Goodbye’s

We said goodbye to some friends tonight. One of the downsides of living in a place like Cambridge is that for all the new people that are coming in, just as many are leaving. This could be true of anywhere you live, I suppose, but in Cambridge the cycle of coming and going is compressed into three years. Three years may sound like a lot at first, but we just finished our first year, during which we did a great deal of settling in and getting to know new people, places, etc. It feels like we’re just getting to know our friends, and some of them are already leaving… it makes me want roots.

People need roots… knowing people and places is just the start of it; the real treasure is not just in getting to know who other people really are, it’s in realizing that after all the time you’ve spent with someone, they are finally getting to know who you are as well. We all long to be known deeply; getting recognized in Wal-Mart isn’t good enough. We want to be known by others because deep down we’re all pretty much still trying to figure out who we are, and the smart ones of us have figured out that relationship is the only way it happens. This means that as much as we need others to show us a bit more of who we are; there’s a few people at least that need us for the same thing. I suppose in some way this is what Christ does; in all the little ways that we rarely ever see, He, who knows us more deeply than we can imagine, is trying to reveal to us bit by bit who He created us to be. Maybe that means that being Christ to someone else has less to do with what we can give them, and more to do with how willing we are to know them, listen to their life, and, at some point, to finally get to the holy and hidden heart of who God made them to be.

Measuring Cups

Brits don’t use measuring cups and spoons, they measure everything by weight with a scale. We brought our measuring cups over with us because Americans are right and Brits are wrong. The only problem is that, apparently, our Bed Bath & Beyond measuring cups don’t last beyond about a year.

Here’s the deal… did you know that a measuring cup is completely useless when the little cup/teaspoon/tablespoon label wears off. The whole point of a measuring cup is that it tells you right there on the handle how much the cup holds… when that’s gone, it has ceased to be a measuring cup, and all you’re left with is a plain-old-average-joe cup, which is good for some things like serving soup, but not so good for measuring.

I thought I’d be clever and solve the issue once and for all, so I went to the office supply store and bought a paint pen. We sat down with all our cups and reasoned out which ones were which by trying to remember all the size increments (this is one of those advanced sets with things like 2/3 cup and 3/4 cup). Candice labeled them all neatly. And after one wash, we discovered that the paint comes off instantly in water… so now the poor cups have simply lost their purpose, they’re like a chest of drawers that’s lost its drawers, or a bookshelf that has no shelves, or Guitar Hero without the guitar.

Baylee in the UK

Baylee has never been on an airplane. This was a true statement not too long ago… that is, before two of her favorite people were living a plane ride away. After our whirlwind trip to Oklahoma, we got back on a plane to Cambridge, and Baylee sat between us :)… a little bit nervous, but happy.

The most important thing to know when having a visitor in Cambridge is this: know your audience. After living in Cambridge a year, you become accustomed to giving everyone who visits the same little tour around the city to see the sights and do the necessary “Cambridge-esque” things. The city certainly doesn’t inspire the same sense of awe we felt when we first got here, but it is still fun to show people around, because it really is a beautiful place. Most people are amazed at the ancient buildings; most people gasp a little when they see King’s College chapel; most people are inspired by one of the oldest universities in the world… except, of course, for most teenage girls… who, I imagine, would respond in much the same way that Baylee did: thoroughly unimpressed with the buildings, but equally excited to see as many shops and restaurants as we could get to. This is Baylee when we were showing her the buildings:

And this is Baylee when we went shopping in London:

Okay, to be fair, these photos are a little exaggerated, we had a great time in Cambridge, and Baylee loved seeing it all. I think the best part about the trip was going to the beach. We found a great beach online that had some good reviews, one of which said it was great for naturists… apparently, that doesn’t mean ‘people who like nature’. We did not go to that beach. This is the beach that we went to…

Sunday, 15 August

The Oversinger sat behind us in church this morning. It wasn’t terribly annoying to have someone singing over me, in fact, I live most of my life as if I had theme music playing, and I kind of wish I could get someone to follow me around singing all the time (in my imagination, at least, it would go something like this).

What was unique about this morning was not the volume with which the Oversinger worshipped; instead, it was the improvisation of never-ending lyrics that was really impressive. During the guitar intro, Oversinger just gave us a soft, “mmmm…. hmmmm… ohhh-o-whoa-0hhhh…”. Then throughout the song, Oversinger would connect all the lines together by lengthening the last word of the previous line into a long run of notes up and down the scale: “… in a land that is plentiful, where the streams of abundance flow, blessed be your naaaaay-eee-yay-eee-yay-eee-yaaaame.” I think it added a lot of zest to the songs, and it made me want to sing louder (I’m a very competitive singer). I even tried my own run of oh’s and hey’s, but I was interrupted by a swift jab of the elbow from Candice.

The weather’s nice today, but I don’t know how long it will hold out… there was one really warm day this week (maybe 73°), which we took advantage of by going to the Cambridge Botanic Gardens… here’s another collage of a nice summer day outside.

Oklahoma – so many people! (the finale)

Telling stories is fun, but if I don’t pick up the pace, we’re never going to get through this Oklahoma series…. here’s my attempt to list everything we did in a rapid-fire number-listing photo-collage frenzy:

1. Arrived in DFW, Chris and Rebekah picked us up at the airport, and we drove to Plano, where we were the guests of honor at an awesome cookout with fun family :)

2. Candice went to a bachelorette party the next day in OKC and had a crazy night out with the ladies; meanwhile, I headed to Ada to catch up with the men.

3. We had another awesome cookout with Candice’s family in Ardmore… lots and lots of kids…

4. We went to Denton to spend time with Chris and Rebekah. We decided to have a night out and go eat somewhere that we couldn’t eat in Cambridge. We were also planning to meet up with some of Chris’ friends and some of our old friends from Ada (Matt and Dana Edmonds). We had a crazy time trying to coordinate where to meet and eat with eight people… which culminated in us finally making a plan to meet at a place in the middle of nowhere out on Hwy 380. When our agreed-upon restaurant decided to be closed on Mondays, we found ourselves desperate, hungry, and ready to pick the next place we saw… which happened to be in the shape of a barn. As it turns out, the barn had great food, country music, a dance floor, and… (that’s right folks)… a slide! What a fun place to find by accident :).

5. Our friends, Jared and Reagan, got married in OKC… we had an amazing time and loved seeing so many old friends. This was essentially the reason we scheduled this trip… and it was worth it.

6. Yet another cookout at my mom’s house… which also happened to be a sort of goodbye to the house I grew up in. Mom has been trying to sell the house for a while… it’s just too big and too much to take care of for one person. I’m proud of her… she got it sold and had another place already picked out. It was bittersweet, though, because I have so many memories from that house… we moved in when I was four years-old… it’s hard to say goodbye. It was especially hard because mom also broke the news that my dog, Bowzer, had died just a few days earlier. Goodbye, House, and goodbye, Bowzer <tear>.

7. Finally, after two whirlwind weeks, it was time for us to go back to Cambridge… but the fun doesn’t end there. Candice’s little sister, Baylee, was headed back to the UK with us for a two-week visit! We all went down to Ft. Worth to Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Cafe so that Candice and I could have one last taste of sweet Mexican-food glory before heading back to the non-Mexican-food-loving UK. We ate outside, and when it started raining, we cleverly moved to a table underneath the open air pavilion… when the pavilion started leaking, we began to cleverly shift our plates and chairs so that we wouldn’t be leaked upon… and finally, when we were all soaked, we decided we weren’t as clever as we thought. At the airport, we said goodbye, and Baylee came with us… we all changed out of our wet clothes, and we started preparing Baylee for her first trip on an airplane (hence the scared face in the picture below).

That’s all for Oklahoma, folks…

Oklahoma – Where the wind… part 2

We were fortunate enough to be able to plan our Oklahoma trip so that we were around on the Fourth of July; and on the 4th, we were fortunate enough to celebrate it in Idabel, America.

The drive down to McCurtain County in Southeast Oklahoma was nice, the trees along the Creek Nation Turnpike and the bright sun beaming down upon the rolling hills made me glad to be back in the homeland. It being a beautiful Independence Day, I was very much looking forward to seeing fireworks explode as a sign of my independence. Much to my disappointment, it began to rain just as we pulled into Idabel.

An ordinary person might worry, but I’m married to a Choctaw Indian princess… so we did the rain dance in reverse, and soon enough we were looking at this :) (if you look closely, you can see a hint of a second rainbow above the first)

A double rainbow is a good sign… a sign from the Almighty that it was time to cook hamburgers and light sparklers… while waving American flags around… and singing the national anthem. Here’s our crew:

After eating, I decided that I was going to try to make a giant firework from about 30 large sparklers… I had heard that if you tape all the sparklers tightly together in a bundle, then light it, it will be awesome.

Of course, there were some who doubted, and that’s okay… I, myself, was unsure whether anything more than a giant sparkler show would happen. In fact, after lighting the “fuse sparkler,” I began walking nonchalantly away while saying to Candice’s family, “Yeah, I really don’t think anything will….” <FFFFFWWWWHHHHAAAAAPPPPP!!!> Behind me, a giant explosion had left nothing but a burning fireball of tape and scorched sparkler sticks in the ground. I wish I had that on video. I wish so much. So much.

With our appetite for fireworks piqued, we decided to head over to Hayworth, America for a fireworks show at the “Freedomfest” put on at the Assembly of God Church… they had inflatables, gospel music, and watermelon eating contests :). The map below will help you visualize the story I’m going to tell you.

We were sitting in the back of our truck, getting ready to watch the show. I had my camera at the ready to get some shots of the fireworks. The show started with a couple of bursts from some artillery shells… everyone looked up to see them explode… and in that split second, everyone knew something had gone terribly wrong. The fireworks had not gone up in the air…

You know the cartoon episode where Wile E. Coyote gets a big crate of fireworks to shoot at the roadrunner, and then he ends up catching the whole thing on fire, and all the fireworks go off at once… well… take a look at this…

<intentional blank spaces add drama>

 

 

 

It was awesome (nobody got hurt)… stuff started blowing up everywhere, and it lasted about 7 seconds… everyone was in awe… including this guy…

Needless to say, we had a blast… :).