Psalm 121

All summer, the pastor has been focusing on Psalms. This week was Psalm 121:

1.I will lift up my eyes to the hills -
From whence comes my help?
2.My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.

3.He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
4.Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5.The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6.The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.

7.The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.
8.The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in
From this time forth, and even forevermore.

(From The Woman's Study Bible. New Kings James Version)

I find this very comforting, considering the crazy world we live in and the uncertainty that surrounds me on a daily basis.

Thoughts?

Bekka

I posted this blog several months ago, but as today would have been her 20th birthday, I feel the need to repost about one of my closest friends, Bekka.

(originally posted 26 May 08)
Allow me to start with some back-story, if you will. I met my very bestest friend, Jess in the 6th grade. We were inseparable and even to this day, talk at least 3 times a week. When I was living back in Washington, we spent as much time together as her work schedule allowed. Jess had a younger sister, Bekka. Bekka was probably about 5 when I met her and she instantly became the little sister I never had. There was a lot of typical sibling squabbles over the years, but Jess's family is my family and vice-versa. By the time Bekka got to high school, the three of us were very close, and the year I spent at home (last year), we spent a lot of time together.

Seven months ago tomorrow (27 October), Steph, DJ, and I had spent the morning shopping at Target for things we needed at the new house here in Laurel. We opted for lunch at a place we'd never been to "Chic-Fil-A". Just as we sat down to eat, my cell phone rang and it was Jess. I don't normally answer at mealtime, as its inconsiderate, but something told me to answer. She was frantic: "My dad thinks Bekka is dead". Jess's apartment is only a few minutes from her dad's house, and she could hear sirens as she tried to calm herself enough to drive over there. I didn't hear from her for three hours. I got another call from her: "We are waiting for the medical examiner". The only words out of my mouth were: "So, it's true?" Bekka had died, apparently in her sleep. It couldn't be true. Bekka was just barely 19. Healthy 19-year-olds don't just die in their sleep.

Sadly, Bekka did pass away in her sleep, at 19 years of age. The autopsy showed nothing. 18 weeks later, the toxicology reports confirmed that her heart just spontaneously stopped. There were naturally occuring chemicals in her blood that showed her body tried to restart the electrical impulses to her heart, but could not. Bekka was healthy. She had just graduated high school and started college. She was in a great relationship. She was an amazingly talented artist and musician. Her whole life was ahead of her and for no reason whatsoever, she was taken from us. (And yes, I realize that when Heath Ledger died, it only took 10 days to get his toxicology reports. We were still waiting for Bekka's when that happened and needless to say, we were rather annoyed.)

I had seen Bekka the day before I left to drive cross-country. I have a couple photographs that I snapped. I had no idea that less than a month later, she would be gone. One of the toughest parts of the whole thing was that I was 3000 miles away from home. I could do nothing to help, I talked with Jess a lot, listened, we laughed and cried. I managed to make a very short trip home over Veteran's Day weekend. It was nearly impossible to get into the car and drive the 15 minutes to Jess's dad's house, knowing Bekka would not be there.

Most of the time, because I'm so far from home, it's easy to not think about this horrible loss. I'm not there to see the void. Sometimes, because of a song or just a random thought, I remember that she's not a part of this world anymore and it's absolutely heartbreaking. I'm not even sure what triggered it tonight, but I miss her so much.

I know God has a plan, but sometimes those plans are very painful for those left behind.

slacking blogger

I wish I could say the lack of blogging is due to being totally busy, but the reality is, it's been pretty boring. Trying to get back into the groove of things, with my mom gone. Although, that will change a bit once school starts on the 8th. Then we will get into a different kind of groove. We did have a playdate today, which was nice. The weather has cooled off significantly, which is also nice. I wouldn't mind a little rain, which the weather-people have promised. The grass is looking a bit yellow.

There is a little Covenant Church about 20 minutes from our home, that we discovered around Christmas. We went once and then got lazy and never went back. When my mom got here, we started going again and I am so thankful. While it is an older congregation, the pastor and his wife are a bit younger and have three little boys. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming and supportive and it's just wonderful.

About 11 more days til school starts again....YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

My mom was here for six amazing weeks and I feel so blessed for that time we had together. Being a single pseudo-parent is incredibly difficult, made even more so by the fact that I'm 3000 miles from home.

It has been very hard to get back into the swing of things since my mom left. DJ seems fine with it, but he is so used to people moving in and out of his life, it's almost normal to him. I, on the other hand, am a total basketcase! If I can just make it through the next 2 weeks until school starts, I will be fine.

Everything in the house reminds of the time with my mom, I can't go downstairs to watch tv, without getting a little choked up, because that's what we did in our downtime, I wake up in the morning and think "I will get DJ and we'll go wake up grandma joan". There was a starbucks cup that she had left in the car from our trip to the airport and I couldn't manage to throw it away til yesterday.

I know its only been a few days I will adjust over time, but having her here for so long and we had so much fun and she was so much help with DJ and the house. I just miss her!

Growth

DJ has grown an inch in the past five weeks!!! He is now a little over 40 inches tall. I don't know if that's average for four and a half, but he seemed to be the same height as most of his classmates.

Speaking of school...


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DJ will be starting the 4's class very soon. He is old enough to be going into the Pre-K class, but I felt he just wasn't ready, and all his friends from last year are just moving up one class to the 4's. I have every confidence it will be a good year and he will learn a lot.

My mom heads home on Tuesday. This weekend is pretty quiet, we went to the bookstore today, so my mom could get books for her flights home. She also got DJ a couple new books, including "Horton Hatches an Egg", which they are reading as I type this. Books are fun.

Philadelphia

With some cooler weather lately, without thunderstorms, we decided to take an impromptu trip to Philadelphia a few days ago. The drive is a little over two hours, not bad at all. We got there around lunchtime, so we wandered down the street a ways, happened to catch a brief magic show (in period clothing, of course) in front of Betsy Ross's house, then found a mall and had lunch. Afterwards, we saw the Liberty Bell, toured Betsy Ross's house, then decided to take the duck tour.

If you're not familiar with the duck tours (they have one in Seattle), it is an amphibious vehicle that tours the land, showing you the sights in the city, then goes into the water (in this case, the Delaware River) and shows you some sights there, before returning to dry land. It was pretty cool and we may go back to Baltimore and take the duck tour there.

We also managed a quick viewing of Independence Hall, which used to be the capital of the United States, and saw where Congress used to be housed.

My mom heads home in just a few days. I'm not looking forward to that. Her visit has been so great, we have had so much fun, and it's just going to be hard to go back to being a single-pseudo-parent again. We will only have a couple weeks and then school will start again, so it will be ok.

Shots suck!

Between ages four and six, most children need four vaccines. DJ is due for a fifth sometime in the next year and the yearly flu shot this fall. I had debated back and forth about timing, if we should do them all at once or split them up, etc. We had to drive out to the naval hospital this morning (very early) so I could pick-up some prescriptions for myself and I figured that since we were there and with school starting up in a month, I would get two of those vaccines out of the way now. I figured we could get two now, the flu shot and another when winter approaches, and the other two sometime in the spring. DJ has never had a problem with vaccines before, but it's never fun. The clinic wouldn't let me split them up. The poor kid got four shots today! The other two (flu shot and the other in his hepatitis A series) we will get in a couple months. He was so brave and didn't cry much at all, but even with motrin and tylenol, he has had a slight fever all day, crashed out hard during quiet time (he almost never sleeps during his nap/quiet time), and hasn't had much of an appetite. He has still been pretty active and has drank a ton of water, so I'm trying not to worry too much. My mom says he's fine and I know these are all normal vaccine reactions. Maybe it is better to just get them over with now, instead of drawing it out, but I cant help but feel bad for him.

Hopefully he will wake up feeling much better tomorrow, as he has a classmates birthday party to attend in the afternoon. I'm just annoyed with the hospital immunization clinic for not allowing me to split them up and I don't like it when DJ's not feeling well and I kind of feel like I contributed to his misery. It's a necessary evil, but still...shots suck!

National Night Out

Last night was the National Night Out. I'm not exactly clear on the meaning and purpose, but I think it is supposed to bring communities together, show togetherness against crime? Something like that. In any event, it was at the lake park down the street from our house. We haven't been out much since returning from vacation, doing a lot of laundry and general vacationing from vacation, aka vegetating. DJ has been bouncing off the walls, like always. I think he gets more hyper everyday.

They had threatened rain and thunderstorms, but the night ended up being perfect. About 78 degrees, humid, but breezy. After dinner, we herded DJ out the door and we walked the couple blocks to the lake park.

When I read about this National Night Out a few weeks ago, the article said they were bringing in a helicopter from the US Park Service for everyone to look at, ask the pilots questions, etc. DJ is a boy, he would like a helicopter, right? He did, for about 15 seconds. We also met one of the US Park Service horses, a couple police dogs, and saw a giant ladder fire truck. All of these things held DJ's attention for 15-20 seconds. Then he danced along to the singer/guitarist who was performing, and we headed home again.

The rescue squad was doing a demonstration on how they extricate passengers from a wrecked vehicle. I was almost in tears before they started, but it wasn't as bad as I expected, to watch, and there was so much going on, you couldn't really hear the crunching of metal. I kept telling myself it was therapeutic or something.
(If you don't know, I was in a very serious car accident almost 11 years ago, and I had to be cut from the car. I don't remember everything that happened, but the sound of them cutting the door off, just inches from my head will stick with me forever)

We only stayed for about an hour, but it gave us the motivation to get out of the house for a little while, have a nice walk, and personally, I thought the helicopter was pretty cool! We were even standing near it when it took off again! It also allowed us to wear DJ out. I didn't bring the stroller as I sometimes do on walks, and he was running all over the fields there at the park, and dancing to the music. He was definitely tired when we got home.

Up next...well, not much. DJ was invited to a birthday party on Saturday for one of his classmates, but mostly we are just trying to enjoy as much time together before my mom has to go home on the 19th.

Oh yeah, and getting back into the habit of practicing guitar before I start lessons again next month! I have barely picked it up since I stopped lessons at the end of April, when DJ's mom left for Africa. So bad!!!

Adventures in road tripping

As I mentioned, we are home, I am doing mountains of laundry, and at least the grown-ups are pretty exhausted. DJ is bouncing off the walls, as usual. The trip went well, we didn't get to see or do as much as we would have liked, because it was extremely hot and humid, and we never really made it to the beach. We did spend a lot of time in hotel pools and DJ has become a regular fish, the completely opposite of last summer, when he didn't want to get into the water at all.

I'm going to skip the disastrous beginning (we hadn't even gotten on the road yet), because everything worked out fine. We drove to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and got settled into our hotel. A storm was moving in, but we took a quick drive down to Dewey Beach, so I could take a couple pictures. The restaurant closest to our hotel was this fun little place called Cracker Barrel. Just as we finished dinner, the storm hit, and it was right on top of us. Outside Cracker Barrel, they have lots of rocking chairs (they sell them), so we sat there, under the porch roof and watched the downpour, lightning and listened to the huge booming thunder. DJ was cheering for the thunder, he loved it. I was ready to jump into my mom's lap. Not a fan, thank you.

Anyway, when we woke up the next morning, the storm had passed, and we packed up the car. Rehoboth Beach is known for its outlet stores and Delaware is a tax-free state. So, of course, we had to do a little shopping. DJ got some back-to-school clothes. We drove down and walked along the boardwalk for awhile, then walked back to the car along the beach, splashing in the waves a bit. That is the extent of our beach fun for the entire trip. We spent the day casually driving down to Ocean City, Maryland. We stayed in a really nice hotel there and spent the rest of the evening playing in the pool. After dinner and bath time, DJ fell asleep in less than 5 minutes.

Tuesday, we began our drive to Williamsburg. We stopped to visit an island in Virginia called Chincoteague. It is famous for a special kind of pony. Every year, they swim the ponies (at low tide) from Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island, and then they are auctioned off. Apparently there is a famous childrens book (true story) about it. Anyway, my mom had read the book as a child and loves horses, so we made a stop to check out the island. That big event was on Wednesday, so the island was PACKED. We saw some of the ponies that already lived on the island, some of the mares were older than me!!! We got into Williamsburg later in the evening, had to find a walmart, and grabbed dinner. Then we spent some time in the pool before bath and bedtime.

Oh! On the way to Williamsburg, we had the opportunity to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which is just amazing. It is 17.6 miles of bridge and tunnel, from shore to shore. You have the Atlantic Ocean on one side of you and the Chesapeake Bay on the other. We happened to get caught in a very nasty rain storm while we were crossing. You could barely see anything, which was a little scary. It's a very cool experience, though. It's just so immense and when you go into the tunnel parts, you are so far under the water. The tunnels are deep enough to allow aircraft carriers and big tankers to cross over.


The plan was to visit the Jamestown Colony and Settlement on Wednesday and Yorktown on Thursday, before heading to North Carolina. However, Wednesday was expected to be close to 100 degrees, close to 115 with the heat index, and extremely humid. We did go to the Jamestown Colony, but we couldn't stay long, as it was so hot and humid, we couldn't breathe. It was disappointing, but we went back and spent the rest of the day in the pool.

Thursday was expected to be hotter, so we skipped Yorktown and headed to Elizabeth City, North Carolina. We got there earlier than planned, obviously, but we checked into the hotel, got some lunch, had a little downtime, then jumped into the pool for quite awhile.

We had intended to drive all the way to Cape Hatteras (nearly 3 hours from the hotel) to see the lighthouse and visit all the other cool things along the Outer Banks. It quickly become obvious we couldn't see it all in a day (or even 2 days, we missed a lot), so we extended our vacation a day and spent 2 days driving up and down the Outer Banks.

Some hightlights: Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, The Wright Brothers Memorial Park (the site of their first attempts at powered flight), and the Monster Truck Grave Digger's official home. We did stop by a beach to check it out, but it had been so hot outside, the sand was burning our feet (especially DJ, who kept crying), and the water was quite rough, so we didn't stay and play.

I took a lot of pictures, but for whatever reason, many of them came out blurry. Not sure what that's about as I've never had a problem with the camera before. Maybe the heat and humidity? I really don't know. In any event, all the pictures are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/megsphotos08/

I'm sure I'm forgetting things, so I may post again later, I'm just completely wiped out today. It's good to be home, but I miss having pools so close and convenient. It was great to wear DJ out.

Home again

We made it home. The drive back was really nice and easy. I will post again in the next day or so (I have mountains of laundry to do tomorrow) with a link to pictures (I have too many to post in a blog, I think) and details of our adventures. Stay tuned.