They Just Keep Coming (to Virginia)

Last week­end was a fun-filled one, with a ski trip to Win­ter­green with Grace Covenant Pres­by­ter­ian as well as a vis­it to Rich­mond by our good friend, Kevin O’Mara.

The ski trip was a blast, even though a few of the kids backed out at last minute. The peo­ple that went, both teenagers and adults, were there to get to know one anoth­er, enjoy the great out­doors, and ski/snowboard. That made my job of “youth leader” very easy. Of course, Angela was actu­al­ly there for the use of Win­ter­greens fan­cy spa facil­i­ties, but she did help with mak­ing break­fast so the skiers and snow­board­ers would have full bel­lies and plen­ty of ener­gy until lunch-time. I nev­er real­ly gave a lot of thought to being a “youth leader” since my scout­ing days, but Angela and I have both been asked to help out with that some through our church. Hon­est­ly, it’s a no-brain­er for me: I real­ly enjoyed get­ting to hang out with these kids. I have my reser­va­tions in think­ing that par­ent­ing will always be as fun (I hear that can be real work, huh, Mom & Dad?). How­ev­er, after hav­ing gone rock climb­ing and now ski­ing with some of the youth at our church, I’m look­ing for­ward to the next adven­ture I get to tag along with.

Some of the young peo­ple from out church in the lift line along with our pas­tor, Chris.

A great deal of our involve­ment in this has been due to the encour­age­ment and lead of our church’s new asso­ciate pas­tor, Chris Thomas. He and his wife Stephanie (and their two cute lit­tle girls) have been a won­der­ful addi­tion to our church and we’re hap­py to call them our friends. Of course, my fam­i­ly grew up with a fam­i­ly min­is­ter who was more like a cool uncle than most folks prob­a­bly see their church leader, so it’s not real­ly so odd to me. How­ev­er, I sup­pose a lot of folks might see it dif­fer­ent­ly giv­en their men­tal image of who or what a pas­tor is. Well, Chris is a thir­ty-some­thing hip­ster from Cal­i­for­nia by way of Boston who hap­pens to be a thought­ful man of God (and a heck of a snow­board­er, too). Hav­ing him and his fam­i­ly in our lives has been great for so many rea­sons and it’s a blast to get to hang out with them. So much so, I feel guilty when peo­ple actu­al­ly feel the need to thank me for going on trips with their teenage kids.

Any­way, all of this just added to why it was so bizarre and unfor­tu­nate that on his last run of the day Sat­ur­day, Chris land­ed a jump bad­ly and injured him­self. At first, he seemed pret­ty sure that he had dam­aged the same knee he had hurt a few years ear­li­er dur­ing anoth­er snow­board­ing acci­dent. Now, it appears more like­ly he actu­al­ly just broke his low­er leg near his knee. I sup­pose that’s bet­ter, in a sense, as it is more like­ly to heal with­out surgery or fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions (in my lim­it­ed knowl­edge of leg injuries, any­way). I felt bad that this hap­pened on a trip he was in charge of and I hope he is able to heal quick­ly so he can get back to work. I also want him to get well soon so we can go out on more fun trips!

Also, after we got back home and I was get­ting over being sore all over from a day full of ski­ing (I’m not very good, but I enjoy it) we got a sur­prise call from Kevin on Sun­day after­noon. He was in town, no less, and was want­i­ng to meet up with us for dinner.

Angela and I met Kevin over at the home of Rich­mond’s newest addi­tion, and also some peo­ple we’re very glad live here now, Trey and Megan. Kevin was inter­est­ed in get­ting some Viet­namese food and Angela had a good sug­ges­tion. Viet­namese isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly our favorite, but we were up for it all the same and how could we deny some­one who longed for it so? Din­ner at Mekong was good and we fol­lowed it up with desert at the new­ly ren­o­vat­ed Bev’s Ice Cream in Cary­town. After­wards, we hung out at Trey and Megan’s place laugh­ing and enjoy­ing some port and cheese. The port was fair­ly new to me, as I’d only had it once or twice before, but the blue cheese and Gou­da was crazy good. It was also great fun to get to spend time cut­ting up with good friends.

Kevin tells me he took this pho­to on his cam­era phone right after call­ing me about din­ner. I like to think they’re all so hap­py because I said we’d go. Pho­to by Kevin O’Mara, used under a CC 2.0 license.

And speak­ing of com­ing to Vir­ginia, my broth­er Dave is on his way as I write this for a show tonight in Ash­land with The Coal Men and Stephen Sim­mons. I always enjoy when they come up to play and the it seems many oth­ers are as well, as more and more peo­ple show up each time the come. Angela and I are look­ing for­ward to enjoy­ing a good din­ner and show up there this evening. The house is in a wrecked state, so we’ll prob­a­bly have to take them out for break­fast (instead of Ange­la’s always well-received break­fasts), but it’ll be a lot of fun to get to see them all.

With all these peo­ple com­ing to Rich­mond and such good friends to spend time with, I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to work­ing on the stuff that needs to get done at the house!