a few more years shall roll

What a great weekend!
Friday evening, I spent time with my mom, dad, and sister in Carlisle. Abby recently moved into a new place with her friend, and has redecorated her room and bathroom with such artistic flair that I can’t believe we’re related. It was fun to get to stay overnight with her and catch up a bit. I also found a great pair of shoes to wear to the wedding I attended the next day. Mine are the pink, flowered heels in this pic:

Saturday. Since I was missing the Live8 Concert back home in Philly, I better have had a good excuse. I did. I got up early, had a leisurely breakfast with Abs at Panera, and hopped on 81 south to go to Charlottesville, VA. I love driving through the Shenendoah Valley—it’s really one of the most beautiful drives around. And with surprisingly little traffic, I was in C-ville in 3 and a half hours. I was there to attend the wedding of Sarah and Brandon. I first met Sarah nearly four years ago at an Andrew Peterson Christmas show in Lynchburg, VA. We’ve stayed in touch and it was wonderful to get to see her and Brandon begin their new life together. I will post some pictures on my picture site soon.

I ran a few errands, and waited for Dawn and Katey to arrive from North Carolina. They took a detour to Monticello, but found it harder to spot than expected. However, we did get this lovely picture of the three of us there after we changed for the wedding. We had a fun time, seeing friends from the internet (gasp!) and celebrating!

Up very early the next morning, I left Dawn and Katey and drove back to Philly. Again, no traffic at all, so a relatively quick trip. As you may have read, my car stereo was stolen a while ago and I decided to sing on my own. I was surprised by how many hymns I remembered! All four verses of some—five of Come Ye Sinners. It was a good way to pass the time Sunday morning, especially since I missed the morning service. I got to church at 10:30, in time for the beginning of our 5-6 hours meeting for our trip abroad. One of the workers over there is in the States for a while and spent the day with us, giving us a better sense of what we’ll be doing there. It made the whole trip very real—almost felt like we were on our way. And, in fact, it won’t be long now. We leave next Friday! After our meeting, we went upstairs to grab some leftover cheesesteaks, then headed to La Columbe for some coffee and more hang time (we’re getting good at this spending time together thing!). We stopped back at the park to sit for a few minutes, where I snapped the end of my roll of film from the wedding.

After evening service, I returned my friend Joyce’s cat carrier to her. She is my ever gracious friend, who lets me borrow the carrier on the rare occasion I actually take my cat to the vet! Then, a bunch of us the wandered the streets searching for sustenance. Actually, three of us got ice cream, and everyone else real food, and we reconvened in a circle at Rittenhouse Square. The night was gorgeous, and we just sat and chatted til about 10:15.

Monday, the fourth of July, was my All-American day. Seriously, it was the real deal. Sarah and I joined a bunch of friends for a BBQ at the guy’s house in Germantown, where we ate, and talked, and tossed football, and played street wiffle ball off their front porch. Classic. Then, we caravanned (is that a word?) over to another friend’s house, where we played about six volleyball games before jumping into the pool to cool off. Ate a quick dinner and rushed (seriously—we were like a secret service caravan of cars speeding through the suburbs to catch our train into the city) to the station. We made it to the Parkway by the Art Museum in time to catch the end of the parade (it was ok). At 8:30 the Celebrate Freedom concert began with Bryan Adams. He was followed by Rufus Wainwright, Patti LaBelle, and finally Elton John, who sang the longest version of Rocketman ever. Seriously, he ended the song four times. In general the concert was so-so, but the fun was being there with so many other people. We had fifteen in our group, but we added about 8-10 more throughout the night. Fireworks finally went off at 11pm and were a nice display—I’ve never been that close to the display at the Art Museum—usually I see if from the highway on my way home! We joined the hordes leaving the area, and got to the train station in time to get our train back. We didn’t have to pay either way—the train was too jammed for the conductors to get around. Sarah and I got home at about 12:45—a long day, but so enjoyable. Food, sports, friends, music, fireworks—a great 4th!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 5th, 2005 at 3:16 pm and is filed under General, family, grace and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.