Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Able to get a lot done today...

This week feels long already and tomorrow is only Thursday.  I keep thinking it should be Friday or maybe even Saturday.  We are planning on celebrating DeAnna's birthday on Monday, Labor Day, here at the beach.  She truly inherited the love of water from me and she gets out here as often as she can.  Happy Birthday to my oldest child, DeAnna Stancil Davis.

Steven stayed at school to play his drums for the city wide pep rally in preparation for the first football game of the season at Ball High School. He was excited to be asked to join the band for this occasion even though he has not been attending the before-school and after-school practices. Transportation back and forth to his new school on Galveston Island is a bit of a problem and no matter how you plan it, takes about three hours to get in the Bolivar-Galveston ferry line, ride the ferry over, do whatever you have to do on the island, and do the reverse to get home.  I left here tonight at 6:10 and we got home a little after 9:30 pm, which makes for a very long school day.  His bus picks him up at 5:45 am, when it is totally pitch black dark outside.

Thus far, he is doing well in his busy ninth grade classes and I am in communication with each of his teachers by way of email.  Boy, things have changed a lot since my children went to school!  He's carrying a heavy load of classes in the Advanced Placement program.  All he wants to do when he gets in the door in the late afternoon is eat and get a bath, chill out for a short while, and head to bed.  He is also involved in the Junior ROTC program, which is somewhat tough I hear.

Joni Harding, a friend of mine here on the peninsula, and I are volunteering tomorrow at the Children's Center, also in Galveston, for a mutual friend, Terri Ward.  She directs the Children's Center and Safe Place on the island and is in need of some help regarding a project. Joni and I are honored to be asked to help there.

I've been working all day on the Hurricane Ike Memorial and Anniversary Service/Celebration, planned for September 12, on the beach nearest Coconuts, beginning at 7 pm.  We plan to honor the ten known dead from Ike and the four still unaccounted for in a solemn service with tea lights and sending a live floral wreath out to sea in their memory.  An old ship's bell that survived the storm will be rung after each name is read.  We will also hear from some Bolivar Peninsula residents, property owners, vacationeers, and some of our talented musicians.

The general public is invited to join us and participate and we are hearing that many are planning to do just that.  It has been the most unusual year of our lives I think.  My mother was dead one year on her birthday, August 26, and Hurricane Ike hit our beloved peninsula and destroyed our home on September 12 and 13 of last year.  We are still waiting on TWIA to pay our insurance claim so we can rebuild or buy a new home.  Thanks be to God, we are in a nice leased property now and are quite comfortable.

My old and dear friend, Betty Cargal Nance, told me about her sister-in-law's gratitude journal, and I want to begin one of my own.  Every day my heart is touched with some small thing (and sometimes, large ones, too) and I want to remember those things in the future.  We get so wrapped up in living that we forget to enjoy the ride from time to time.  I think for me to list those things I am most grateful for will help to keep me focused and my eyes on the prize. Living where I do in my dream world of the ocean and beaches, I see things every day that are special and deeply meaningful to me.  

If you were writing in your gratitude journal today, what would you list? We have so much to be grateful for each day, don't we?

I am excited that Ginger (Bragg) Doster and Millie (Jones) Pincus, two of my oldest and dearest friends, are coming in mid-September to stay a week or so with Ted, Steven, and I here at the beach house. I guarantee there'll be a lot of front deck sitting, sand and surf watching, telling of old tales, playing of board games, cooking and eating, and good memories being made.  And, then, in late October, we are heading to Atlanta for another reunion of sorts with the Carpenters and the Rounds, more old and dear friends. Jack and John came to us at Forrest Hills Baptist Church from Bob Jones University when they were young college students.  Both have now matured, married, had families, and still communicate with each other often. It will be the first time we've all been together in quite some time and we look forward to hitting some of the old haunts in the Big "A" Town, eating at the Varsity, climbing Stone Mountain, visiting old friends and catching up.

God is good ... all of the time.

Until the next page turns,
Brenda