Camping with Boys

This week I joined my daughter on a camping trip with her thirteen-year-old son and three of his buddies. We had a delightful time together.
Thirteen-year-old boys are a breed all their own. These guys have bodies that have suddenly gotten bigger and voices that have suddenly gotten deeper. They had a wonderful time all day doing manly things like setting up their tent, canoing, chopping firewood and building a campfire. They loved the freedom to play and roam the woods by themselves. They were manly men. At night they crawled into their tent laughing and talking. Our campsite was about a hundred yard away so they felt alone. As they got sleepy they noticed that the night is full of noises that these city boys aren't used to hearing. They could hear scary, unidentified things moving around outside their tent. My daughter's cell phone rang. They needed a mom. These manly men had no objection when she crawled into their tent and sang to them until they were able to fall sleep.
This is one of the songs she sang as their lullaby that night.

Memories

As with all vacations, the time came to leave and return home again. We are left with wonderful memories and over 700 pictures. I am so glad we could go. It was a wonderful adventure, but it was time to return to home and the good life we live here.
I can't say it was the best vacation ever, but it was mighty good. God made a great big world and exploring it is an exciting wonderful thing.
What makes a vacation wonderful? What are some of your wonderful vacation memories?

Giant Tortoises

No visit to the Galapagos would be complete without seeing giant tortoises. On the island of Santa Cruz we had our chance to see them in the wild and later at the Charles Darwin research center. I loved seeing them in the wild, just lumbering along at their very slow pace, munching grass as they went. These creatures weigh up to 500 pounds and live more than 150 years. There are currently eleven species of giant tortoises. At one time there were more than thirty different species, but people have made life difficult for the tortoise. The most noticeable difference is the shape of their shells. Some are domed, others are saddle backed. These differences were among the observations that helped Darwin to conceive of his theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest.





According to the shipboard naturalist, we can all learn some very important life lessons from observing the tortoise. This the list.
1.Eat you vegetables.
2.Get a minimum of eight hours sleep every night.
3.Slow down and reduce stress.
4.Have sex for at least four hours every day.

Rabida Island

We sailed back northward toward the equator and came to Rabida Island. I have now seen thousands of blue footed boobies and thousands of magnificent frigate birds, but I still get excited with each new sighting. I just have a hard time believing that I am really here and really seeing all of this. Marine iguanas are sunning on every rock and we just walk around the sea lions on the beach. What an amazing place this is!

We found a nesting area of pelicans today. Newly hatched birds were is every nest. We watched as the mom regurgitated into her bill and the baby then ate out of her bill. Look closely at the first picture and you can see the tiny baby eating. It was an awesome thing to see.





We went to Bashra Beach on Santa Cruz Island in the afternoon and found a lagoon full of flamingos. I just sat down and watched these graceful birds. They are truly beautiful.





Dennis was quite excited about seeing this Galapagos mockingbird. It was another rare find for his life time list.



Each day here is full of wonder.

Floreana Island

We sailed south during the night and were off the shore of tiny Floreana Island in the morning. The evening before the captain had told us all to get our postcards written because we would be stopping at the post office this morning. Soon after breakfast we all scrambled into our pangas and went ashore to mail our cards and letters. No postage would be required. This is the post office we found. It was established by the sailors of old as a way to communicate with their families. We pulled out the pile of mail inside the barrel and several of us read off the addresses. Any of us going that way were encouraged to take mail and deliver it to the addressee. We brought home two cards to deliver to people in Maryland. I am curious to see if any of the ten cards we wrote will ever be delivered.



After we left the post office we went back to shore and waited to be tendered back to our floating home. The La Pinta is a beautiful boat with three decks and comfortable places to rest and enjoy the ocean.



The crew issued the gear for snorkeling when we returned. I got the gear and thought I would try, but I was just too afraid to jump into that deep ocean. I couldn't make myself do it. About half the passengers snorkeled and frolicked in the water with the fish and the sea lions. The rest of us opted to see the fish through a small glass bottomed boat. We were able to see the beautiful tropical fish, sting rays, sharks and sea lions swimming beneath us. It was a beautiful sight. Dennis spotted a Floreana Mockingbird on shore which made his day. This mockingbird is found only here. There are only about 150 individuals of this species remaining. The naturalist was just as excited as he was.



In the afternoon we went ashore again and walked across the island. It was a beautiful walk. There was a lagoon full of flamingos (the flamingo pictures did not turn out too well, but we got some better ones later.) There were beautiful flowers and lots of birds. This yellow warbler was a new lifetime bird too.



A beautiful deserted beach greeted us on the other side of the island. The footprints in the sand are mine. We were the only people there. We were unable to swim because there were stingrays swimming right off shore, but it was a lovely place to rest and enjoy God's beautiful creation.


___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Jean's condition remains unchanged. She has been is a coma for a week now. Today she had a tracheotomy and a feeding tube inserted. This will make her long term care easier. Continue to pray for Jean and for Bill who still cries.

Fernandina Island

We stepped off our panga through a bunch of big red crabs and around a big sea lion onto Fernandina Island. This is the westernmost and youngest of the Galapagos Islands. It is covered with uneven, ropy lava which made walking difficult, but the sights we saw made the difficult walk easy. The beach was covered with piles and piles of marine iguanas. There were thousands of them just warming themselves in the sun. They really are ugly and scary looking, but the naturalists all assure me that they are harmless. They do have a mighty spit and I got sprayed several times. They spit to clear the salt from they nostrils. They actually blend into the lava and several times I almost stepped on one. I am sure that would have scared me more than the iguanas who seemed completely unaware of our presence. Sling, I couldn't decide which one to pick for you. You will just have to choose from one of these.





Little lava lizards scampered all over the iguanas feeding on little sea urchins on the iguanas' skin. The lizards' lunch was the iguanas' bath.



The island was a nursery for the sea lions. We saw several babies not far from their moms. Twice I saw babies nursing from their moms.



We saw sea turtles often in the water. This beautiful one swam ashore and posed for pictures.



My birdman was always looking for more birds and added new ones to his list every day. On Fernandina he saw this Galapagos pelican and a flightless cormorant. The cormorant is one of the many endemic species that evolved to better survive the harsh life on these islands.






Fernandina felt like we had visited a land that time forgot.

North Seymour Island

Our plane touched down at the tiny one gate airport on the tiny island of Baltra. Before we were off the tarmac Dennis had spotted a new bird, one more for his life time list. After clearing all the legalities of entering the Galapagos Islands we boarded a small bus and took a five minute ride to the pier. As we donned our life jackets to ride the panga (a big rubber raft that was always our ride on and off the yacht) we were greeted by our first sea lion and our first marine iguana. I was excited. As soon as we boarded the La Pinta we were sent upstairs to the main lounge for our first briefing. We were given all the rules and told we would be exploring North Seymour Island that afternoon. It would be a dry landing, meaning we would not need to step into the ocean before stepping up onto the rocks on shore. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch and a short rest period then we piled back into the pangas for our ride ashore.

“Wow! Look, look!” was about all I said for the next three hours. I had hoped to see a blue footed booby. I saw thousands of them. North Seymour is one of their major nesting areas and everywhere I looked there were boobies. They were dancing with one another in a courtship ritual or sitting on nests with their eggs or diving into the sea like torpedoes. It was just awesome







North Seymour is also a nesting area for the magnificent frigate birds. These birds are huge, with a wingspan of more than six feet. They look like small airplanes in flight. The males have a big balloon-like throat pouch that they inflate in order to impress the ladies. I can assure you that I was impressed with their beautiful magnificence.






The island was covered with many kinds of birds. It also had a large number of sea lions and lava lizards. You needed to watch where you stepped or you might step on one of the land iguanas munching on its lunch.




After North Seymour I could hardly wait for whatever wonders might lie in store for us the next day.

Quito

After our long flight to Quito I was excited when we were instructed to prepare for landing. I was watching the small screen in front of me that displayed our route from Atlanta to Ecuador including information like flight speed and altitude. I had just noted that our altitude was 10,000 feet when suddenly the wheels hit the tarmac. We had landed at the capital city of Ecuador which is high in the Andes mountains. The altitude left us a bit breathless and tired for the two days we there – or maybe we were just breathless at the fact that we were actually in Ecuador.
Quito is divided into two sections, New Town and Old Town. New Town is a big modern city with tall buildings and traffic. Old Town was built by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. It is full of beautiful old churches, narrow, crowded streets, tourists and little boys everywhere trying to shine our shoes for only one dollar. Little girls were trying to sell us chewing gum and the women were selling beautiful scarves made from alpaca. I really could not understand what they said since I do not speak Spanish and they spoke no English, but their meaning was clear. If I ever move to another country I will learn the language. It is very frustrating not to understand what is being said.


On a high hill overlooking the city is a enormous statue of the Virgin protecting the city. She is fairly new, built is 1978, and quite spectacular to see. You can see her in this picture taken from one of the many plazas in Old Town. The yellow building is one of the many monasteries in town.





In this picture you can see the crowded, streets of Old Town. It is hard to capture the feel of the peddlers and beggars that lined every street.





We were at the presidential palace at the changing of the guard. It was a nice ceremony, but only two guards were involved so it was a very short ceremony. The guards appeared very young, just boys.





Looking out our hotel window we could see past some of buildings of New Town to the Basilica. The building is lit up at night and was a beautiful sight.





Tomorrow I will start a series of posts abut the Galapagos and the fantastic things we saw there.


Jean's condition remains unchanged. She is still in a coma. She is breathing mostly on her own but is only responsive to painful stimuli. The doctors are not very encouraging. The fear is that she may not wake up and just remain comatose. Bill just cries. It is hard.

Home

We are home. The trip was wonderful beyond our wildest expectations! We have many pictures and stories to share, but right now we are just too tired after the forty hours of travel since we left the boat yesterday morning. We will sort it all out and I promise to share soon.

The day after we left my sister-in-law fell and hit her head. We were out of contact and just found out when we got home. She has a bleed in the brain that they can't seem to control. She is non-responsive and on a ventilator now while my sweet brother tries to be hopeful . Pray for Jean and my brother Bill.

Ecuador

Standing in the middle of the world

Galapagos Islands

Tomorrow is the big day. We have waited and waited with growing excitement thinking July 8 would never come, but as always the much waited day has almost come.
We leave bright and early tomorrow for our once in a lifetime trip to the Galapagos Islands. Tomorrow night we will be in Quito ,Ecuador. After two days there we will fly to the Galapagos Islands. We will spend the next week on a forty passenger tour boat seeing sights we have never seen before. The islands are populated with many varieties of unusual birds and wildlife. This is the place that inspired Charles Darwin to write his theory of evolution. My beloved the bird watcher will increase his life time bird list by many birds that exist only in these islands. I believe he is more excited than he ever has been about a trip. One of the most common birds there is called the Blue Footed Booby. It is a comical duck-like bird that often dances. When I start talking about dancing boobies, I am referring to the birds like the one in the picture.
We will be away from phones and computers. You will have to wait until we return to hear all about our adventures in this far away place.

$

When we returned home from our visit in West Virginia we had a message from our bank to call as soon as possible. There had been unusual activity on our bank account. We weren't too concerned, assuming our out of town charges had been noted. When my husband went in to check it was a little scarier than that. A phone call from someone impersonating my husband had come in from Singapore to verify the faxed withdrawal slip with a signature closely resembling my husband's signature. Whoever it was had all the information about our bank account and was requesting the exact amount of money available in our account plus a loan for $100,000. It all looked very legitimate. Fortunately the bank recognized this as highly unusual and called to verify the transaction before transferring the money. Apparently the information was obtained through records that are part of the public domain about property ownership in Maryland and then through credit checks that had all our financial information. It was scary to think that we were a keystroke away from having our entire savings wiped out. We have closed our bank account and opened a new one that is password protected. The FBI and the Secret Service are investigating the incident. We are grateful to still have our savings.

Michaela

We have just returned from an overnight visit in New Martinsville, WV. The long drive for a short visit was prompted by the need to see one ten-year-old girl who who calls me Gramma. I do love this little girl and just needed to give her a big hug and spend a little time with her.

The hardest part of the trip is always trying to answer the many questions she always asks about her dad. Her father was our foster son. Todd came to live with us when he was fifteen years old. In my heart he became my son, but unfortunately Todd was not able to make that same commitment. We were the end of a long line of parental figures in his life and he was just not able to make another intimate attachment. He was a sweet boy who definitely livened up our household. When he finished high school we sent him to a small college in West Virgina were he fell in love with and married a West Virginia girl. They were married for four years and had a beautiful little girl, our Michaela. Marriage, commitment and responsibility were hard for Todd and one day he just left. He came to see us for Christmas five years ago. We had a great visit. After a week he climbed back into his big truck and drove away. We have not heard anything from him since then. Well, almost nothing. A couple of years after he left we hired a private detective who found him in Iowa. He did call to talk. He said he knew we loved him, but it was hard for him to talk to us. Life was hard for him right then. He would call us when he was able. He has not called.

So Michaela asks us about her dad. She wants to know about him. We tell her some of the funny things he did while he lived with us. She laughs at some of the funny antics we remember. When she asks if he will ever come back we have to say that we don't know, but probably not. Something inside of her daddy got broken a long time ago. He is missing out on so much and that is sad. She is a well loved, happy little girl. We are grateful that we get to be her grandparents.

Airplanes

Saturday we decided to go to the Smithsonian's new Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum near Dulles airport in Virginia. This is an enormous hanger that houses hundreds and hundred of airplanes. There was a replica of the plane the Wright brothers flew ,the space shuttle Enterprise and some of every kind of airplane in between. It was amazing to see so many kinds of planes all in one place. We saw lots of World War II planes. The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, is there. The SR71, The Blackbird, a spy plane used until recently was there. That plane flew from Los Angeles to Washington DC in 64 minutes. There was even an exhibit about the IUE (International Ultraviolet Explorer.) That is a satellite that my beloved worked on for many years. It was cool to see him looking at something that had been such a big part of his life on display in the Smithsonian. It was a fun Saturday thing to do.


The Enola Gay



The white plane in the back is the Concorde



The space shuttle is huge!



Dennis by the IUE console

Laundry Room

I asked my beloved to take a picture of my clean, colorful laundry room. He put together this panorama picture that make my little room look deceptively large. It is only as wide as the washer and dryer. The end with the furnace and water heater is what you see if your back is to the washer. It is a small rectangular room about five feet wide by 10 feet long. I don't have any before pictures so it is hard to tell how much better it looks. It had never been painted. The walls were stained and scarred. The floor was dirty. Now it is clean and bright, but still small. I used up four of my partial cans of left over paint. I wonder what I can do with the rest of my paint. I still have two shades of green, dark blue, bight red, and some antique white.

Any suggestions?

Facebook

Last week I became a member of Facebook. It is a fun way to communicate with my grandchildren. Somehow it seems to be cooler to talk on Facebook than to just talk. It has been fun to set up my page and to add friends. I have found many of the children I was once close to who have now grown up and moved away. I have over twenty friends. I feel so popular. I haven’t yet figured out how to use all the features. You can send virtual gifts and hugs or poke your friends. I was just looking around the site and typed the name Barack Obama into the search. I did find several official and supportive websites as I expected. I also found about twenty-five sites that claimed Obama was the Antichrist. The hate just spilled out of those pages. It is scary what people believe and say. I then typed John McCain into the search engine and found several official and supportive sites. I did find one site that claimed McCain was the Antichrist. So I know some people hate him too. The part of the world I live in is mostly a friendly place filled with kind and gentle people. It always startles me when I come face to face with hatred.

Sunday School

I came across this picture last week. It is a photo of my eldest daughter’s first Sunday School class. She is the cutie pie wearing the bonnet in the middle of the group. The date was 1965. She was twenty months old. Going clockwise around the table from her we see Kim. Kim became an engineer and moved to Seattle where she lives with her husband and a menagerie of animals. The dark haired young teacher is Donna. She has moved to Nashville and is now a great grandmother. I don’t know who she has in her lap. Next is Melodie. She was married and divorced. Last I heard she was an aerobics teacher in Florida. Then we come to the twins, Rocky and Raye, daughters of the teacher Donna. They are both married in living in Nashville. Raye is a grandmother. I’m not sure who the next little girl is. I think her name is Joanna. Then we are back to daughter number one. She grew up, married, raised two beautiful children and still lives in Bowie. The baby in the crib is Graden, the only boy child in the group. He is married with a couple of kids. The last I heard he was selling medical equipment and living in Arkansas. I am just out of the picture feeding my newborn daughter who grew up, married, divorced, and is the mother of three beautiful children. They live here in Bowie too.

Church and Sunday School were a big part of all of these kids lives. Some of them are still faithful to the Church of Christ in which they were raised. Some have found a home in other denominations. Some are no longer believers.

Are you still a part of the faith community in which you raised?

Gettysburg

We have just returned from a two day vacation in Gettysburg, PA. We went to celebrate our forty-seventh wedding anniversary. One of the things we did was to take a Segway tour of the battlefield. It was just one more trip together on our journey through life.

Touring the battlefield was a very sobering experience for me. We stood on this peaceful, green countryside and remembered the tens of thousands of lives that were lost during this three day battle. The ground had been covered with the bodies of men who were fighting for what they each believed was holy and right. They fought for a cause that was worth more than their own lives. They died willingly and courageously. I felt like I was standing on holy ground. The picture of us on the Segways was taken at the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. This is the place where Lee’s troops almost broke through the federal lines. If they had succeeded here, the course of our country’s history might have been very different.



This is the spot where General Lee waited to greet his returning troops after the failure of Pickett’s Charge. Over half of his troops were killed. It was a great defeat and turned the tide of the war.


This is the view from Little Round Top looking down into what became known as the Valley of Death. This little hill was the site of great carnage.


This is a wonderful monument. It was erected in 1938 and dedicated by Franklin Roosevelt. Present at the dedication were many of the veterans from both sides of this great battle. The Eternal Peace Monument was erected as a symbol of this nation’s commitment to live together united in peace. I found it symbolic that one of the cannons placed there to indicate where it had been during the battle now held the nest of a bluebird.

It is my prayer that one day all the guns of the world become the home for nesting birds.

Ol' time Religion

Like the country song says I come from a long line of love. Today I was thinking about the legacy of fathers and grandfathers. The lives of these men impacted the lives of many generations to follow them. I wonder if they would be surprised at the stories that are still told about them today.

My grandfather was a Church of Christ preacher in Texas during the first half of the last century. In those days preachers were not paid by the church and they had to support themselves and their families with other jobs. My mother tells this story she remembers about a gift her father was given after holding a meeting.

Mom was about five years old. Her little sister Rubye was three. The buggy they used to ride to meeting had two small red chairs in the back where the girls sat for the long ride to and from church. That Sunday the congregation paid my grandfather for his preaching with two barrels of molasses. The barrels were placed in the back of the buggy next to the girls’ chairs. It was hot in Texas and as they rode home the heat caused the molasses to expand. The barrels began to leak and the molasses oozed slowly out onto the floor of the buggy. When they finally arrived home the girls were unable to move because their shoes were firmly stuck in the molasses. Their dad yelled at them to quit dawdling and climb out of the buggy. They started to cry because they could not move. Finally he figured out their predicament and he reached in and unlaced their high top shoes and pulled them out barefooted. She doesn’t remember how the shoes were freed, but since they were their only good shoes they were rescued, cleaned and worn again to meeting the next week.

What stories have been passed down in your family?

Painting

I walked into my laundry room this week and actually looked at it. It is really dirty! I started cleaning and sorting things out. I use that room to store the things I don’t know where else to put. It is a small, cluttered, dirty room. Among other things in there is all my left-over paint. I have decided to brighten the place up by giving it a fresh coat of paint, using all the half full cans of paint I already have. Today I painted the ceiling with the left-over half can of white primer. That has already brightened it up. Tomorrow I will figure out how to paint the walls and shelves with the two shades of red, two shades of blue, two shades of white and some olive green paint. It will at least be clean and colorful. Another good thing is I will not have all that paint on the shelf and there will be room for me to put up some of the clutter. I think it will be fun to paint.

Does anybody out there have a room decorated in all the left over colors of other projects?

Have a good week-end everyone.