The view as we walked across the gangplank.

The first thing we entered was this enormous, warehouse-sized area. I took a picture of it, and immediately some guards came over and said that I should not be taking pictures here! (By the way, these little pieces of machinery in the foreground are some of the things Ray does maintenance and repairs on.)

Thyda took us all over the ship, up and down many flights of narrow, steep stairs and through many corriders in which we had to step up over a doorway about every 12 feet. She is small, but mighty, let me tell you. She carries heavy supplies up those many flights of stairs for hours at a time. Here she let me take a picture of her in her "bedroom", a berthing where about 50 girls sleep on triple bunkbeds. Her bed is on the third layer behind the blue curtain. When the ship goes out to sea there are 5000 crew members aboard!

I was also allowed to take a picture of this statue of Theodore Roosevelt.

Eventually we got up to the flight deck onto which navy jets land and from which they take off. It is astounding to think of the precision and skill required of those pilots.

Here's our Thyda under the American flag.

The massive control tower on the ship.

A man on the flight deck came over to us and asked if we'd like him to take a picture of us. Bless his heart! He said he knows how it is when you can never get a picture of your whole group together.

A view of other aircraft carriers.

The view from the flight deck was amazing. My camera most certainly did not do it justice.

After the tour of the ship we went back to the apartment, packed the car, then went to the Golden Corral for a buffet lunch and to Walmart for a few supplies for the road. We said our goodbyes to Thyda, and before "taking off" Dick had to give the GPS some info.

This time we took routes 64 and 95 home. I sat in the back and read my book most of the way home. Dick and Sam took turns driving and navigating. Dick also took pictures while Sam drove. Below you can see the Washington Monument in the distance as we went through DC.

There were bridges on this trip as well, but at least it didn't cost $12 to cross them!

I think this is a view of a Maryland Harbor.

We did not have any map or Map quest directions for the trip home, but relied totally on the GPS to tell us what to do. At some point it decided to take us on the scenic route through Cecil County, MD and southern Chester County, PA. Has anyone ever heard of Gumtree Road? We were on it for five or six miles! Below is a picture of the Conowingo Dam near the MD/PA border.

FINALLY we arrived at this house in Downingtown, PA where Sam has a third floor apartment. He gave us a quick tour, we said our goodbyes, and were on our way.

It was a little less than an hour's drive home from there. Destiny contented herself in the back seat, playing Solitaire on Dick's PDA.

AHHH. It was a fun weekend, but it was GOOD to be home.

Road trip, Olympics

Well, it's time to move on. Enough of my "hair-brain." I'm glad it entertained you. Isn't the above photo amazing? I took that with my cell phone one evening as I was driving. (I pulled over, just in case you're about to scold me.)

I'm waiting to hear back from Destiny's mom as to what time I can pick her up today, so I'll do a post a while. I'm hoping to hit the sack really early this evening, because we want to leave for Virginia Beach at 4 AM. We'll go to Downingtown first to pick up Sam and then head on down the Eastern shore to Ray and Thyda's, hopefully arriving by about noon.

It's been a while since we've done a road trip - we're jet setters, you know. I remember one of the last times we did a road trip to visit Jeremy in Connecticut, I was sitting on the passenger side with a bunch of stuff at my feet and a bunch of stuff on my lap and trying to keep track of my reading glasses and my sunglasses. I could never find anything I currently needed, and would have to move piles of stuff to search. To top it off I misplaced the New Jersey turnpike ticket and we had to pull over to move EVERYTHING before we finally found it. Dick said, "I'm going to have to start putting you on a train." I think I'll let Sam sit up front with Dick while I sit in the back with Destiny. I'll have a little more room for all my stuff, and maybe Dick can put up with me better that way!

I think it's going to be hard to go to bed early this evening, because we just love watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics. I'm also excited to see if that U.S. swimmer (Phelps) breaks a record by winning eight medals. I love to watch swimming. Jeremy was a year-round swimmer for quite a few years and was on a relay team that went to States a few times. I miss those days.


I'm sorry you southerners are having such intense heat, but let me tell you, in PA the weather is PERFECT - 80 degrees and very low humidity. I wish we could put weather like this in a bottle and save it for next winter.

Have a great weekend. We're coming back Monday evening.

My "hair-brain"

My own "hair-brained" mistakes have cost me a bunch of gas and time this week. If I could manage to kick my own butt, I would!

The first one:
For the upcoming choir performance I mentioned in my last post, we are having only two rehearsals, so my friend Linda made CD's of our two songs for the choir members to be able to work on the songs themselves. I went to Sunday's rehearsal feeling so organized and prepared, with a numbered folder of music for each person in the choir. The rehearsal went just great and then at the end I told them they could each take a CD along home. But alas, where were the CD's?? Dick checked our car, no CD's. I checked my music bag, no CD's. I had left the CD's at home!! I couldn't believe it. I promised everyone I'd get a CD to them.

So on Monday I mailed one and then drove around town and countryside, with addresses and phone numbers in hand, delivering those CD's, then last evening I delivered two more in a different direction, and today I'll deliver the last two. I had to leave lots of them on doorsteps. If you're a choir member, did you get your CD? I must say, it was fun discovering where everyone lives. But after all that driving on Monday I had to take Destiny back home to Reading, so by the time I got home I was sick of being in the car. Maybe that was practice for our upcoming road trip. Hmmm.

The second one:
Tuesday evening I went to Office Max, feeling all good about the money I was about to save. With Sunday's newspaper we had received a paper bag from Office Max, and for a few days they were offering 15% off everything one could fit into the bag. Cool! I needed ink cartridges for my printer and I needed some of my annual school supplies including my favorite teacher's planning book and my big desk pad calendar. I also took some old ink cartridges along since they take $3.00 off the new one when you return an old one. It took some searching, but I did indeed find my favorite plan book and a desk pad calendar with the school year, as opposed to the calendar year, on it. I approached the checkout, and asked if they still give $3.00 off for returned cartridges. No, they changed that policy on July 1st. Now they have an Office Max card which keeps track of your purchases and your returned cartridges and you can go online each month to print out your personal coupons, or something like that. I was disappointed, but at least I knew I'd be getting my three-bucks-a-piece sometime in the future. So I proceeded to check out. I had not bothered to put my things into the paper bag, so I asked, "Do I have to actually put my things into this bag to get the 15% off?" I picked up the bag and discovered I HAD BROUGHT THE WRONG BAG!! Unbelievable. I exclaimed, "Oh my word, it's the wrong bag!" as heads turned. I asked if I had to have the right bag in order to get the 15% off, and was told that yes, I did have to have the right bag. What to do, what to do? The things I was buying were not inexpensive, some of the things were ones I buy only once a year and I wanted that discount! But I hated the thought of having to drive there again, looking for my stuff again.... It was 9 PM and they began locking the doors. I asked would they please keep my things at the service desk if I would come back in the morning, which they kindly agreed to do. They just wanted me out of there!

Wednesday morning I returned with the RIGHT bag in tow. They still had my things, plus a few other things, at the service desk. I told them which were my things and which were not, went to the checkout line, again without putting the things INTO the bag. I gave the cashier my bag and she started ringing things up saying that the calendar would be regular price since it could not be put into the bag. I said, "It can't fit into the bag? If I rolled it up I could get it into the bag." She said, "Okay, you roll it up and if you fit it into the bag I'll give you the discount." You better believe I rolled that thing up and got it into the bag! I had to make sure the 15% off was worth more than the gas I used to make the extra trip!!

I bet you're sick of hearing about that stupid bag, aren't you? So am I.

Deep cleaning (my computer!)

My computer is a storehouse for WAY too many emails and pictures. Every summer one of the things on my list is to delete, delete, delete. But it's HARD!! I think my "sent" email file has almost 3000 in it, and when I start to delete them, I get to reading them - just like when you try to clean out a filing cabinet or "junk" drawer. There's so much interesting stuff to read!! One day back in the fall of 2004 I began deleting emails from our "in box", all except for my dad's. I ran out of time and did not get finished. THANK GOODNESS!! A day or two later my sister Janet died. How I wished I still had every email she had ever sent me. I do still have quite a few, which I cherish.

Then there's my Picasa files. Oh my goodness. When we first got a digital camera in 2003 we did not know how to save our pictures in an organized fashion, and even worse was the state of affairs with the pictures I had saved off other people's emails and blogs, etc. This morning I spent HOURS organizing those pictures into very specific files with titles that are descriptive, deleting many as I went.

It suddenly hit me yesterday that I only have two weeks of summer left. I have gotten very little deep cleaning or painting done. It feels like I just went from event to event all summer long - my first trip to Florida, camping with our church, Lisa and George's visit here, camping with Dick's family, July 4th with my family, VBS, my second trip to Florida, the weekend at Ebenezer with my family, Hershey Park, and now this weekend we're going to Virginia Beach to see Ray and Thyda. But I wouldn't trade one of those "events" for any amount of deep cleaning or painting, so why am I complaining anyway?

And behind the scenes I have been working on one last "event" before school starts. In the past few years I have directed Christmas musicals at church that brought together people from various other churches. As an outgrowth of that choir experience, we are planning a corporate Sunday morning worship service on August 24th with our church plus the one I grew up in and the one Dick grew up in. We'll be holding the service in my school's gym. We will have a choir and a worship team including people from all three churches, as well as other things, and a meal together. On Sunday afternoon we had our first choir practice and next Tuesday evening we'll have our first worship team practice. I just love doing stuff like this. I get "pumped' just thinking about it!

Gotta run.

Crazy blogger

I've been having picture posting issues this evening. But I'm tired of trying to fix it. So depending upon which browser you use, you may see every picture I posted twice, or big empty squares where the first ones were that later disappeared, or maybe little tiny rectangles. But hopefully you can see each picture at least once.

Adrias came to visit!

Sunday afternoon and evening Frank spent the day at our house and brought his youngest son Adrias along. Adrias will have his first birthday later this month. We had not seen him since Christmas. He grew hair!! (Because he is a "mamma baby", Frank also brought along Elizer, Abby's older son whom Adrias is very familiar with.) How we wish Frank had stayed with Abby. We loved her so much. But what is past is past, and we were just happy to have a chance to enjoy getting to know this precious baby.

Don't you just want to eat him up?? Sooo precious!

Hershey Park

So yesterday was the long awaited day at Hershey Park, provided by Dick's employer. I have loved going to this park since the first time I went there on a 9th grade bus trip. That first ride on the Comet hooked me. I LOVED the thrill!

Until.....I gradually began to discover that I didn't like the feeling of having my brains knocked back and forth inside my skull, and I didn't enjoy looking like a drowned rat in public, and I wasn't sure my heart would keep beating if I did a 100 foot drop at 75 miles per hour, and my neck no longer recovered from a direct hit from behind.

So while I have gradually been enjoying less and less of the thrills, Destiny has been getting taller and braver. I went on a few rides that I still enjoy, but the majority of the day I held our stuff and watched people, LOTS and LOTS of people, TOO MANY people, and occasionally I caught a few ZZZZ's, while Dick and Destiny had all the fun. I was wishing I had brought a book to read.

Destiny and Dick, however, have no reservations about getting wet or going up high or being put upside down or getting banged around. After enduring LOOOONG lines they rode the Claw (below) and the Comet (the original wooden roller coaster). They would have riden many other crazy things too, but the lines were too long and there was too much to do.

One ride I still love is the Pirate Ship (below).

This little train ride still thrilled Destiny.

The Boardwalk was the favorite and most time-consuming part of the park for Destiny.

For a period of time most rides were shut down because of an impending storm. However, the storm never came, and soon the rides resumed. Dick and Destiny lined up for the Fender Bender, and once again I resumed my sitting and waiting. I looked up and spied this beautiful sight - the sun shining brightly on a big, white cloud that peered out between two tall evergreens.

The last ride of the day was the Carousel - a favorite of all ages.

Getting the work done so we can play tomorrow

Today I got my weekly bookwork and bills taken care of and our weekly laundry, I text messaged back and forth with Ray, emailed back and forth with Sam, talked on the phone twice with Jeremy, went to the heart doctor with my dad and stepmother, drove to Reading to pick up Destiny, cleaned up the kitchen floor after Destiny washed the dishes and got a whole lot of water on the floor (she wanted to see what it would be like to slip on the floor). And now we're watching Cheaper By the Dozen II on TV with popcorn. What a funny movie!

And that was my day. Tomorrow we go to Hershey Park - a day provided by Dick's employer, including a free meal. Dick is there this evening with a boy from our church, riding the roller coasters. Destiny was unhappy when she found that out. She said, "But I like the wild rides too." I guess we'll see how many of them she's tall enough for by now. I have a feeling the days of kiddie rides are about over for her!