Gargoyles of the National Cathedral

 During summer, the Washington National Cathedral offers tours of the gargoyles and grotesques that adorn the outside of the huge, impressive, and beautiful limestone church.  What a perfect opportunity for a field trip!  The Confirmation class, along with 3 adult advisors, met early on Sunday morning and set out on a road trip to D.C. with "Gargoyles or Bust!" as the motto of the day.

The 11:15 worship service we attended was absolutely beautiful.  Most impressive was the size of the sanctuary, the sonorous music of the organ and guest choir from Texas, and the sacred space steeped with history and tradition.   We arrived at the Cathedral in time for the 11:15 worship service and joined the hundreds of folks already gathered for the service.  We marveled how at home and comfortable we felt during worship, pleased to discover how closely aligned our order of worship is to theirs.  At the same time, we marveled at how "fancy" and special the service was simply because of the context of the Cathedral.

The closest we could find to Mr. Jefferson (a nod to our Charlottesville roots!)

After the service, we sprawled out on the lush lawns outside the church for our picnic lunch.  The day was becoming more beautiful by the hour, and we lazed in the sunlight and gazed at the clouds until it was time for the gargoyle tour.

In the pre-tour powerpoint presentation, we learned a lot about the function and the construction of the gargoyles, and the difference between a grotesque and a gargoyle. We saw the damage done by the August, 2011 earthquake, and listened to the difficulties of repairing the gargoyles.  We saw up-close photos of the gargoyles and learned their stories.  Once outside, we scanned the lofty heights of the Cathedral in search of the now-tiny creatures, delighted when we were able to spot them.

The group's favorite was, predictably, this guy:

photo credit

When our necks were too sore to search for gargoyles anymore, we explored one of the gorgeous gardens on grounds.

 Our state seal, in the hallway just outside the Cathedral sanctuary:

 In late afternoon, we began our trek back home, stopping for dinner and then again for some much-anticipated ice cream:

What a great looking bunch!  

...and what a happy, memorable experience this day proved to be for all of us.

Take me out to the ball game!

A crew of 22 gathered on Sunday, July 21 for the Richmond Flying Squirrels game in Richmond.  It was fabulous!  We started the game sweating buckets in the 90 degree heat and humidity; but then the skies opened and dumped buckets of cold rain, soaking us to the bone and leaving us shivering and huddling for warmth.  Of course, the weather did nothing to dampen our laughter or our happiness; in fact, it only seemed to intensify both.  

Often, I prefer stories told with words, not photos, but this time, I'll let the (heavily captioned) pictures do most of the talking:

Ready to Root, root, root for the home team after a delicious pizza lunch!

So much going on in this pic - love their energy!

 You see a lot of interesting things at baseball games.  At this one, we had...

 knitters.... (whaaat??)

....readers (whaat??) look closely, you'll see the furtive reader in pink...

...And apparently, MAIDS!  This is the shirt Jeff caught from the t-shirt catapult thing.  His wife said if he was going to wear this, he had to clean the house, too!

 There were also....

....boys eating out of tiny hats....

...boys WEARING tiny hats!

And the flying squirrel, the mascot that proved to fill our youngest fans with great consternation and apprehension.  P. wanted to know why this Flying Squirrel never flew.  Z. worried that he WOULD fly into the stands and scare us all.

Our group was ecstatic to hear "St. Mark Lutheran Church" announced over the P.A. as an official group, and we saw our name on the diamond marquee as well!

(This was definitely in the "sweating buckets" portion of the event)

(Z. was still fretting about the Flying Squirrel in this pic)

C's friend J. traveled all the way from FLORIDA to join us for this baseball game!

(Most of) The Gang's All Here!

Suddenly, we found ourselves in a too-good-to-be-true moment in minor league baseball.  It was the bottom of the 8th inning; we were down by 2 points; the bases were loaded.  All we needed was all three runners to make it home and we would win the game.  Oh, and this is what the sky happened to look like at that moment:

See those dark clouds?  Yeah not too menacing, right?

Then the sky looked like this:

 
 In the 9th inning, the score remained tied as we headed into another inning.  By this time, the rain had started falling but the players continued the game.  We took a vote:  stay or leave?  and the kids (plus several grown ups) overwhelmingly outvoted the grown ups.  We stayed. 

"YOLO!" the kids shouted  (Yeah, I had to ask what that meant the first time I heard it.  You only live once.) Dancin' in the rain:

 But then --
How cool is THIS?!  How often do you get to see them roll out the humungous tarp for the diamond??

"Can I change my vote?" they asked me.

We scurried for (more!) cover underneath the seats where we'd been huddling:

wind tunnel/ginormous puddle that was ridiculously entertaining...

"May I remind you that I voted to leave?" 

Soaked, shivering, and still smiling!!

Who won the game?  We have no idea.  They had to officially end the game for the night as weather conditions worsened.  We waited out the storm for awhile, but decided we were about as wet as we could be and made a mad dash for the cars.  Our ride home was soggy and slightly stinky, but the event itself?  A knock it out of the park, total home run of happiness and fun memories.