No, that's not the sequel to "Dances With Wolves." Instead, it describes how Sarah has spent the spring being part of the cross-country program after school. She has been working very hard all spring, twice a week for an hour after school, training for the New Balance Girls-On-The-Run 5K race, which was this past weekend.
Sarah did phenomenally. She asked her fat lazy old man to be her Running Buddy, and she set the pace for how we would run. In the downpour at George Mason University yesterday morning, she led us out onto the course and never once stopped. We passed people who were walking, we passed people who were jogging, we kept right on going up three different hills (amazing how we never seemed to go *down* any hills) to the finish line, where Sarah kicked in the afterburners and sprinted across the finish line.
She wound up finishing 968th out of 2,643 total runners, all girls in elementary schools around Northern Virginia. She finished a 5K race in 35:50, or an average pace of 11 minutes 32 seconds per mile...not shabby at all for her first time doing a road race! She finished in the top 37% of all girls running that day, and quite honestly, was probably one of the first Silverbrook girls to finish; we know several others were eating her dust all morning.
We're so proud of Sarah! Click on our Spring 2010 photo album to see sights from her Brownies activities this spring, as well as a couple of pictures from the race.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sarah's Year in Brownies
Sarah is finishing her third and final year in Brownies; it doesn't seem quite possible that the little girl who joined Daisies four years ago this fall is on the verge of Bridging over to be a Junior Girl Scout. Her Bridging ceremony will be on June 6, which looks like a perfect day because Grammie and Grampa Tarrier plan to be in town that weekend.
In the meantime, her troop leader has posted up a slideshow of snapshots taken throughout the year: the pumpkin patch and pig races, seeing the Nutcracker and going backstage, the Princess Diaries sleepover, and their Thinking Day exhibits on Christmas Island are all here. Enjoy seeing our little girl growing and blossoming.
In the meantime, her troop leader has posted up a slideshow of snapshots taken throughout the year: the pumpkin patch and pig races, seeing the Nutcracker and going backstage, the Princess Diaries sleepover, and their Thinking Day exhibits on Christmas Island are all here. Enjoy seeing our little girl growing and blossoming.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Rebirth
Updating our previous story: The spring rains and warm sunshine have finally led the Dad Tree to put forth its leaves. Click here for a photo of it as of this afternoon.
The story from the last post made it into the sermon that I delivered at church on April 25 and again at Lincolnia Senior Center on May 2. It's good to know both stories--the tree, and the promise of new life in Christ--have a happy ending.
The story from the last post made it into the sermon that I delivered at church on April 25 and again at Lincolnia Senior Center on May 2. It's good to know both stories--the tree, and the promise of new life in Christ--have a happy ending.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Pictures from Lacrosse
A commercial photography studio affiliated with SYC has taken pictures of David's lacrosse team; see the link at the right or click here to find the album they posted. See picture #2 of 85 for a great shot of David in action...and I understand you can order copies if you like.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Waiting for Blooming
The tree we planted out front last autumn with the last of Dad's ashes and dedicated to his memory has yet to burst forth in bloom this spring. How long should I be waiting before getting worried about the "Dad tree" making it through its first winter?
I didn't think I had to worry about it getting enough water through the winter; with all the snows we had, the south lawn was very well moistened thank you very much. And it's set back far enough from the road that road salt should not have gotten to it. As far as I can tell, we've taken good care of it through the winter.
Yet whenever I drive through the neighborhood I see everything else in full bloom. Leaves are out on the oaks, the forsythia are done their blooming, and even some young trees are blossomed and leaves are coming out. And still, our tree stands there just as bare as it was all winter.
There are signs for hope: the twigs do have buds on them, and the tips of the branches have a reddish bark that suggests, to me with my untrained eye at least, a healthy tree, ready to grow. According to Cornell University, the leaves won't be out for about three weeks after the buds begin to swell in the spring. I confess I can't say whether the buds have begun to swell, because I only just noticed them recently, yet it's not clear to me that they've swelled any.
It occurs to me this could be another teaching moment on Dad's part: patience, certainly. ("Come ON, GROW already!") And it also occurs to me that God could be using this first spring, and the anxiety of waiting for the tree to burst forth, to teach about waiting for the new life that comes in resurrection. We may anxiously desire it, we may be looking for signs of its coming. But just as with the blooming of a young sugar maple tree, it will happen on His own time, and we just need to put our concerns about it in His hands, waiting for the promise of new life that Easter represents.
The selfish part of me wants to see blooming: to see progress, new life, to know it's made it through the death of winter. And maybe there's a lesson in there, too, about surrender, and trusting in the four hardest words in the English language: "Thy will be done."
I didn't think I had to worry about it getting enough water through the winter; with all the snows we had, the south lawn was very well moistened thank you very much. And it's set back far enough from the road that road salt should not have gotten to it. As far as I can tell, we've taken good care of it through the winter.
Yet whenever I drive through the neighborhood I see everything else in full bloom. Leaves are out on the oaks, the forsythia are done their blooming, and even some young trees are blossomed and leaves are coming out. And still, our tree stands there just as bare as it was all winter.
There are signs for hope: the twigs do have buds on them, and the tips of the branches have a reddish bark that suggests, to me with my untrained eye at least, a healthy tree, ready to grow. According to Cornell University, the leaves won't be out for about three weeks after the buds begin to swell in the spring. I confess I can't say whether the buds have begun to swell, because I only just noticed them recently, yet it's not clear to me that they've swelled any.
It occurs to me this could be another teaching moment on Dad's part: patience, certainly. ("Come ON, GROW already!") And it also occurs to me that God could be using this first spring, and the anxiety of waiting for the tree to burst forth, to teach about waiting for the new life that comes in resurrection. We may anxiously desire it, we may be looking for signs of its coming. But just as with the blooming of a young sugar maple tree, it will happen on His own time, and we just need to put our concerns about it in His hands, waiting for the promise of new life that Easter represents.
The selfish part of me wants to see blooming: to see progress, new life, to know it's made it through the death of winter. And maybe there's a lesson in there, too, about surrender, and trusting in the four hardest words in the English language: "Thy will be done."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)