It was a nice, sunny, warm Friday after work, and I decided that I didn’t feel like getting stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the way home, so I tarried at Our Lady of Good Counsel for a bit.

My boss had given me her old pair of Rollerblades, and I’ve been keeping them in my trunk — you never know when you are going to have the opportunity to use them.

I parked the car in an unoccupied corner of the parking lot which looked relatively flat and popped open the trunk. I donned my new-to-me ‘blades and started skating around. I could only do 2-3 largish figure 8s around the car before I had to sit on the bumper and rest a bit, but it was a lot of fun!

As you can see, I haven’t yet gotten around to matching my socks and just grabbed the two which came closest to hand this morning:

At least this is the current fashion for the school kids and I can just pretend that I did it intentionally to be trendy. 🙂

After skating as long as I could, I still wasn’t quite ready to leave and walked around with my camera taking pictures of various things.

There were these cute little blue flowers.

I saw pictures of them on Google saying that these are bluebells, but I’m not sure… They’re very cute, whatever they are.

There were also these little berry things. I didn’t try to eat them. 🙂

And a small flowering tree in the “wooded area” between the parking lot and the Garden of Gethsemane.

Peter was still sleeping, so I didn’t try to wake him.

Instead, I looked around and found a cool little stripey rock:

I walked over by our Lord, and someone had placed roses by Him. Unfortunately, this put thorns right by His face.

I wasn’t too crazy about that. 😦

I prayed and lit a candle for my intentions:

I admired the oddly peeling bark of one of the trees:

I then visited the other side, where we have the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto. There was a bunch of new candles anxiously awaiting prayers:

Our Lady had flowering trees, too:

The Living Stones of OLGC:

I’m sure that I wouldn’t be able to pick out which one was my stone if it was held up in front of me. But… didn’t I take a photo of it before I put it in the pile? Hmm…

There’s a little nook by the front entrance with a bench. It’s a little odd, seeing as there are floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of you, so everyone inside the church can see you sitting out there, but no one was around on a Friday afternoon, so I sat for a little while. See? I even saved you a seat! 🙂

While I was sitting there, I got to look at this statue. I think this is supposed to be Baby Jesus.

As you can see, I’m quite talented at amusing myself. 🙂 As soon as some joggers started down the driveway, I decided that I had stalled for long enough and headed home. It was a pleasant diversion from the daily drive. 🙂 I love Church!