31 October 2006

A Weekend!

What a busy weekend--but a wonderfully irresponsible one (to quote Bono...but, I'm getting ahead of myself). I'm looking forward to seeing all the rest of the staff this morning and listening to Mike Wittmer's message from Sunday. I hope you were there Sunday to listen live. Thought I'd give a quick summary of what we did during the time off.

FRIDAY / One of those work days at home running errands, doing chores, and parenting. We took a long drive to a pumpkin patch that turned-out to be a pretty big disappointment, so we didn't get anything.

SATURDAY / Aya woke up and immediately began puking. I'm not talking routine vomiting here; I'm talking about horror movie kind of puking. It was every ten to fifteen minutes. After two dozen episodes, she became extrememly lethargic and almost unresponsive, not too mention the brown blood stuff we began to see. After a phone consultation with the Pediatrician, my Dad graciously came out to watch Arys and we took Aya to the E.R. at Beaumont Hospital (Royal Oak). We spent the rest of the day there while they did tests and gave her an I.V. to rehydrate her. Turns out it was just a run-of-the-mill virus that really hit her hard. She did really great dealing with it all. The bummer was that her long-anticipated trip to the Friendly Forest with Katelyn Hall was a no-go. Given the weather, I was grateful!

SUNDAY / We got-up early (though not as early as usual on a Sunday for me, and with that wonderful extra hour thrown-in) and drove to Grand Rapids where we worshipped at Mars Hill. The Teaching Pastor that we really like (Rob Bell) was not speaking (of course!). Instead, the showed a 40 minute interview between Bill Hybels (Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church) and Bono (lead singer of U2). I'll say more about that in a subsequent post, but suffice it to say that Willow Creek did this interview about a month ago on another weekend I was on vacation and Cami and I had been tempted to go to listen, but opted to stay home and finish a painting project. I guess God wanted us to see it after all.

After a special trip to Toys R Us (of all the stuff, and with all our lobbying and manipulation to the contrary, Aya picked a Little Mermaid make-up set!? When we got in the car she explained it to Mom: "I get my own so I not have to use your make-up." Makes sense. I am soooo in trouble...). We had a great lunch then checked-into the Ramada Plaza with the four-story waterslide. After all the build-up and anticipation, she went down it only twice and then was too freaked-out to even get near me (I kept having to remind myself that she was possibly still sick after a traumatic Saturday). She finally realized that I wasn't going to make her, so we had fun splashing around in the kiddie pool (checkout the depth below):


Friends Again! (diving not recommended)

Abused in the "deep end"
I should note that the seven big custom coaches idling in the parking lot turned out to be for the hard rock post-grunge band Godsmack. I can't say that we're fans (I did at least know who they were), but I can say that we were relieved to see that they were totally low-key and quiet while they were in the hotel as they prepared for a concert at Van Andel Arena.
MONDAY / After a quick stop at Baker Book House (torturous since I didn't have money to spend! But, I did get a new study Bible I'd been needing for a long time since the one I had in seminary was falling apart), we headed to Holland. We spent time that beautiful day exploring the town. This is when I crunched our car in backing-up in a tight municipal parking lot. Brilliant! Damage to both cars was minimal and cosmetic, but I still felt like a complete dork (I did grow-up parking cars as a valet after all--this isn't supposed to happen to ME! And no, I'm not including a picture.)
In the late afternoon, we met-up with our niece Anna who attends Hope College. We got a tour of the sorority house she lives in, went to dinner, hung out at Starbucks, and got her back for her night class. It was great to see her and spend the time catching up. Aya is smitten with her, but was so low key that it was comical. We ended up at the Holiday Inn Express where Aya both girls crashed.
Ayanna, Anna, and Aryssa--a.k.a. good genes
TUESDAY / We got-up early and headed back to Grand Rapids for the "Abraham to Jesus" exhibit at DeVos Place. This is the largest collection of biblical artifacts ever to go on tour around the world. And it is the most comprehensive spanning the time of Abraham to the fall of Masada after the Jewish Revolt of 66 A.D./C.E. and the razing of the temple in Jerusalem. It was absolutely fascinating (I'll tell you a little more in a subsequent post). I would encourage everyone to go, but it leaves town this Saturday (it will be in Columbus, Ohio for the next couple of weeks--the next closest location during its North American tour).
We got back in time for Trick-or-Treating. Aya was Super Girl and Arys was a Peapod (since Mom and I always call her sweet pea). Aya ran out of steam early, but we still had an obscene amount of candy.

My wonderful women

I should note that we came home to find that we'd been T-P'ed (toilet-papered--can you believe there's a Wikipedia entry on that too!?). Cami doesn't want me to mention this, but I think it was a pretty lame job. The good news is that we had not recently cleaned-up all of Reagan's mess in the yard. I hope someone got to take home a treat! If you're willing to let me know who was behind this feeble attempt at trickery, I'd be happy to hold a clinic on graduate level T-Ping.

So, that was the weekend. It really was fun, even if not exactly relaxing. I'll tell you about the Bono interview and the exhibit later. For now, I'm going to work to get some rest!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the punctuation police. We're writing you a ticket for hyphen overuse.

etoc said...

I have no-idea what you're talking-about. I've never received this kind-of-feedback. Thanks editor-girl!

MJ Johns said...

just wondering why daddy didn't wear his Super man costume to match Aya? Sounds like a nutty weekend.

Laurie said...

thanks for the laugh! sounds like a great weekend. I for one would love to see the crunch pix!

Laurie said...

sounds like a great weekend..sorta! I for one would love to see the crunch pix! remind me not to park by you....