Summer Wrap-Up

A few weeks ago, I posted on here about how the summer was flying by and how I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss out. I included a link to a list of "101 Bits of Summer Fun," and I used that as my springboard. Since then, I've managed to have quite a few bits of summer fun. Here are some from the list:

*Stay up late (I did this several times in order to finish books.)

*Read a book, or seven (See the right-hand margin for recent reads.)

*Write a letter

*Plant something (Unfortunately, the hibiscus had a short life due to the drought, but most of the vinca is still thriving.)

*Eat breakfast for dinner

*Go to the library (I checked out The Mountain Between Us.)

*Take a class (I took 2 at Arthur Murray--thanks to a Groupon--and learned how to waltz!)

*Sing a song (I did this in the car, but I counted it.)

And then, I made up some of my own:

*Attend worship led by Kari Jobe (Amazing!)

*Plan a reunion with my small group (We met for dinner each month, which was a lot of fun.)

*Attend the opening night of The Help (This was worth going on a week night!)

*Try a new restaurant during restaurant week (Eddie V's in Dallas was fantastic!)

*Attend the Longhorn Rally at Joe T's (It was fun to see all the burnt orange and get an update from Coach Brown on what to expect this season.)

I'm blaming this summer's record heat for the fact that I didn't attempt more. Most nights, after walking in the 110-degree heat from the building to the parking garage and climbing the stairs several flights, I just wanted to come home and sit under a fan. So next summer, or maybe even this fall, I'll be a little more proactive and reach out to others by working in a soup kitchen, baking cupcakes for neighbors, or taking books to the children's hospital.

Summer Time

Despite having been out of grad school for 11 years now, I still miss the feel of summer breaks. I think after all those years of schooling, my body got into a rhythm of studying hard and knowing that there'd be mandatory respites carved into the calendar.

Now, summers are usually one of the busiest times at work, and I seldom take off for a real break without combining it with a continuing education seminar. And so it feels like summers just slip away.

But I've realized that I need to make my own "summer time." Even if I can't take three months off, I can still enjoy summer's fun activities. I just need to be more intentional about scheduling them on evenings and weekends.

And while I was pondering this, I came across this list of "101 Bits of Summer Fun," thanks to Ann Voskamp, and had the perfect starting point. I love that the list includes service-oriented bits of fun, like taking books to a children's hospital, working in a soup kitchen, and taking cookies to a fire station. I've picked out some of the "bits" from the list and added some of my own.

I've penned the date-specific activities on the calendar and the rest I'll pick and choose from each week. I'm hoping that these last eight weeks of summer don't speed by as quickly as the first four did!

Wide Open Spaces

I wasn't raised in West Texas, but I have a great appreciation for its wide open spaces. I was reminded of this when I drove through West Campus at UT this past week and noticed the hair's width of sunlight trying to peak between the numerous apartment buildings, sorority and fraternity houses, and the businesses that are all elbowing one another for space.

And for me, that love translates from space between houses to space on my calendar. I'm not fond of having events back-to-back night after night. But sometimes a busy calendar can't be avoided. The past two weeks have been an example of that.

The trip over Memorial Day weekend to see my mother was a top priority because neither my sister nor I had been able to spend Mother's Day with our mother. My sister and I had a wonderful time on our road trip down south, stopping at local bakeries along the way even though we already had cupcakes from The Cupcake Cottage in tow. What can I say; we brake for bakeries.

While we were home, we looked at pictures from my mom's recent trip to the Holy Land and heard her version of the trip, tried a new local restaurant that serves great sandwiches (and has yummy sweets as well), and made a trip to San Antonio to do a little belated Mother's Day shopping.

One of the highlights of the trip was worshipping at a church other than the one I grew up in. The church body was small in number but exuded amazing faith and authenticity. A guest speaker had been scheduled to speak that day but asked to come at a later date because the body had just lost one of its members to cancer. The worship that morning celebrated her life as well as the life we all have in Christ. It was beautiful to witness how this body of believers does life together. And it was great afterwards to get to drop in on some family friends before hitting the road to return.


My sister and I returned to Cowtown late Sunday night, and she flew back to California on Memorial Day. I unpacked, did laundry, and geared up for a short work week (that included training two interns in less than two days) and another trip south--this time for a work seminar. The seminar is one of two that are held each year that is specifically related to my field, so I felt that I needed to attend, despite the bad timing. And so I went.

The second trip made me realize how infrequently I travel now that I'm no longer an auditor. There was a time when I traveled 13 weeks during an 11-month period. Thankfully, that isn't the case anymore. But I must say that I recognized anew the perks of traveling for work: staying in a nice hotel where someone else makes the bed, where a sign actually asks me to leave my towels on the floor so that housekeeping will know to put out fresh clean ones, where a newspaper awaits at my door each morning and Starbucks beckons me from the lobby with iced green tea each afternoon, and where the view looked like this:

Not bad for the government rate!

I have come to recognize that my desire for wide open spaces on my calendar is simply another way that my desire to control things manifests itself. I want to be able to decide when I go and where I go, but mandatory events inked on the calendar chip away at that control. It's not a pretty picture and can cause me to miss out on the great views that God wants to give me, if only I would freely let Him be in charge of the calendar and the pen and stop trying to wrestle Him each time some back-to-back events hit the schedule.

Top Ten Things I Learned While On Vacation

I wanted to do one more thing to wrap up my vacation, so here's a little top ten list that I made of things I learned:

#10 - Traveling with a group of twelve is not for the impatient. Everywhere we went we waited. We waited for close to forty-five minutes to get three cars out of valet parking. We waited to get seated at restaurants (to the tune of over an hour at one place). We waited for our food. We were lucky to see any sites after how long it took just to get food several times a day. It made me wonder how Jesus and the twelve disciples did it day in and day out (not the waiting at restaurants or for cars, just traveling with a large group in general). But the waiting was worth it; when will we ever get all twelve of us together again to travel Texas?

#9 - I want some of my 80-year-old great aunt’s adventuresome spirit. Who else would say after riding a train for nine hours longer than expected, “That was FUN!”

#8 - Take time to watch the butterflies, and watch children as they try to catch them. I had great fun with my seven-year-old cousin as she patiently waited for a butterfly to land on her. When you live where it rains most of the year like she does, having a butterfly land in your hand and travel up your arm is a real treat!

#7 - I’m not ready for the old folks home yet, but rocking in rockers on a balcony with the whole group while listening to an outdoor German concert is a lot of fun.

#6 - Pictures keep the vacation and the memories alive. The day we got back, we made a CD of all our photos and have had a lot of fun going through them and reminiscing over things that just happened last week. I can only imagine that we will wear out the CD, if that’s possible.

#5 - If you are trying to break the sound barrier, just call our group. We actually scared my young cousin with how loud we got while playing a game. We definitely know how to have a good time.

#4 - The beauty of the hill country filled my soul: Think green rolling hills with amazing vistas. And all the culture. I enjoyed soaking it all up.

#3 - There comes a time to put away the sister hat and just wear the friend hat. My sister is nearing thirty, and yet I caught myself asking her where she was going at times, as if she needed me to keep tabs on her. The word “annoying” aptly described my actions. So, I’m working on cutting my “apron strings.”

#2 - I sleep better in my bed at home (the place where I grew up) than I sleep anywhere else on earth.

#1 - My dog will always greet me when I return from vacation as if I have been gone a lifetime because she missed me with all of her heart.

Summer Vacation Built on Secrets

My extended family is not known for being able to keep a secret. They don’t mean to reveal secrets; it’s just that they tend to leak secret information before they are even conscious that what they are talking about is a secret. But this year was different.

Last August when I was with my aunts, we decided that we should plan a surprise for August 2007 to commemorate my mom’s ??th birthday. The official planning started in January after we learned that my sister would be coming to Texas for a week in June. We all decided that Mom’s birthday celebration would be carried out then instead of August, thus increasing the chance to surprise her.

As we started planning, additional relatives asked to be part of the surprise. We soon assembled a group of twelve that would be coming to Texas for four days to visit San Antonio, Fredericksburg, and Boerne.

Meanwhile, my sister and I had a lot of storytelling to do. We easily convinced Mom to take the week off from work. The harder part would be getting her to pack for four days without spilling the beans. However, about three weeks prior to the trip, my sister told her that we (which Mom assumed was the three of us) would be taking a “girls’ trip” to San Antonio and Fredericksburg for a couple of days. Mom peppered my sister with questions, but my sister answered them all without slipping. And because my aunts were afraid that they would accidentally tell Mom that they were coming to Texas (i.e., the big secret), they stopped communicating with my mother so that they would not have an opportunity to divulge the secret.

On the big day, all four of my mom’s sisters, some of their daughters and granddaughters, and one of my mom’s aunts arrived in San Antonio by plane, train, and automobile. As we passed the evening awaiting my mother’s arrival, everyone kept asking me, “Do you think your mother suspects anything?” and “What do you think her reaction will be?”

The answer came around 11:15 p.m. when my sister convinced my mother that they were meeting a friend in The Menger Hotel lobby. My mom was urgently searching around the lobby when she spotted me. (She thought that she would be picking me up from the train station later that evening.) She slowly started to notice the people around me and recognized their familiar faces. She was in shock and started crying. She kept asking, “Why?” But she could not process my sister’s answers of “because it’s your birthday” and “because we love you.”

Mom stayed awake most of that night trying to sort through what had occurred. Thankfully, she was able to put the shock of the evening behind her and enjoy the next three days with her extended family. As for my sister and I, we took early retirement from the vacation planning business and now use our time to confess the many fibs that we devised to get Mom to go along with our plan.

I'm Back!

I've left the porch swing at our adorable B&B cabin and am back at home. Unfortunately, the day sped away without a "real post" as unpacking, laundry, mail, and an eager dog wanted my time and attention. I got a lot accomplished today and hope to get back "up & running" for real tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

P.S.--The one post I did on vacation was posted outside McDonald's in our small town. It was the only place that had Wi-Fi available in a multi-county area. While we were in Fredericksburg, I was told that I could go sit at a pecan company and try to feed off their Wi-Fi, but I thought the locals might think that to be a little odd and didn't want to discourage their business.

Preparing To Have Fun

I now know why a lot of people don’t take vacations. It is WORK to get ready for one.

I’m in the middle of a huge project at work that I want to wrap up before I leave for vacation. And, I’m feeling “hard pressed on every side” as I try to make that happen. You see, I have appointments and errands and obligations before and after work each day, which limit my ability to work extra hours to get this huge project done.

But are all the things I’ve crammed into my schedule in preparation for vacation really necessary?

Did I need a haircut, a brow wax, and a pedicure? I tell myself that those were absolutely necessary because I am seeing my family. After all, I wouldn’t want to show up as the "Shaggy, Unibrow, Callous Foot Wonder" and embarrass them.

Do I “need” to get the dog bathed and get my house in “perfect” order for the housesitter? Obviously, I don’t want to be known as a slob or have the housesitter deal with the dog hair that is everywhere.


And then those familiar words hit me: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

You see, I am a Martha through and through. I want everything looking perfect. I want everything to be in order.

But at what cost? Sacrificing prayer time?

I see a definite correlation between the increase in my anxiety level and my absence of time with the Lord. I want to be prayed up for this trip--for good health, safe travel, and sweet time with family. But in order to do that, I must make prayer a priority and dispense with my preconceived notions of what I may or may not look like when I arrive and how my house might look while I’m gone.

Lord, I want to choose “what is better.” Help me. As I prepare for this trip, show me what really needs to be done.