A Busy Weekend!

From all reports, G & G Camp 2009 was a huge success! The cousins all had a great time with each other and with their grandparents. They traveled to Wichita, Kansas, together and did all kinds of fun things...ice skating, museum visits, trips to the zoo and the botanical gardens (including a digital scavenger hunt), sewing, swimming, and even cooking egg rolls.


They wore matching G&G Camp shirts all week, and you may be able to see in the above picture that all of their names were listed on the back...even baby Faith, who was not big enough to come this year. Hannah's name was on there too, with a gray ribbon in front of it...gray is the color for brain cancer awareness. Of course, the girls and their grandparents all missed Hannah...as the oldest, she was always sort of the "head cousin". I think it was a good time of togetherness and healing for all of them. It sure was great to get Bethany back home on Friday night...we really missed that girl!


Saturday night, Bethany and I (along with Bethany's best friend, Kristen, and her mom) went to the American Idol concert in Little Rock. We had a great time at the concert, but it ended up being a surprisingly emotional experience for me. You see, Hannah was the real American Idol fan in our family, and she and I had been to AI concerts together for the last four years. We have lots of good memories associated with AI, and some not so good. At last year's concert, which we attended in September in Oklahoma City, Hannah really wasn't feeling well, and we actually left early. It was just about a week after that when we found out that her cancer had returned. Watching the show this year was also very different. The show starts in January every year, and she was really looking forward to it. But by the time it started, she was beginning to have some problems with short-term memory and had trouble following it from episode to episode. She never really grasped that there was a guy from Arkansas in it this year. After she went to Heaven in February, we continued to watch the show, and thought of her through every episode. Wouldn't she have been surprised when that guy from Arkansas, Kris Allen, actually won! She would have loved the concert this year...especially the screaming that erupted when THIS showed up on the big screen! A lot of that screaming came from Bethany and Kristen, sitting right next to me! Kris did a great job, and Hannah would have loved it.




We finished up the weekend by speaking at a wonderful little church in Umpire, Arkansas, on Sunday. It was a sweet fellowship, and a perfect way to mark the five month anniversary of Hannah's first day in Heaven.

Please continue to remember Jamie Morris and Lauren Crook in your prayers. Jamie is still inpatient at St. Jude's and waiting for his counts to rise enough to continue his chemotherapy. In the meantime, he has had a couple of rough days. Lauren will be having scans on Friday. They will put her to sleep for these scans since she has been unable to lie still enough. Finally, please add Alan McCone to your prayer list...he is a young husband and father who is being treated for Stage IV kidney cancer. I've been visiting with his sweet wife via Facebook. I've also added links to several more websites of children and adults who are in need of prayer. So many needs...but God remains faithful. I am so thankful for this promise: "I saw a new Heaven and a new earth, for the old Heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain." Revelation 21:1,4. He truly is good, all the time!