the rose of kiev

Long before I knew I would be getting married in December, I knew for a fact that I would never have an outdoor wedding.  I would not be able to handle the stress of planning 2 locations for the ceremony and making paranoid visits to weather.com for the prior 3 weeks.  I'm also a person that when I develop a certain expectation (such as getting married outside) I would not be able to roll with the punches if it rained.  In fact, I just might start punching people. Why didn't I remember this key aspect of my personality before I started planning my yard sale?  Hours and hours of rooting and tagging and pricing and ad-placing  - and what do I get?  Torrential downpour, one tentatively dry hour, and 7 lousy guests during an 8-hour day. My damn yard sale got rained out.  And I want to punch someone. The good news?  At least I've earned a little more money than I spent advertising for the dumb thing.  The bad news?  I've made an equivalent of $2.50 an hour.  That right there...

I'll remember this day for years. We girls woke up and read together; shortly after our discussion was over the natural movement toward the beach began.  Just before leaving, Brandon and Thomas showed up.  I hunkered down at the kitchen table with my laptop to do a little blogging catch-up.  One by one Thomas and each of the girls took their towels and walked out the door, but Brandon sat down across the table from me.  For 40 silent minutes I continued to write and he sat waiting until I closed my computer.  "Alrighty, I'm heading over to the boys' house to have lunch with Colin." "Ok," he murmured. "I wanted to ask you something, but it can wait until after lunch." I paused over my beach bag.  He'd been waiting forty minutes, I might as well hear him out now.  It probably wouldn't take too long anyways.  So I went back to the table and asked, "What's up?" "Well, I've been feeling an increased need to get baptise...

After the I led the morning reading and we had our daily dance party, I tried to get a hold of Dave so we could go out for our date day.  While everyone else was waiting for the evening to go out for Date Night, we wanted to drive 45 minutes to historic Wilmington for a date day.  When I didn't immediately hear back, I of course donned my bathing suit and went for the beach.  I joined the group and watched 8-inch fish leap out of the water every few seconds all along the beachline.  Dave was on the beach shortly after, and we waded out into the water, watching Gordon's raft get smaller and smaller.  Schools upon schools of fish shimmered and leaped around us, darting between each other and even between our legs, the girls shrieking in terrified laughter.  Regardless of the temptation of such a fishing situation, we left shortly after and got cleaned up for our day out. After a lunch at Hardee's, we crossed the Cape Fear River and wandered into historic downtown.  Across the...

This was the girls' house for this week, "Tig na Mara".  Every morning we've been getting up and reading  and discussing passages from an unpublished book by Dennis McCallum about the church as we feel the house sway slightly.  Every morning after we finish reading we then crank up the music and have a mini dance party on the steps.  Every morning we all put our bikinis on and then take off for the beach together.  And today we were lucky enough to see SUNSHINE.  What a glorious sight after all the overcastness, one that we capitalized on. In the afternoon, after some fun at the beach, a lot of boys and Emily Morris and I went to the second annual tennis tournament.  Last year's tennis tournament happened on the day where happy hour involved headdresses, so most bystanders were Arabian from the earlobes up.  This year, Cynthia and Emily Maxwell cheered us on from the sidelines, minus the headdresses.  They cheered me on to a magnificent 6-0 loss to Emily Morris.  ...

Another grey morning on the beach, but at least it makes hot tea taste better.  As the day went on we experienced a lot of erratic weather, a little bit of sun then misty rainfall, but it was another day mostly made for being indoors.  We spent some time outside in the early afternoon helping Grace realize her vision for a sand-sculpted turtle bigger and better than last year, but aside from that we were indoors for a lot of the day - so it's no surprise that the theme of the day became food from lunchtime on. Katie came down to the beach trip for the first time this year.  And I love her.  And we already have nicknames for each other.  With a little bit of butter and a box of noodles, she turned out a delicious meal for me: sauteed mushrooms, red sauce and angel hair pasta.  Way better than the box of mac-n-cheese waiting for me in the cupboard.  We sat in the tall-backed rockers and waited for the sweet corn to cook, talking about siblings and high school and phone numbers with G...

So it rained today.  Not the kind of weather one hopes for at the beach.  In the morning it was simply grey, but we had heard the forecast and knew what the clouds were bringing later that day.  Since it was our first full day, we all went down to the beach, sun or no sun.  As the girls laid out their towels and stretched out, their sunning positions were almost laughable.  Myself and a few others opted to play in the waves; Thomas taught Cynthia how to bodysurf since it was her very first time in the ocean.  She and I weren't very good at it, and the pre-storm waves were pretty forceful.  As we got sucked and dragged and crashed against, battered by the waves and currents, this is what it felt like: It was brutal fun.  And as we were out in the surf, we figured out why they were so many fisherman lining the beach.  Many many times as a large wave would swell, just before the crest would break we could clearly see entire schools of two-inch long fish, which we later learned are cal...

So we made it.  We made it the beach.  And from now until the 12th I pledge to write about every day here, to show you our beautiful little family. Dave and I left at three in the morning to pick up Brandon for the 11-hour drive.  What a good man Dave is - the only break he got was a 90-minute window in Virginia before I quickly wussed out and became too tired to drive.  We passed several cars along the way that we could tell were headed to The Beach, even if we didn't know who they were.  After all, there are at least a dozen other Xenos homechurches each of 30 or more people going the same way to the same place, so we're bound to encounter a few.  Through the dark farms in Ohio and tumbling into the Appalachian hills of West Virginia, getting lost in Virginia clouds and then emerging upon the pines and sandy knolls of North Carolina.  Passing through Wilmington, passing the Food Lion, passing the gift shops, to get to the bridge.  That bridge is our one way onto our beach; it...