Spring Break

This is what spring break does to Jenna's room:



But don't worry, there's an "after" picture:



The last couple of years, we've been fans of not going anywhere for spring break. It's nice to actually take a break instead of packing up the family and exhausting ourselves on a long road trip. So we are staying close to home this year. Besides, I just really didn't have it in me to plan a trip this year.

But we did go to Wye Mountain, where daffodils are blooming by the thousands. We had to leave suddenly when Jenna needed to potty and didn't like the looks of the port-a-potties. I was so proud! A girl after my own heart.



And the girls and I spent yesterday afternoon hanging out in downtown Little Rock. Here are the girls on the trolley. (Jenna loved it. Julia, on the other hand, is getting too cool to think this kind of thing is fun. Don't know if you can tell from the picture.)


And last weekend, I threw a Twilight DVD release party at church. (It was in the teen room, but attendees were mostly made up of lovestruck moms like me.) We had refreshments (don't worry -- it was black cherry Kool-Aid):




And people like the Williams women had fun swooning over Edward:



So that's it. A peek into our boring spring break lives. Hopefully soon I can review one of the books I've been trying to get read.

Betting on Alice and the freedom of the press

Yes, the long-awaited Twilight movie opens tonight. I'm hoping to go Sunday afternoon with friends from church. Yes, it will probably be cheesy. But we're going, anyway. And we're gonna like it.

Over the weekend, I traveled to Austin for Patsy Partin's memorial service. It was very nice and I got to see some old friends. Here I am with Patrick, Patsy's youngest, and Robert Duren. I went to junior high and high school with both those guys and then Patrick and I went to the same college. I thought so much of Patrick that I found him a wife. I guess I thought he couldn't do it on his own. Anyway, Patsy would have loved that her service brought together so many people who hadn't seen each other in a long time. It was especially great seeing Patrick's wife, my bff Carol, for the first time in three years.

Now on to our latest adventures with Jenna. Last Monday, she got our church office staff thrown out of a bar. Really. One of our ministers (WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS) is a barbecue fan and makes a hobby of seeking out hole-in-the-wall BBQ joints in search of great barbecue. Being from Texas, I get this. Sometimes the best BBQ you will ever eat is sold in establishments you might otherwise want to avoid. Like the Rib Cage in Baytown.

(For those of you tracking my vegetarian progress, don't panic. I was going along with everyone on Monday to seek out some potato salad. I've been meat-free for over two years now.)

Anyway, Mr. Nameless Minister thought we should try a certain "restaurant" out here in Saline County. I felt a little funny about going to this place, because I thought it was a bar. But the sign said barbecue, and Rev. Nameless was paying, so who was I to complain? Anyway, we go in there and sit down -- with 4-year-old Jenna -- and the waitress comes up and says, "I'm sorry, but according to Arkansas law, no one under 21 can be in here." Why? Because it's a BAR. So we all left.

For those of you who live around here, it was "The Pit" by the race track. The race track where the hillbillies race their hillbilly cars every Saturday night. Yes, I took my child in there.

The whole thing reminded me of Reese Witherspoon's line in "Sweet Home Alabama": "You have a baby! ...in a bar!"

Then this morning, Jenna kept yelling "MOVE, LADY!" at the woman giving the forecast on the Weather Channel. Apparently the poor woman was blocking Jenna's view of the U.S. map. I guess we need to work on Jenna's manners. Keeping her out of bars might be a good place to start.

Finally, I'm so, SO proud of the staff of the Optimist, ACU's campus newspaper. (Where I was managing editor for one year and senior staff writer for two years in college.) They made a candidate endorsement that they had to know would not be well-received in the ACU/Abilene community, but stood by it anyway. They have taken all kinds of flak as a result, which was to be expected. I just remember making a difficult endorsement while on the Optimist staff (for student body executive offices, that time) and going to press knowing we were going to make a lot of people unhappy, but knowing we had to stick by our convictions. (And one of the guys we weren't endorsing was Chad's friend and scheduled to be in our wedding that summer. Ugh -- still not fun to think about. He got elected, anyway.) That was rough at the time, and I can only imagine what the current situation is like for the Optimist staff, especially since this controversy has made news beyond the campus. Part of learning to be a journalist is accepting the fact that in doing your job, you will make people upset. I think this experience will serve to prepare the current staff for their future jobs, and I also chalk it up to a victory for freedom of the press.

Here's an article about the controversy in the Abilene Reporter-News, and another article at the College Media Matters web site.

Hikers, bikers... they're all the same

My parents came up from Houston last Monday and we've been busy driving them all over creation. On Thursday, we drove them up to a friend's cabin near Jasper in the Ozarks. We've stayed there before and we LOVE this place. It's on the Buffalo River and it's gorgeous up there this time of year.

We planned to do some hiking, and my mom was determined to get my dad a walking stick. (Not the insect... an actual stick you walk with.) None of the usual country bumpkin-type places in our town (like Cracker Barrel) had any, so we decided to stop on the way up to the cabin. We passed a sign that we thought said "HIKERS OUTLET" so we stopped. Surely the Hikers Outlet would have a walking stick! It wasn't until we were all out of the car that we noticed the sign actually said "BIKERS OUTLET." The Confederate flags should have tipped us off. However, we did manage to secure a walking stick at a business adjacent to the Bikers Outlet, so mission accomplished.

After a couple hours of windy, hilly driving (in the backseat with a 9-year-old who is as prone to motion sickness as I am), we finally got there. The cabin comes complete with a resident elk (named "Elkie" by Jenna) who came to see us both mornings we were there.

Why, there she is now!

Julia and Jenna got to do lots of exploring on the land around the cabin. Here are my sweet girls actually being sweet to each other down by the creek.

We hiked Lost Valley trail and poked around in Beechwoods Cemetery, where graves go back to before the Civil War. In fact, if you know anyone whose last name is Villines and they live in Arkansas, just about everyone they're related to who's dead is buried in this cemetery.

Here's Jenna in the original Villines house, which was built in 1850. While we were in there, we looked up and noticed the whole place is being held up by a couple of thin cables. So we left. Rather quickly.

Then back to the cabin, where we walked down to the Buffalo River. My dad loved looking for arrowheads there...


...while my mom pretended to not be related to any of us.








This is the perfect place to find some lovely fall colors, which I tried to capture in this rather artsy photo I took:



We drove back to our house Saturday and my parents flew home today. My next much-anticipated outing: the Twilight movie on Nov. 21! Edward + Bella = love forever! (And I do mean FOREVER.)

Haunted buildings and other things

Some recent developments:

The Arkansas State Capitol building is apparently haunted.

Queen Victoria apparently had a 50-inch waist.

I apparently have pink eye and can't wear my contacts for a week. This is the longest I've gone without wearing contacts since I first got them in 7th grade.

A church in our former hometown of Baytown had a drawing to give away $150 in gas. And you know what? That won't even fill up my tank.

"Breaking Dawn," the fourth book in the Twilight series, will be released at midnight tomorrow night. Julia and I devoured the first three (I did censor a couple of parts of Eclipse for her, which she didn't mind -- once I told her what they were about.) Julia wants to attend the release party at the Little Rock Barnes & Noble, but I'm leaning toward sticking closer to home and going to a tamer release party at one of the local libraries. The B&N party will be complete with a costume contest and I think a bookstore full of vampires might be a bit much for a 9-year-old, no matter how much she loves the books.

Speaking of...speaking

A postscript to my commentary on the Twilight series. Another reason I appreciate these books is because they feature teenagers who can speak. Eloquently.

I'm not knocking the teens I know in real life. Most of them have an admirable grasp of the English language. But if you've ever seen the monosyllabic morons who star on shows such as "The Hills," (not to say I don't love that show) you understand my frustration. Here's a dialogue sample from "The Hills."

Monosyllabic Moron #1: (flipping hair) "I was so...like..."
Monosyllabic Moron #2: (flipping hair) "I mean... I know!"

The really sad thing is that the above conversation could serve as a major plot turning point in the show.

Meanwhile, Edward and Bella -- the hero and heroine of the Twilight series -- actually know how to talk. There are lots of reasons to crush on the dark, brooding, dashing Edward, but he had me at "unequivocally."

Twilight

The Twilight series is all the rage, and since I manage to steer clear of things that are "all the rage" (except for that Hannah Montana concert I went to last winter), the Twilight series nearly passed me by.

Then I got sucked in.

Bella Swan is a new girl to the town of Forks, Washington. At the town's tiny high school, she meets a guy and falls in love. But there's a minor problem: He's a vampire.

I've never been into vampire fiction. I've known people who are into it, and they're kinda...well, you know, weird. But, even though it concerns vampires, Twilight is a sweet love story about two teenagers who have no real hope of a future together, but fall deeply in love anyway.

So what challenges do Bella and Edward face? Let's see. He constantly fights the urge to kill her and suck all the blood out of her body. Hey, it's a vampire thing. But he also deeply loves her and does everything he can to protect her from anything that could hurt her -- including himself.

Another problem is that Edward does not age. But Bella, as a human, will. In 50 years, she'll look like an old lady who scored herself a young hot guy. It's one of the weird aspects of having a mortal/immortal relationship.

Edward does not eat, sleep or have a beating heart. But I'm telling you, I don't know when I've had such a crush on a fictional character. Stephenie Meyer's description of him makes me think having a vampire boyfriend wouldn't be so bad. (If I weren't already married. And if vampires even EXISTED.)

There are three books in the series with the fourth, "Breaking Dawn," due out on Aug.2. (Happy birthday to me!) I've just finished the second, "New Moon." Both are gripping and have unexpected twists and turns throughout. (Although "New Moon" will completely rip your heart out a couple of chapters in.)

And I'm not the only one with a crush on Edward. Some women at church my age and older are pretty much loopy over him.

If you feel silly reading about teenage vampire love, consider this conversation I had with one of our elders' wives at church tonight.

K: (Asking if I have heard of a book she had heard about somewhere, which I hadn't.)

Me: I'm too embarrassed to tell you what I'm reading right now.

K: (rolling her eyes) Oh, well, I'm reading Twilight.

Me: That's what I'm reading!

Ha ha!

On another note, ACU camps were GREAT last week. I was asked what we do with Jenna during that time. ACU camps provide excellent childcare, free of charge, for children of camp volunteers. She got to play with babysitters all day. Julia did this for years until she was old enough for the youngest camp. During Kadesh, which has a more hectic schedule than the middle-school camp we did last week, the babysitters will even bathe your kids and put them to bed for you. This is really the only summer youth group activity I can participate in 100%, and it's because ACU camps provide top-notch childcare so I don't have to worry about my kids. It's another reason we love ACU camps!