The Lady at Her Finest

I have returned home from the trip to NYC I took with my church's (Trinity United Methodist) youth choir. We did all sorts of cool stuff--sang at missions, local churches, and toured the city. The first few days were wonderful. 75 degree weather, sun--it was awesome. Then it joined the ranks of Alabama, hitting 90+ degree temps.

I have to be honest, I was really worried about how it would work out with 90 teenagers. But luckily, no one got lost/hurt/..... anything else.  I took this while walking the perimeter of the Statue of Liberty, with the summer sun in the background.

The common disease of summer boredom is encroaching upon me...in May we're all like "Yea! We can sit at home and do nothing all day!" And now we are sitting on the couch passing time by drawing faces on our lesser-liked teachers in the yearbook. I try to avoid that by filling my summer with activities and things... church youth functions, mission trips, beach trips, that sort of thing. We are heading to Gulf Shores, AL this weekend for our annual "Mom's-side-of-the-family-beach-trip". My grandfather rents a big house and we all stay for a week.

Well, I hope all of your summers are going well. You know it literally just dawned on me that adults with most jobs have to work over the summer. Alas, it is something to do.

-Rip

I AM still alive...

This photo is from, as you may remember from an earlier post and Birmingham, AL DP, Grayton Beach in Florida. The body of water in the picture is a branch of Western Lake, just about 30 feet from the Gulf. It really is a beautiful place, quite untouched by most development, considering its neighbors Destin and Panama City. We were there last over New Years, but we have at least one trip planned for June/July. My fathers brother's family lives ON western lake- his daughters are Emily and Lucy...one at USF and one headed to NYU! (Congrats to Lucy, by the way, for being excepted into NYU's school of drama... or whatever they call it.) Ya'll probably dont care about that anyhow though....

Well, the title of my post was what it was for a few reasons.
1) I havent made a post in quite sometime, so I appreciate those of you who havent just given up on me entirely.

2) Some horrific tornadoes have devastated much of Alabama in the past week, and I am very happy to say that Homewood (on the southern city limit of B'ham) was not in the path of the storm, although there was a major tornado that touched down just a few miles from us, somewhere in northern Birmingham. I must say, that my outlook on these storms really has changed since this disaster. I mean, in Alabama, its not uncommon for there to be tornado warnings twice a week in April/May. Most of them dont touch down, and if they do, do not cause any widespread damage, so my thought was usually "hey, we get out of school early!". Now, though, I think I will take these storms much more seriously, now that an area that is so close to home has been so devastated. It's just one of those things that no one has any control over. Although, taking proper cover is so important- I have heard stories of people who have been divided into different locations in the home, and those who were in "safe" places in the home (bathrooms, basements, etc.) survived, while those who were not werent so lucky.

Well, that was quite a long post. If you skipped my ranting on storms, I completely understand! =) Its nice to know that somewhere in this world there is peace and tranquility.