Sherpa's Wonderin's

The Top Ten Summer Events...Continued

So, its been almost two weeks since I started the list, okay...more like three? Here's the next two.

8) Rebekah, Maggie, and Josh.

In August I happened upon Little Rebekah's parents blog. Little Rebekah is three years old. Her parents found out that she likely has Cerebral Palsy the end of last year. About 6 months ago, she was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma. She had a really rough August, but is doing better.

Maggie is another 3 year old diagnosed with mixed lineage (two types) leukemia. She had a bone marrow transplant this summer, but her body rejected it. Although she's been doing well (thanks to make a wish and other foundations) she was able to go to Disneyland and meet Rod Stewart a few weeks ago.
Like Rebekah, Josh has Ewing's Sarcoma. Poor little boy is having a rough time with complications and has been in ICU off and on for the past month.

7) Lake Anna

The last time I was able to hang with our intern Berlin and her sister Starlee. Anyway, each summer our bishop invites the members of his congregation to his second home on the shores of Lake Anna. Lake Anna was created as a cooling pond for a nuclear plant about 100 miles south west of DC. Yes, Lake Anna is safe. I drove with a Erin McBride, Starlee, a friend of Erin's. We spent most of the day on the water, playing and water skiing. I heart waterskiing. Although, now i've decided i want to learn to either turn on two skis, wakeboard, or slalom. However since I've only been skiing twice in my life.........

6) Of Lit Crosses and 17 miles downhill

After taking the summer off to travel Europe, central America, with pitstops in UT, Kelli came back to Virginia to pursue her studies in Nursing. Before she started working in INOVA (she starts the first of next month as a clerk) we went with Erin McBride to the Galax Fiddlers Festival and biking in Damascus.

We left Thursday night, camped at the KOA, met Tyler and drove by Natural Bridge and went to the visitor center---a travesty really. 12 dollars just to see a natural bridge--Let's just say that a national treasure such as the national bridge.....should be preserved but not charge 12 dollars per person and built up around it to such an extent.

Anyway, we headed down to Roanoke to say hi to Erin's grandmother and then took the BlueRidge Pkwy down to Galax. Each year Galax holds an annual fiddler's festival. The festival was held at the fairgrounds, and the parkinglot accompanying the fair grounds was full of trailers, and encampments---when we walked through them to get to the grandstand to watch the event, many of the camps were full of musicians practicing (it was oldtime and bluegrass band competitions). After the competition, the bands went back to their camps to play...Some playing well after midnight. People would just wander from camp to camp listening.

The next day Tyler informed us that the mt biking trail we would go on was too easy for him but that it was just right for us. He went off to Charlottesville, and we went over to Damascus. The trail was 17 miles down hill. We were in the corner of Virginia--next to North Carolina and Tennessee. The trail wasn't any work-but the hillside was BEAUTIFUL. The only thing I regret was not going to any of the bluegrass museums in the area. We ended up going back to NoVa on the way home.