Tropical Storm Edouard

Edouard turned into a non-event. Originally predicted to hit hurricane strength before landing, it made landfall this morning as a Tropical Storm. At that point it was predictied to pass right over Bryan as a TS. Instead, it was downgraded to a Tropical Depression. Sounds like good news, but we really needed the rain. Hoping for 3 or 4 inches, we have received less than 1 inch. As it slows down, we may get more. Hope so, we are already about 6 inches behind for the year.

ZIPLINING!!! or is it ZIP LINING!!! ?

Last weekend, Tamie and I met Tony and Alice Elkins in Austin, Texas, for his 49th birthday weekend. We stayed at the Barton Creek Spa and Resort. Five minutes after we got to our room, a storm descended on the resort. You can see from the pictures how the valley disappeared when the rain hit.

Friday we spent the day ziplining - WHAT A BLAST! We had never been before, but we all had a great time. We had such a good time that we went back that afternoon for the more challenging course. During that time, we zipped with the Fluke Family from Beaumont, Texas. Come to find out, we are almost related. He is a lawyer. Their oldest son, not on the trip with them, is a JR. at BAYLOR, and he's pre-dent. The oldest daughter, Erin, is about to be a Fish at ATM. We invited her to join us for Thursday night dinners. Caroline, the younger daughter will be a high school freshman. Maybe we can influence her to follow her brothers better example. Friday night was dinner at Gumbo's. GREAT New Orleans style restaurant in downtown Austin. As long as you didn't look outside, you would thing you were in the French Quarter. The Blackened Shrimp was served over etoufee. Magnifique!

Saturday we split up. The Elkins went hiking on Barton Creek and saw Mama Mia. Tamie and I went to downtown Austin and hung out on SoCo, or South Congress to the un-initiated. Had a great lunch, did some shopping, and hit Amy's Ice Cream. Woohoo! ( you know Erratts and their ice cream) We found a shop called Ten Thousand Villages. It's a store that features fair trade articles from around the world. If you need a present for "someone who has everything", buy them a "singing bowl" from 10,000 Villages. I got two pounds of fair trade coffee and Avery's birthday present. Tamie found 4 necklaces she had to have, together with several sets of earrings. She also found a necklace for Alice. Which she wore to dinner at III Forks. Which was also wonderful. The rest of 'em had steak, but I had the Lamb Chops. Tamie and I shared a spicy Lobster Bisque which was quite different and very good. In case you wondered, yes we do travel on our stomachs.

After dinner, we took a walk down 6th Street. It was almost as much fun as Bourbon St., but much cleaner and not as many drunks. Found a good jazz bar and hung out for awhile. Tony's co-worker, aka the Camera Stealer, was in the bar and even had "my" camera. I'll explain later, if you're interested. The punchline is that I ended up with my Nikon D70 with 4 lenses for about half of what he paid for his camera and 3 lenses.

Sunday, we had a brunch buffet at the resort, packed up and departed for home. We picked up Mrs. Honea on the way and dropped her off in Hempstead with Uncle Sonny. Saved him a drive to Austin and back to pick her up. She and I had a wonderful conversation while Tamie napped in the back. We didn't talk about her, though. Just in case she was just pretending to be asleep.

Playing Catch-Up

So, I have been doing a lot of things...California last weekend, group of nine boys camping this past week, wreaking havoc upon Durango, and now headed back out to camp again this week. Needless to say, I am a little behind on the updates.


So, I will start with California:

My trip was great, a few hours of delay on the front end and switching airports, but overall it went pretty well. The night that I arrived, we went to the beach for some Bachelorette Party II. The group consisted of the bride, the bridal party, and me...strange, I know. So anyways, we had a great time on the beach with our puny little fire, roasted hot dogs, made smores, and just generally laughed a lot. After that, Ayla and I moved to our new hotel (she had stayed the previous night with some of the bridesmaids) and basically went to sleep. The next two days we pretty much spent all of our free time down at the beach, with a rehearsal dinner one evening and the wedding the next. The wedding was great fun (there were only about 35 people there including the wedding party). They married, we ate, danced, laughed and waved them off. On Sunday morning, Garrett came and picked Ayla and me up, and we went to see some of the LA sites. We saw Hollywood, the Walk of the Stars, Grohman's Theater (where all the hand prints and footprints are), ate at a famous little restaurant that I forgot the name of, and spent the rest of the day down at the beach. On the trip home, it was a little more interesting...I had to run to make my connection flight in Phoenix, because of delays in LA; my bag didn't make the connection; I got a speeding ticket coasting down the hill outside of town; and I didn't get my luggage back until Thursday of the next week.

The return trip home was only a piece of my troubles, however, because we also had a little bit of a rough start to our camping week, with Marquette leaving and me locking my keys in my car (all in the same very unfortunate morning). Things improved from there, however, and we had an amazing group with the boys. The staff working that week were: Lance, Jared, Garrison, Hannah, and me. The boys were a baseball team sent up by one of the guys' dad, who wanted them to experience God together in a way that would allow them to develop a different kind of bond that didn't revolve around sports. It was really different having only campers there without an adult sponsor, and also just having a group of guys that small. I really enjoyed it though, and the week turned out really well despite all of the distractions. The week ended with the boys planning on starting a weekly or biweekly Bible Study when they return to Dallas, and one of the boys prayed to accept Christ!


That pretty much covers my life up to this point, and I am going to include a few pictures (including one from our summit of Engineer the week before last).

Hannah and me standing in front of Engineer Peak.

Garrison, Hannah, Jared, and me laying in the flowers just above tree line.

The view off the top of Engineer (12,972 feet).

Avery in Europe

This is the palace of King Ludwick II, the first place we visited on our first full day in Europe! (Saturday, 12th) It is crazy gorgeous on the inside. Everything is covered in gold, silk, and ostrich feathers. Unfortunately, they would not let us take pictures, so you will have to use your imagination. We went through the palace and then hiked about a mile through the grounds to see the King's personal underground opera house and his hunting lodge. It was intense. After that, we visited a small town famous for the 10-hour-long Passion play it puts on every ten years. Finally we topped it all off with a visit to a fancy church. It was full of paintings, gilding, sculptures:

Today, the 13th, we drove most of the day. We did, however stop in both Austria and Liechtenstein. Two more countries. H00ray!

This is Sam, me, Jordan, and Becca standing in the rain in Austria. The view was unbelievable, but it was so cold that we took a couple of pictures and jumped back on the bus. It's supposed to be summer! Good thing I learned from my experiences in Germany last summer: always pack warm.

Right here we are about to carry
Becca into Liechtenstein! Actually this was taken after we had already eaten lunch in the country, but I wanted irrefutable proof that we had actually been there!

Updated Colorado Pictures

Dad's favorite picture of Alyssa belaying at X Rock with our church youth group.

Durango Intro

I have now been up here in Durango for a month. It has been a really exciting first half of the summer. Our basic week, when working with a group, looks like this: The group arrives Monday night and we all grill hot dogs and then have a first worship session that night, after they're all settled in. On Tuesday and Wednesday we take the groups rappelling and hiking (we always make sandwiches for lunch and dinners vary a little bit). Occasionally a group will rock climb instead of rappelling one day. On Thursday we all go into town and play around in the field at Santa Rita Park and go rafting on the Animas River (which has a temperature averaging in the upper 30's and lower 40's right now). And every night Marquette gives a lesson and Lane leads worship for the group. On Friday most groups leave fairly early in the morning to get started on their drive home.

On the weekends we're all pretty free to do whatever we want. I try to go climbing at least once every weekend since I have such a huge selection of places to climb while I'm here in Durango. We also usually use the weekends to catch up on sleep and laundry. One of the most unique things about being a part of the camp staff is the amazing community that we are able to build. It's a huge blessing to have such a constant group of people investing in my life and holding me accountable on a daily basis. God has really been able to use the rest of the staff and our times of group devotion, learning and discussion to teach me a great many things about His character and His love for me. I know that I will really miss that aspect of this community when I return to school.

My other job while I'm here is to take care of the boys part of the time. Luckily it's a really easy job because they are both naturally good natured. Nash, the oldest (he's two and a half) is hilarious and always makes me smile.

Beck is about 10 months old and he is really sweet and loving with an adorable laugh. Both of the boys love to be outdoors so that is a blessing for me, so that I don't have to stay cooped up in the condo during the weeks that I watch them. Other than that there isn't too much else to say.

On Sundays we are going to a really great church in Durango called River Church, where we have already met a lot of people. The pastor and his wife have an amazing heart for God, which you can see reflected throughout the rest of the church membership, and they are in the process of adopting their eighth child. Last Sunday I wore the earrings that Avery made me for my birthday. You can see them in the picture. I got a lot of compliments on them, so thank you, Avery, and props to your craftsmanship!

God has already done some beautiful things in the hearts of many of the campers and even some of the youth leaders, and I can't wait to see what He has in store for the rest of the summer. We are continuing to pray for God's spirit to move in the hearts of all the students that come to camp this summer, as well as in all of our hearts so that God will be able to work through us in every situation. It's such a blessing to be able to spend the summer serving students by showing them God's love through my actions and through spending time enjoying His amazing creation.

First Blog

We now have a place where we can keep up with each others' activities and share what we're doing with all of our family and friends! The challenge is for us all to be diligent in actually updating the site...

I love you guys!

-Alyssa