseroles, pies, cakes, rolls, more fried chicken, cookies, bags of chips, sandwich trays, meat trays...did I mention fried chicken? Yes, I believe in total we racked up at least six boxes of fried chicken. I feel sure the local deli at Kaine's Supermarket had a banner day last week. In spite of my attempts to eat well and not totally wreck my diet, I had to give up that dream. It just wasn't possible. After all, someone had to help clear out all that chicken!

I would like to give special acknowledgement here to Mrs. Sybil Stanley, God bless her, for the most delicious rum cake I have ever eaten. Well, the only rum cake actually, but it was warm from the oven, and "Oh, she did hope it tasted all right. It just didn't look like it usually did." I can assure you, Mrs. S., it was ALL RIGHT. And I'm sure the homemade rolls were the same recipe that we had back in elementary school. Divine, I tell you...practically manna from heaven. (Hang on a sec, while I wipe the drool from my keyboard.)

So, in the Southern way of thinking, here's my little equation: food = love. If that is true, then lotsa food = lotsa love. Thanks everybody for showing us how much you loved Mr. Holmes, and in turn, us too!

And now we return to our previously scheduled diet...

Remembering Bobby Holmes

Last Thursday, after a 3 1/2 year battle with cancer, my father-in-law passed away at home. At times like this, the phrase "absent from the body, present with the Lord" has more meaning than  you can imagine.  

We attended his funeral on Saturday, and it was a service that honored his life. Three pastors spoke of him as a man of faith, a man of family, and a man of joy. I am convinced that he lived as long as he did because of his joyous outlook on life.        

Since I started dating Jeff at the age of 18, Mr. Holmes has been part of my life for quite some time now. He has been a father figure when I needed one, and later on, a wonderful grandfather to my kids. He loved bragging about his grandchildren, and no children anywhere in the world were as smart or as pretty as his were.  And, he gave them the most important gift over the years -- his time and attention. I am so grateful for those memories.

He could be pretty cantankerous at times, espousing his philosophies on politics and the world in general. One of the last things he said to me was that he was worried about what Obama is doing to the world that his grandkids live in.  He was extremely opinionated on most subjects and didn't mind sharing. He loved talking to just about anyone, and I often thought a perfect job for him would have been a WalMart greeter.  In fact, we hated taking him to WalMart with us because he would stop at the entrance, shake hands with the greeter, and ask him about his grandkids.  (Of course they wouldn't be as clever and beautiful as his!)

This coming Father's Day the world will be missing a really great father and grandfather; however, our loss is heaven's gain.  And what a blessing to think of him whole, healthy and even more joyous than he was here on earth. I can only imagine...