a "quiet" lunch with the Parks! 

before the process begins... 

starting the process... 

I feel a tingling... 

There it is!!!!! 

we measure it for documentary purposes... 

It's a dead rat!!!! 13 inches worth!!! 

Amazing! I have a neck back there! 

Proud parents of a "bouncing" baby tail!!! 13 inches long, 1.2 oz. 

the "new and improved" me! 

ibid 

last week ...

sorry, i've been putting up more images than thoughts lately. summer gets to be that way. you know that, i'm sure.

jimmy is here for the next couple of days. we'll be driving him up to DC on Thursday to spend the night with Lolly and family before driving him to BWI on Friday evening to see him off to Chile.

yeah, Chile.

He's going to live.

I'm really not sure how I'm going to handle it. the thought of him going is both incredibly saddening and exhilerating. saddening because we REALLY DON'T KNOW when we'll be able to SEE him (to hug him) again. it might be a few months, or it could easily be a few YEARS. the joke is, now that he's going to be living there, we'll have a place to stay when we go visit. and that IS in the plans -- to go visit and take the family to see where Daddy grew up.

i'm beginning to get a feeling for what my aunts and uncles must've gone through when momma and daddy left for overseas in 64. i talked about it some in the message on sunday. (see Emmerton Messages in the links to the right)

God, be with him.

dress-up, continued, this time, the attendant, the bride, and the train-holder ... (the DALMATIAN train-holder) they'd just been parading around the living and dining room, and were back down in the basement seeing what other concoctions they could come up with.  

Judson, Hannah and Caleb, aka: doggy/lion, madame, and spiderman, enjoying the perennial game of dress-up. 

Leslie and Jimmy working on this new dice game... the intricacies of which escaped me at the moment. 

Angelica and Leslie. Her due date is in August, but she has a feeling the baby will come sooner than that. We asked her to call us after her contractions were 5 minutes apart for half an hour to an hour, not ... 16 hours, there IS an hour's drive to the hospital to take into consideration. :-)  

Roberta and John Kennedy. 

Eusebia and Jessica (the one that Leslie took to the hospital and got there half an hour before Jessica was born). We went to visit them this afternoon.  

Volleyball is the game of choice. ALWAYS. 

Cecilio and some of the other guys from White Stone hanging out on the monkey bars. 

had an encuentro today here at jbc, it was an awesome time. had a group of 10 people, youth and James, the youth ministry intern, along with one of the parents (in the middle in the picture - Willard and Marian Bowen's daughter Cindy) joine us for the afternoon. they helped with the clothes closet as well as the food pantry setup. i think they really enjoyed getting to know the folks and meeting the youth from JBC who came. :-) I'm bushed!!!  

Hannah doing the rock climbing thing at Rivahfest in Tappahannock. she made it all the way up twice. the first time was on the hardest section, the second was (i believe) an accident ... the attendant thought she hadn't gotten very far (it didn't take her long at all), so i'm thinking he thought he'd give her another shot on an easier wall. 

caleb and judson enjoying the view across the rappahannock on the grounds of St Margaret's school. i'm putting this picture on my desktop. the orange thing on Caleb's head is a balloon hat made to 'be' a tiger. 

Caleb at his last T-Ball game this morning. see the ball on the far right side of the picture??? *I* thougt that was pretty cool!  

Leslie with Cecilio ... i think we were getting ready to make a run to Hyacinth and Callao apts and a couple of other places to let folks know about the encuentro the next day ...  

Cecilio came over last Saturday and spent the day and night with us, then went with us to the encuentro at Rappahannock Baptist Church, along with ... 22 others. had a wonderful time. forgot to take the camera. will try not to do that again. for a long time i thought it wasn't working. turns out we'd inadvertently turned off the display screen on the back. (ugh) ... ;-)