florida visit

The family's visiting family in Florida this week.

My beloved Aunt Betty and Uncle Kermit (my dad's sister and her husband) live in Brooksville, FL and we all hadn't seen her for a few years and her health's been a little worse in the last couple years, so we decided to come stay near the amazing natural attraction Weeki Wachee Springs (we're right on the Weeki Wachee River with a little dock behind our house and canoe; there are manatee in the water [I touched one!]), which is close to Brooksville, and we've been going over every couple days and seeing them. There are also lots of cousins and newer second (and third!) cousins we've been getting to see. (I'm pictured above with Eric, Aunt Betty's youngest son and my cousin, at the Rising Sun Café, a really neat little coffeehouse in downtown Brooksville; you can see the original tin ceiling and the brick wall behind us).

My mom's dad ('Papa') and her sister Claudia also live in Orlando, a couple hours away, so we're going to see them today too. It's been a great trip so far and it's awesome to be with the whole family.

Here's Aunt Betty and me in our element.

Sarah and I will be getting back to Wilmington, NC on Friday night, where we'll be till August 3rd for the Leadership Training (LT) program we're helping to staff. More on that in my upcoming ministry update letter!

elkins, part 2

I've been meaning to keep posting about all my ventures to Elkins in October, but heck, what can I say? So hard to keep this thing current...

ANYWHO, I got to go down to my hometown a second time the weekend of October 5th for the beloved fall event I always try to plan ahead to attend: Forest Festival! It was awesome; everybody in my family but Colleen [sad face] got to be there, including Christopher and Alice. Everyone not from Elkins always asks me what the Forest Festival is like, and it's hard to describe. Obviously it's celebrating the forest; there's a maid who becomes a queen (Sylvia) and she has a coronation on Friday of the festival in which there are many ladies of her court whose dresses are the colors of the forest and nature. And of course it has all sorts of arts and crafts associated with such West Virginian culture. And music is heard all throughout, from folk to bluegrass to country and everything in between. There is also a 'primitive encampment' set up where people live in authetic frontiersmen-like tents with real cookfires and wool blankets and everything! This was a huge hit when we were boys.

But my favorite events of the festival happen on Saturday morning and are centered around lumberjacking. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it this year, but there are several competitions in a field at the bottom of Davis & Elkins College surrounding some set up logs that are basically trees with their branches cut off. Lumberjacks have to try and saw them down fast and accurately (they're trying to make them hit a peg when they fall). They also do this awesome competition with shorter logs where they chop into them at a height, stick a plank in the side, hop on the plank and start chopping higher and repeat the process till they're at the top, and then they chop the top part of the log off. So cool.

This year I also got to visit my dad's grave (he died of cancer in 1989), which I did get some good pictures of. He's got the only rounded top gravestone in the entire new section of the cemetary! I actually used to draw it some when I was little. Beside Dad (J.D. King III) lies his good friend Jim Woodrum, who also has a unique grave marker: a bench. His wife, Bonnie, who's a good friend of my mom (Annette), also obtained permission to plant a tree by his grave.



On Saturday of the festival, we all went up to Bear Haven by Spruce Knob, one of our favorite places to be. It has a bunch of great rocks to climb around on and some amazing mountain views, and it was an absoultely perfect day. I'll let the pictures speak their own words...





It was a great overall visit to Elkins. The only group shot I have of some of the siblings/spouses is here on the corner of 3rd and Davis, and Alice is only half in it and Christopher isn't at all. Oh well. I guess I like scenery more than people. ...just kidding.