our favorite time of year!

there is just something about the fall!! obviously college football (a true passion of ours, only magnified by living in sec country), a slight chill in the air, the colors (i was pretty burnt out on orange after high school, but i love it again!), pumpkin anything and everything, the anticipation of the holiday season, and i even love how busy it is because we don't mind being busy for really great things!  like DNOW, the best thing we do in the johnson ferry student ministry. it's an amazing weekend retreat & is less than three weeks away! there is a crazy amount of work we do, but so so worth it to see what God does in the lives of teenagers! that part reminds me of working at young life camp, which is always a good thing!!

next week we are heading out to arizona for jeff's wedding! he is ricky's former roomate and has a big place in our hearts! it's our first time back to God's country since we moved here, and when i think about it i just feel like my heart is so full it's going to explode! going back to the place we met, seeing our friends that became our family, the mountains, the wedding!! and my parents and my sister are coming, too! could it get any better? only if it we were leaving right now instead of next week, ahhh!

i should probably be embarrased by this pic, but for real? who hasn't seen my cry before?

we are also working on our house whenever we can! i don't know when i'm ever going to put up "after" pictures because there is SO much we want to do and only so much time & money every month, but it's so fun to make it our own. but hunter is not a big fan of the projects. especially the current one! ricky's been using the air compressor/nail gun to put up waincsotting in the living room & dining room and hunter HATES it! i was in KC for libby's wonderful shower a couple of weeks ago and ricky literally couldn't get hunter out of our closet! that's hunter's safety zone, apparently! and the other morning, ricky got up to feed him (obviously hunter's #1 priority), and i heard some loud thumps. it sounded like ricky had tripped & fell, but nope! hunter had fallen asleep under the bed (i know, right?!) and kept bumping the bed trying to get out because he was so excited about food. i know i talk about hunter a ton, but i can't help it! he's the most entertaining dog ever!

the big atlanta flood!

we have had rain like CRAZY for days & days, and at first i thought people were just overreacting like they usually do around here...but it was really bad! it took me two hours to get home from work (a 15 mile trip) and ricky's mom got stuck at her school with 15 5 & 6 year olds until midnight because their parents literally couldn't get there because the roads were flooded. you can find some crazier pictures out there, but i snapped this one of a soccer field near our house on my way home. quite a change from living in the desert!

our heart

this video is of our favorite place in the world and represents so much of what we believe in & just gets me amped to serve a God whose love knows no bounds!


Lost Canyon: The Eric Scofield Tour from W. Ashley Maddox on Vimeo.

just trying to update the blog from the iPhone...our big splurge!!
they've proved to be very useful (for me at least, ricky mostly just
plays his fishing game)!

summer adventures!

wow, this summer has been so much busier than i anticipated, but better than i had hoped! i thought i'd post a recap, since i just never seem as caught up with friends as i want to be!!

we kicked things off by moving into a new house and gaining and endless to do list of fun and not so fun projects. a couple of days later i got to take kids to camp up in the mountains of chattanooga, one of my favorite trips yet! i loved that once i got there i got to stop being the assistant and just got to hang out with our students. here's a picture of the wonderful group of leaders i got to work with:

i got to go up to nc to visit libs, check out her new digs (yeah. i'm a poet now), and find her stunning wedding dress! highlight of the weekend was definitely just sitting outside a coffee shop with her just being us. laughing and crying and making absolutely no sense to anyone but each other.

then it was off to the ozarks! ricky's first trip to one of my favorite vacation spots ever. it was an awesome few days with the bram fam, including a pontoon boat that was driven more like a waverunner, go carts, fishing, the best view to a fireworks show we will ever have, fireworks with my brother (always an adventure!), and listening to my dad's commentary on the bachelorette. totally worth the 24+ hours in jolanda the honda. but i totally failed at taking pictures...oops.

in the meanwhile, i got paid to go to six flags and go rafting with teenagers, we celebrated a ton of family birthdays, literally pulled trees out of our gutters, dog-sat a normal sized black lab for a couple of weeks, and had some fun times with friends. the next big thing was the middle school mission trip to dallas! what a week that was! 105 degrees everyday while we were doing vbs outside, but the little kids were so precious (ricky is so lucky i didn't bring any home) and it was incredible to step back and watch our students reach out to them and love them. lot's of cool "God moments" as we called them. i was a little better about pictures for this one:

after a week of getting close to no sleep on an air mattress, i was ready to be home! i got so lucky and missed the bus ride back to atlanta! thanks josh and katie for getting married on the 18th so i could avoid that misery! we had a blast spending time with all of ricky's best friends and the wedding was beautiful!

we wrapped up the summer with a long weekend in jacksonville, relaxing and getting beach time with some friends. it's been a great summer, probably my favorite outside of my yl summers! but i would be a big fat liar if i didn't admit that we missed young life camp every single day! i'm convinced that nothing holds a candle to it. we're so blessed to be near family, friends, jfbc, sweet tea, & the sec! we're counting down the days until football starts, until we get to travel back to our arizona family for jeff's wedding, and until libby's big day! no sign of life slowing down, but we're loving it!

it's official. longest. post. ever. and somebody's demanding my attention.