to d.c. and back!

As you can tell from the lack of blogging, our lives are just not that interesting lately. Other than the great time spent with our adorable son, not that much goes on in the Blakley household each day. With summer here, we just had to create our own excitement. And nothing spells excitement quite like a road trip with a 4 month old!

Because we had a singing group for the entire church service on Father's Day, this meant a "week off" for Justin. We decided to take advantage of that and planned our trip around the churches of music ministers Justin wanted to glean some wisdom from. This sent us to Durham for Justin to attend a choir/band rehearsal last Wednesday at The Summit Church and north of Washington D.C. to attend a worship service at Covenant Life Church.

We've been to The Summit several times, and their choir rehearsal is an amazing thing to be a part of. God has tremendously blessed their worship leader, Chris Gaynor with a humble, kind spirit, and a gift for leading God's people in worship. Justin was glad to be able to go again and spend some time talking to Chris. Since we were headed that way, we spent some time Wednesday and Thursday seeing some friends in Roxboro, where we used to live. That was a great blessing and such a good time to catch up with people we hadn't seen in a while. (Really, everyone just wanted to meet Elijah!)

Friday morning we headed to D.C. to spend two nights. Our time in D.C. was pretty much spontaneous and hilarious because we were just following wherever "Mr. GPS Voice" took us! With Elijah, we knew we'd have to be flexible and Justin and I are aren't exactly what you would call "planners," so we just went with the flow.

Looking back...we would've done a few things differently, but I guess you learn what to do and not to do when traveling with kids...so now we know for next time! Overall, Elijah had enough clean clothes and diapers, ate every meal, and didn't get us kicked out of the hotel, so isn't that all that really matters?! I survived my first two "real" public breastfeeding episodes - one at the National Museum of Art and the other on a park bench facing the Washington Monument - I definitely set my standards pretty high! (All the other times I fed Elijah in the car).

So, as Elijah slept around D.C. on Saturday, Justin and I toured a couple of places. Other than enjoying the great monuments, we decided that the internet has probably caused us to lose a little bit of our wonder in the museums. As Justin put it, if we wanted to see Kristi Yamaguchi's figure skates, we'd just look online. If we wanted to see Duke Ellington's manuscripts, we'd Google them. We're gonna have to save up our excitement for when our children are old enough to want to tour these places. (Obviously we didn't do a good job picking the right Smithsonian museums to visit, either!)

Then, Sunday we headed to Covenant Life Church for what we thought was an 11:00 service. Turns out, the internet ISN'T always right and their 2nd service is at 11:30. Too bad we got there at 10:20. Oh well, that left me time to nurse Elijah and tour their GIGANTIC children's area. I was SO impressed. I felt so welcomed as I found their "Infant Care Room" that housed what looked like theater seating of sofas and nursery gliders. Nice. Real Nice. There's nothing like nursing in style at church on Sunday morning. (At least that once!)

My experience was nice, but unfortunately the pastor (Joshus Harris) and the worship pastor (Bob Kauflin) were out of town yesterday. It was a great service, but I hated that Justin couldn't "see Bob in action." I think it was a good first Father's Day, though!

It was a great trip, but its good to be home. More thoughts and pictures to come!