Mom, Mommy, Mother, Mum, Mumsie, Momma, Mama: Bottom Line = She's Mine

I love my mum. I only have one, and I'm quite satisfied with the one I've got. One is quite enough. I know all this because this weekend mine came down to visit, and we had 4 whole days together that we packed full of adventures.

On Friday we had a SeaWorld day, brimming with fish, aquatic mammals, and a variety of other living creatures. We saw Shamu, rode the Manta roller coaster, thoroughly enjoyed the dolphin show, and froze in Antartica.

It's Christmas in the ocean already apparently. It even started snowing - in Florida, I know! - while we were there. OK, it was only a snow machine.

 I made friends with some manatees.

And a colony of penguins. I may have tried to go native there. That plan didn't succeed. Oh well. What can I say? I like birds.

Saturday we drove over to the Cape Canaveral National Seashore. After eating lunch at a special little restaurant named Loyd Have Mercy, where we dined sumptuously on grits, collards, and other southern delectables, we spent the afternoon driving along the Black Point Wildlife Drive observing...you guessed it...the wildlife.

Although it was a gray day, the clouds mostly behaved themselves by not raining on us when we ventured from the car to get a beach picture. After being together at the Pacific Ocean only three weeks earlier, we needed a photo like this to bookend our fall travels.

We went to my church on Sunday and had Tijuana Flats for lunch with my roommates and some friends. In the evening we dined in a restaurant on Park Ave in Winter Park. It's a really fun place to walk and enjoy a Florida evening. And there was a beautiful full moon.

My half birthday was on Monday. I took my mom on a grand tour of Wycliffe. This fulfilled two purposes: 1) My mother had a chance to see where I'm working and learn about what I'm working on and who I'm working with and 2) my coworkers and friends at Wycliffe had a chance to meet my mom. 'Twas a grand success.

No picture for the final event which was five hours of clothes shopping that afternoon. Those of you who have known me for a while know that until about two years ago I was quite content wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie almost continuously. This was my existence for several reasons, but a few major factors involve me being born without certain genes that most other females seem to have in abundance. I hate shopping. And my 'oh, this is SO cute' meter is non-existent. Blessings on my mother for helping me through the transition of trying to expand and mature my wardrobe. I think we are moving in the direction of victory.

My mom's pretty cool. And she's super cute too. My meter isn't that broken.

Biking, Baking, Beach Time, Traveling

This is a two-week post, since I didn't post last week. Let's see...what's newsworthy? Well, here are some highlights:

I bought a bicycle. This fact in itself makes me super happy because I've been saying that I want to buy a bike since January. Now that I live in Florida, it's perfect that I waited until the fall to get a bike because it's way too hot to go bike riding here during the summer and now I will be able to use it all winter long. True confessions: I hate running. I don't care what you say, running is a form of torture. I love being outside and getting exercise, though, so now I can do that on my bike. And there are even several bike trails in Orlando so I can go use those. Life is good. 

When one of my coworkers left our department in September to go to grad school, her absence made everyone sad for several reasons. One of those reasons is that she's an awesome person. Another reason was that every Thursday she would bring in cupcakes or some other delicious form of baked sugar so that we could have a Sweet Thursday. Luckily, I like baking for people - and it's always better to know that other people will be there to help eat the deliciousness - so I've taken up the continuation of Sweet Thursdays upon myself.

So far I've made beaver houses (you might know them better as no-bake cookies), chocolate covered strawberries, white chocolate chip banana muffins, and pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting. Tomorrow's treat is brownies, half of which have coconut. I'll put a picture up if I make anything particularly interesting looking - then you can all drool and wish you worked with me.

Last weekend my church had their young adult retreat at a hotel in Cocoa Beach. The retreat was an awesome time on many levels, particularly on the levels of 'getting to know other people' and 'God being SUPER awesome like he always is.' The theme verse of the weekend was Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Interestingly, this was the theme verse for New England Camp Cedarbrook my last summer working there. What if followers of Christ actually took time to think about what this verse means and intentionally lived with it in mind each day?

One thing I noticed this weekend is that, in my mind, a retreat equals cabins, woods, lake, hills, and probably cooler weather. Not so in Florida. Here a retreat is hotel, sand, beach, flat, and sunny blue sky days. Not bad, just different.

And to close out with a super happy thought, in about 36 hours I will be Southern California with my mother and my youngest sister! Why? you might ask. Because I have the best job ever. A Wycliffe missionary couple, John and Bonnie Nystrom, who worked in Papua New Guinea, wrote a book called Sleeping Coconuts, and I'm going to be traveling with them around SoCal next week selling books while they speak at different college and church events as part of a book tour.

When I found out that I might be going on this trip, I called my lovely sister, who is a freshman at Biola (one of the colleges the Nystroms are speaking at), to ask her what she was doing the last weekend in October, she said, 'Oh, that's the weekend Mom's coming out to visit me.' Mini family reunion coming up!

Because of this trip, it is possible that I might not write a blog post next week - we'll see. I'm sure a post-California post will have lots of good stories, though. 

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, I've been to California once before, but I was only six years old. I went with my paternal grandparents to visit my aunt, her husband, and my baby cousin. We stayed in a time share in San Diego. Mostly what I remember is my uncle teaching me how to do handstands in a pool. And having a tea party with my aunt and my grandmother.

America, Spread Your Golden Wings

I don't know about you, but my 4th of July ended with a bang. St. Cloud, a city south of Orlando, had quite an impressive fireworks display over East Lake Tohopekaliga (try saying that 10 times fast). I had a great view of it all from a camping chair on the beach.

It's interesting, though, because fireworks now seem a pretty normal part of life. Down here in Florida we love our fireworks - or maybe it would be more honest to say that our tourists love our fireworks. In the past month, I already saw fireworks three times over at Disney World. Both Magic Kingdom's Wishes and Epcot's IllumiNations shows have fireworks every night. That is a lot of fireworks!

Epcot IllumiNations June 2013

When I think of July 4th, I think of time with family, burgers and hot dogs on the grill, and lake boat rides. Despite having moved about thirteen states south of the 4th of July location of my youth, I was able to have all of these in Florida. Although I am usually quite quiet and reserved, I do know how to speak up. This year I used that ability to get invited to spend the 4th with a family I met when I moved down. The husband and wife work at Wycliffe, and I got in touch with them because the husband's sister and her family are long-time friends from MA. My new friends were so welcoming and encouraging as I transitioned to living in Florida. I had a great time getting to know them better last Thursday. It certainly helped that they had a pontoon boat to take out on the Florida lakes. Never mind that we got caught out in one of this season's daily afternoon rain storms. :-)

Saturday I learned an important lesson: the Florida summer sun is powerful. I went to the beach with the young adults group at my church and despite reapplying sunscreen multiple times and sitting under a towel whenever I wasn't in the water, I still managed to get a sunburn on my shoulders. Lesson learned.

Work is going well. Today I learned that I successfully completed a crucial step in the first big project given to me when I started. Wycliffe has several representatives attending a large conference in Texas this coming week, and several weeks ago I was given the task of pulling together materials for them to use at their booth, setting up the booth in the office and taking photographs, and then mailing all the supplies and emailing instructions to Texas. I heard today that the boxes of supplies arrived in Texas. Success.

P.S. The title of this post, for those of you who don't know, is from a song played during the show in the United States at Epcot's World Showcase. The music is quite majestic...and definitely emotionally manipulative.