Click here and here for two videos of Kyrie playing in the pool.

Have you ever been in a church that asks you to participate in an all night prayer vigil by donating an hour or half hour of your time to pray? Here’s a note of encouragement:

Unless we actually subject our bodies and stomach to a meaningful discipline, the actual sense of experiencing Christ’s suffering will elude us. As our bodies become tired and our muscles begin to ache, our eyes burn, our stomachs to hunger; and our spirits to grow dim, we begin to experience in a physical and psychological way a touch of our Lord’s pain. This physical and spiritual sadness is a way of actually entering into Christ’s death in an emphathetic way creating a sense of our spiritual oneness with him.

~Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Time

And when we fall asleep, we can say to ourselves, “Could you not stay awake for one hour?”

I’ve often thought on the fact that suffering is a good thing that prepares us to meet our Maker, especially on our death beds. Somehow I missed this when relating to prayer. It’s no wonder darkness was so important to the early Christians.

I recently posted on the connection of anamnesis (drawing near of memory) and Hebrew word for “offering” (the thing brought near).

I just had a connected thought that I’m just going to blog here to look at later (I’m busy doing a school assignment and don’t have time to think about it now). Jesus’s words on the cross, “It is finished” are well translated as “That which has been far off is now brought near.”

Like I said, just posting that so I can think about it later.

I’m getting anxious and excited about our upcoming trip to Spokane. We’re crazy and we’ve decided to drive up — yes, with a toddler. Kyrie is an excellent traveler, so I don’t anticipate too many problems, but I’m sure this road trip will be tiring for us all. It’ll be so nice to be up in Spokane and have the use of our own car, though! Due to the expansion of our families over the past couple years, the Tuckers & Capezzas can no longer share a van. Anyway, we’ll be there in late June! I can’t wait to see Kyrie with her cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents. She’s grown so much since they last saw her. Eeeee!

I woke up this morning feeling particularly happy. It just feels like a holiday weekend, even though Rick is at work as usual and we don’t have any special plans (other than visiting with the in-laws who are in town!). The sunshine is warm & soothing, the breeze is cool and refreshing, and the bright blue sky complements the green grass and leaves quite nicely. It just feels like we should be going to a lake and bringing fried chicken and watermelon. Instead, Kyrie and I went outside to enjoy the weather, and I got a few snapshots as well.

(Medical) Dr. Rob Maddox, a member of AAPC, recently started a blog. Jon blogged about it a bit ago, but I hadn’t really gotten to reading it until today. Anyway, it’s fascinating. He has an ongoing discussion of iatrogenesis. He talks about the mumps, pneumococcal, tetanus, and HPV vaccines as well as the futility of the Hib vaccine. And well, just check it out: Contranemesis.

Today I wanted to do something fun for Kyrie. She is usually cooped up at home with Mommy, and we both get a little stir-crazy from time to time. I felt bad that she couldn’t really play in our yard (it’s just not a great yard to play in, and the grass is too long, so I’m afraid of snakes…and the mosquitoes are problematic), so I suggested to Rick that we take her to the park. She went down the slide a couple of times and then we went to the swings. She was having fun, but her cheeks and legs were turning bright pink. She’s very sensitive to heat, and we were worried about her, so we decided to look for an indoor place to play instead. There’s a place called The Jungle Gym in West Monroe, so we checked it out. Kyrie had an absolute blast. She was climbing up netted ropes, flying down slides, burying herself in ball pits, crawling through tunnels, and bouncing on this huge inflated floor — not sure what those are called, but she was seriously having the time of her life. One of Rick’s students was there with her kids, and her 5-year-old girl really helped Kyrie out a lot through some of the stuff for bigger kids. They were so cute going down the slide together. The older girl had her arm around Kyrie and was acting like such a big sister. Kyrie wanted to hold her hand as our two families walked out as the place was closing. It was such a sweet little moment. Kyrie is really so great with other kids; it makes me proud. It was really sweet of Rick’s student’s girl to be such a little mommy, too. With all the bratty kids running around in those places, it is nice to run across a sweet, responsible kid every once in a while. Anyway, I wish I’d gotten some videos or pictures. Maybe next time!

Hollie was super cool and offered to babysit Kyrie on our anniversary so Rick and I could watch Spiderman 3 (so romantic!). Here’s a picture I stole from her blog. View the rest over there!

I am very frustrated today. Very frustrated indeed. Angry, upset, disappointed, misunderstood, and just plain ticked.

Had to get that out.