Friendless in the Big City

Well, there goes the last of them! When Layne and I first moved here, we made a number of friends pretty quickly, as it seemed like a number of young, married couples had all moved into our area at the same time and met each other at church. Since then, they have mostly moved away, one by one. My friend Amy was the single hold out with me.

As I was growing up, we moved around a lot. (A lot is an understatement. We moved annually). My mom would always remind me that when it comes to friends, you only need one. Well, I had my one and things were going splendidly until her husband got an internship in Chicago for the summer. The long, hot days of summer stretch out ahead of me and they have never seemed so lonely. I will, luckily, be really busy with work this summer and she will only be gone 3 months, but still. Three months is a long time with no true friends.

Saying good-bye right - shoving our faces full of ice cream.

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Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America

That's right. This weekend, we rocked a monastery. We went because Andrew heard about it on the radio and it had catacombs and how cool does that sound?

Way, way, way cooler than it actually was.

The monk who gave us the tour droned on. And on. And... oooooooon. The tour was supposed to be 45 min. It was an hour and half! And it ended up being of the church as well as the catacombs, so the first hour was just spent going through this Catholic church as he described every detail about every single stained glass window, wood carving, and bas relief. And then he would throw in a few Biblical stories that he felt might somehow be slightly related to the story that was actually being depicted. It probably would have been a little more interesting if I was Catholic...

When we finally got to the catacombs, our excitement was at an all time high. Those hopes were quickly dashed. Little did we know, they were just a modern replica of the catacombs in Rome, made entirely of plaster and cement. It was another half an hour of slowly walking through rooms with no dead bodies, skulls, bones - nothing!

The afternoon was only salvaged because while we were waiting for the tour to begin we spent some time in the gardens and they were beautiful, so that's the part I'm sharing with you.

Absolutely amazing fall colors.

They had this really pretty dome thing - not sure what it was about.

And some arches by a rose garden. It had rained earlier, so they were still dripping.

They had this tomb down in the lower gardens, and a really cool statue of a saint up on a wall.

Little Baby Emma

My friend Amy asked me to take pictures of her little baby girl before she was born. I was incredibly honored, but even more terrified! I don't take pictures of people, and I did not want the responsibility of once-in-a-lifetime photos! The day I took pictures was a little too cloudy, but I tried my best to deal with the low lighting and get some decent shots of the most beautiful baby you have ever seen. It has been more than a few months now, but here are some of the shots from back in April. I know they could be so much better, but I thank Amy for taking a gamble on me and letting me be a part of such a special event in Emma's life.

It's belated, but welcome to the world Emma Louise Harrison!