A Stone's Throw

Man, what a great afternoon of helping with the Maple Leaf 5K and Duathlon!  We had a blast helping out racers from all over the area.  I am so proud of our church family who stepped up and volunteered their time and energy!  You guys ROCK!  I had a ton of the racers who were so thankful for the kind words and encouragement from our people.  Belinda Shores (#330 in the pic) is a triathlete and serves in our Kids City children’s ministry every Sunday  She did an amazing job in the Duathlon (5K run/15 mile bik/1 mile run). She is standing in-between Trisha Fisher and Jessica Ensz, two other Forest Park(ers)!  They decided to run the 5K together and did an awesome job too!

Check out an email that Jenny got this morning from Belinda…FP Carthage, you guys are awesome and it really shows!!!

Hey Stone Family and church family!

Just wanted to tell you how much your help was appreciated at the Maple Leaf Run and Duathlon.  What a great response from our church and what a unique way to reach out to our community!  You all did a wonderful job of protecting the racers from oncoming traffic and giving directions.  Thank you!  Those of you who were serving the water were a refreshment to the thirsty.  Thank you!

Matthew 10:42 “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”

Joyfully,
The Shores Family

By the way, Taylor your a great runner!  I could tell you trained hard, because you ROCKED the run!  Also, Patricia and Jessica what a great run!  Your run times were spectacular!  Way to go girls!

Thanks again to all of our FP Carthage folks who really made a difference yesterday in our community!  AWESOME!

Here are some pics from my iPhone…random, I know…forgot the “real” camera in the truck!

We must be a real glutton for punishment as we ventured out to give the beach the old college try once more, but this time right across the street from the condo. Tucker didn’t get a good night’s rest, so he was teetering on the edge of meltdown. He was a little confused at where he was at last night and didn’t really get to sleep at all. Basically it was not going to happen . . . so Tucker had to go back to the condo and take a long nap. Taylor and I went to the pool later on.

Here is Taylor’s Travelogue . . .

The next day day we went back to the beach in front of our condo. We were only there like 20 minutes. Then we went to the pool by our room. My dad and me raced. I won every time!

No pictures of this crazy day

We decided to give the beach another try and headed out to the St. Andrews State Park (which is really awesome, by the way) to get some beach time. The boys didn’t think the “our” beach was clean enough, especially after going to the Shell Island beach the other day, so we were going to try to go to a cleaner beach. I find it funny that Taylor says “that is the cleanest/dirtiest beach I have ever seen.” Oh yeah, how many beaches have you seen buddy?

We had made our lunch, packed the chairs (thanks Gary and Fran) and a canopy shelter (thanks mom and dad). I realize that the picture on the front of the canopy is a beach scene, but they definitely didn’t have the beach scene we have had the entire time here–pretty brisk wind. So basically our canopy deal didn’t work because it was too flimsy for the large winds on the beach.

Secondly, what is always at the beach and tends to multiply?? Everybody? SAND! When God promised Abram that he would make his children as many as the grains of sand on the seashore, he wasn’t messing around!! I think the boys like the idea of the beach and the sand, but they get sand on their hands, then head to their faces to scratch an itch or whatever and the get sand in their eyes. Then add an anger management issues and throwing sand at each other and you have a disaster on your hands. That is what we had on our anniversary morning and early afternoon–a full on beach disappointment.

We left the beach just in time to head to Happy Hour at Sonic (wish is was something else, quite frankly–just kidding). It is “anti-customer service week at the beac”h for us, so even something as simple as some drinks turns into an almost 45 minute ordeal. The first hint was that the girl came over the speaker and said there was a 15 minute wait, would we still want to order. Well, we had just gotten done with an absolute beating with a two year old, so we needed some self-medication for sure. We ordered our drinks and watched all of the cars on our side come and go. . . 25 minutes go by and Jenny walks up to the door. She is not alone. There is a pretty upset senior adult who wants names and telephone numbers of district managers. The beauty of the deal was that the manager and assistant manager are both sitting down eating while the short staff is drowning. They didn’t even come out to face the angered public, they sent this poor teenage boy out to try to calm down the masses. Forty-five minutes and free drinks later, we were off to take a nap at the condo.

We had some really good hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner and ventured out to get those awesome vacation pictures next to the sea oats and the sunsets. Did I mention that Tucker doesn’t really like the sand and waves? I think I did.

Overall, we had a really good time and we think we got some good pictures to capture the memories of this week. We had to go to the pool before bed and really had a good time at the pool.

Here is Taylor’s entry for the day . . .

We went to the ocean. It was a lot of fun. Then we went to the pool.

Here are a few of the pics from that photo shoot . . .