Hello, friends. I'm not dead, can you believe it?! There's entirely too much to explain at the present time, but I have just today started a new blog. You can read about why I haven't posted since November and why I'm moving by hopping over to http://drgnfly1010.wordpress.com.

Thank you so much for reading my blog and keeping up with me and commenting.. I know I've been off-kilter not only since August, but even before that, but I'm hoping that that's all going to change now ;). So please check out my new blog and follow it!  I'm still in the process of catching up on all of your blogs, as well, but I don't think I'm going to be able to catch everything, so if there's something particularly exciting or life-changing, let me know!

Goodbye for now,

~Bethany

Time flies… and fun has nothing to do with it! ;)

Ok, fun has *some* to do with it.

I’m so sorry for my long absence, blog friends! I’m consciously trying to do better, starting tonight. I’ve got news and excuses and all kinds of wonderful things to talk about! But… I give up trying to return comments because I can’t remember which ones I’ve returned or not… sorry! I do love your comments and appreciate them, I promise! I'm also sorry for not commenting and keeping up with your blogs... I'm going to try to do better in that area, as well.

First and foremost – not long after my last entry, my dad got sick and ended up in the hospital for a week with some sort of infection. It has taken him several weeks after that to recover, and he’s still only just now getting back to himself physically. Needless to say, for that one week I spent all of my spare time at the hospital so I didn’t feel much like trying to blog.

Other news bits:

-I retook the ACT and got my score high enough for the academic scholarship! Praise God! Super happy about that J

-I had a graduation party J. We sent out these cute announcements/invitations and lots of people came and I was given my diploma. It was really fun. J I also got a GPS from my parents as a graduation gift – and I was really glad of that because one of my worries was getting lost at school! Unfortunately, all the slideshows are messing up and won't let me post, so if you want to see more pictures, you'll have to add me on Facebook ;)

-A few weeks ago Melissa, Collin, and I went to a free concert at Ft. Eustis – it was Rebecca St. James & Jeremy Riddle. It was GREAT! I loved it! So much fun. Jeremy Riddle was really cool – very happily worshiping God. And I love Rebecca St. James’s music J. Again, there are some great pics, but the slideshows are messing up. So here's just a few:

Me & Jeremy Riddle 

-Last week Melissa and I were to go out for mexican and she surprised me by inviting Faith, a friend who moved to North Carolina a year or more ago, and who I had not seen since she moved... and, in fact, hardly talked to at all. It was a fun evening :) Here's a picture of me and Faith:

-Last night Melissa,  Collin, and I went to one of those paint-your-own-pottery places and it was lots of fun. I made a little hanging name-plate type of thing that says “Flutterbug” (my mom’s blog-name for me) and something for my mom’s kitchen. I’ll post pictures when I get them J. For now, here's us afterward:

-Tomorrow is my last Sunday at my church! L I can hardly believe it. We are leaving Wednesday to go to South Carolina for a week before I go to school… I think I’m still not FULLY realizing it all… but every now and then I do and I start bawling! Lol ;)

-Tonight I finally got in contact with my roommate, Holly. I had tried calling her a few weeks ago and she had tried me back but it wouldn’t go through, so she emailed me tonight, and I’m so glad she did! It kind of helped break the ice J. I’m very excited with how much we have in common. God is great that way J. So tomorrow I’m going to call her after church to talk some more. I’m looking forward to it. J Oh yes – she and her best friend have a blog, here: http://werunashamed.blogspot.com

I think that’s all for tonight.. don’t want too long of a post or else I might bore you ;). Actually, it’s been *so* long that I’m not sure I remember much more than what I’ve written. Sad, is it not? Oh well, tis me. ;). I shall be back soon!

Bethany Joy

PS: I know something I forgot to mention—I’m thinking about transferring all of my posts to http://drgnfly1010.wordpress.com and redirecting this URL to that one for my blog, since it’s easier to use than HSB. Downside: not as customizable and would take me a long time to transfer the pots and comments. What do you think? I like input! BTW, I like that template, but I haven’t decided for sure to use that one. J  Goodnight!

Wow.

There is SO much to blog about.

Where do I start?

Hmm…

Well, the trip, I suppose. ;)

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the mountains? My Mamma loves the beach, but I’ll take the mountains over the beach ANY day! We had a long drive to TN for the first school, and we drove through the beautiful mountain area of western Virginia. It was gorgeous and I totally loved it.

After visiting the school in TN (which I was able to rule out), we went to Greenville for basically 24 hours. It was an EXTREMELY fast trip, but fun. We took some wacky family pictures while we were there. Here’s some good ones…

On the way back home we stopped in Winston-Salem, NC, to visit the other school. I didn’t take any pictures there, though… I kinda forgot ;).

We got home and it’s been a whirl-wind rush ever since. I’m now working full-time, so that’s another excuse for not posting ;).

I got my ACT scores back, and I’m ONE POINT away from getting an academic scholarship. ONE POINT!!! So I’m retaking it on June 13^th (more prayers, please ;).

On the 22^nd (of this month) we have some visitors coming for the day. They live in Washington (the state) but used to live here, so they know my mom and dad. I’ve seen the dad of the family several times in the last five or so years, but not the mom or the girls… I don’t even remember the girls at all, lol. They have two daughters; I think the oldest is 13, I’m not sure. :)

I was able to get the new newsboys CD a day or two after it came out. I like it… my favorite songs on it so far are –“Lead Me To The Cross” “In the Hands of God” "The Upside" and “The Way We Roll.” I like several others, though, too. :). Buuuuut… I don’t like it as much as I was hoping/expecting. Definitely not as much as GO or Thrive or even Take Me To Your Leader. But that’s ok... it’s still good :) and sadly, the last one with Peter Furler. I’ll miss his voice.

A few weeks ago we went to Target on our day off and I was able to get some clothes. I don’t normally like anything there, but they had some nice “professionalish” clothes that are good for school; I got a nice dress shirt and two nice pairs of dress pants. Perfect for class. The strange realization hit me – I have to go SCHOOL SHOPPING! Never had to do that before!

A few days ago I got the new Jenny B. Jones book. I read it so fast. I totally LOVE it. It’s awesome. I just keep gushing, lol. But it’s great. It’s actually got a mystery…and I LOVE mysteries! So that with the wit and fun of Jenny Jones’ style makes the perfect Christian Teen novel. I’m going to post my review on my book blog, and hopefully I’ll start keeping up with that blog more now. I’m going to try anyway! So take a peek and let me know what you think… here’s an excerpt of the review:

***
Bella is a bit of a spoiled brat.

She freaks out and is completely miserable because she has to leave her Dad's awesome condo in NYC, all her upper-class friends, and her adoring boyfriend, to move to "hickville" in Oklahoma with her mother, her mother's new husband, and his two sons - one sweet, while the other seems determined to make Bella's life even more miserable. She begs her mother to come to her senses, but her Mom is rock-solid that it's "God's will." How can Bella argue with that?

READ THE REST HERE!

***

Ok, I think it’s time for me to wrap it up. It’s about midnight and I have to be at work by 9 tomorrow, which requires getting up at 7:30 and I’m sooooooooo tired that I don’t know if 7.5 hours will hold me ;).

Bye for now!

~BethanyJoy

[I’m going out of town tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) on a little “College Road Trip” and will be back at the end of the week.. I promise to return comments then.. please pray for me! I’m a little nervous :) Thanks!]

A few days ago my Grandfather sent me (as well as others in the family) some pictures of the daffodils that were coming up in his yard.

I wrote back telling him how pretty they were, then went on to say that daffodils were kind of special to me. They spark something inside of me; it’s like when I see daffodils coming up, I know spring is here.

We have been at the same church for over 15 years. The church building is surrounded with daffodils, and when I was a little girl I would get so excited to see the pretty yellow and white flowers popping up all over the yard. I always associated them with Easter. When I would see them being coming through the dirt and mess of the yard, it brought forth anticipation in me for the beautiful holiday. Even now, when I see daffodils, I get a tingle of excitement that spring is here; and that Easter is coming. By now, of course, Easter has passed. But I still get a twinge of excitement when I see the daffodils.

My Grandad wrote back last night. I was waiting for my turn to brush my teeth so I could go to bed when I decided to check my email from my phone while I waited. I didn’t expect any new email, as it had only been about twenty minutes since I’d been online. But there was the response. I opened it and began reading it on my tiny screen.

He told me that there was a history to those particular daffodils, and I was inspired to share it with you.

They came to his home from the farm his parents owned in Maine, but before that they came from a farm his parents owned in Massachusetts. His father (My great-grandfather) had bought the farm around 1924, and the people before him were comparatively well to do. One memory he has was that there was a tiny hole in the middle of the dining room floor, under the dining table, where a wire was connected to a bell in the kitchen which could summon the maid by stepping on a button under the table with your foot.

The family who had previously owned (and presumably built) the home had put in a nice, large flower garden in front of the barn between a large cellar door and the front corner of the barn, all enclosed by an attractive, low, stone wall. He guessed it to be at least twenty by twenty-five feet.

Grandad remembered that his Dad and Mom would often work in it in the evenings to keep it looking spiffy. Though he was young, he remembers gorgeous large hollyhocks growing up against the barn, and a number of perennial plans such as bleeding heart, delphinium, lilies, phlox, daffodils, etc. growing. He also remembered how nice the garden smelled when he would play with his toy cards on top of the stone wall. The driveway circled in and out right in front of it, and many folks that stopped by to buy veggies, applies, pears, cherries, berries and currants from their farm stand would admire and remark on the flower show.

They moved from that farm in Massachusetts to one in Maine when my grandfather was seven years old, though a few of his relatives stayed there. At the farm in Maine they did not have many flowers at first; it was more what one might call “survival gardens” to raise food to sell and for the family. But eventually his father developed a large vegetable garden where he put some peonies, lilies, etc, bordering the driveway and its strip of lawn.  

My grandfather’s Uncle Lawrence was not the gardener that my great-grandfather was, though he always had a good vegetable garden, and the flower garden in front of the barn got overrun with grass and weeds and never looked the same again. But one thing about daffodils; they don’t run out like tulips, hyacinths and crocus, but tend to multiply if they are not too smothered.

About 1950, he guesses, Uncle Lawrence decided to dig up and thin out the daffodils, bringing up to Maine a whole bucket or two of extra bulbs! Great-grandfather planted them along the front of the garden in a strip about four feet wide by about seventy-five to a hundred feet long, and the multiplied some more.

When my grandfather returned from the Army in Germany in March of 1955 with his new (Zeiss Ikon 35mm) slide camera, what a sight there was to photograph! --looking toward the house from the far side of the garden, with the resh green spring lawn, and then that huge strip of nodding yellow daffodils! Beautiful.

They multiplied even more, so great-grandfather “subdivided” again, and planted a narrow strip on each side of the driveway all the way to the road (it was a long driveway!). After great-grandmother died in 1973, he even planted some in the farm cemetery.

When my grandfather and his brother Lester had to sell the farm, he made sure to dig up a couple peonies and a box of daffodil bulbs, and he planted the bulbs “temporarily” on the side of the vegetable garden at his home in New Hampshire. At some point later on, he inadvertently planted a couple of rhubarb plants on top them! He was sure their tops had died away when he did that, but undaunted, they bloomed away every spring, long before the rhubarb was barely popping the ground.

After removing brush, vines, and all sorts of things from the front corner of the yard, he put down some wood chips and thought it would be a good place to plant some of the daffodils. He also thought another place to plant some would be the adobe-looking birdbath.

But he now faced a problem – how could he find the bulbs? The tops die away early in the summer, and then huge rhubarb leaves hide everything. So when the rhubarb leaves were done after frost, he dug up a large section where the bulbs had multiplied, and got a lot of them – but not all! He tried typing string around the tops when they were green to identify the locations later on, with results less than spectacular. Every year he transplants a few, and every year there are still a few remaining, blossoming even now under the raspberry bushes!

He concluded, saying, “Well, I guess we can say these are definitely interstate bulbs, having traveled, survived and multiplied in three states!  And isn't it a wonderful picture of how we as Christian believers, though we die and our bodies rest in the ground, at Christ's command we shall be resurrected and gloriously flower forth in new bodies!!!”

What a beautiful thing to say! I confess, while I see allegories to the Christian life and similarities of Christ’s love and work in many different things in life, I never made the connection to perennials, and more specifically daffodils. I think that’s partly due to the fact that I don’t garden, and I don’t know much of anything about plants. However, I was inspired by the letter my Granddad wrote. How true! He laid out a story and made the plant seem so simple…and then so easily tied it in with our lives in Christ.

Spring is a beautiful time of year, and daffodils always mark its coming for me. But now I have an even greater reason to be excited and feel a twinge when I see the daffodil peeking through the ground… a reminder of the coming day when I, too, shall suddenly come forth out of the ground in a beautiful new temple to be with my Savior – even greater than the promise of Easter is the promise of the ultimate resurrection day.