'for those who care'

eric and i just got back from an amazing missions trip to st. louis with our youth group. i do have some pictures of the trip to share with you all later on, but first i had to show you my favorite part of the trip...

okay, maybe not my favorite, but hilarious nonetheless.

eric and i stayed at a couple's house and this beautiful 'memory park' was right by their house. since eric and i are fans of cemetaries anyway, we had to check it out...i must say this one is right up there on the list of 'cemetaries you just have to visit'.

blueberry pickin time

it's blueberry picking time and we took advantage of the summer weather to pick pounds of blueberries.


6 of us decided to head out to persimmon hill farm where there are tons of blueberries and pick our fair share of blueberries to last us at least through the summer.

even maya came to enjoy the pickin...of course she slept in her little carrier most of the time, but thats okay, cy and nolan made up for maya not getting to eat any blueberries by eating her share as well as their own.

mom enjoyed her fair share as well... alright, if the truth be told we all kind of nibbled a little as we picked them.

the boys had lots of fun following kathleen around the blueberry patch... cy kept saying, "kathleen, where are you?" and nolan was calling her 'kath-uh-leen'. pretty funny.

for the most part it was kind of cloudy, not too hot, but we did have to take a quick break to get some water to drink.

cy came all decked out ready to pick some berries. by the end, adrian was carrying his bucket...and cy was just walking around eating all the green berries. we kept telling him that the blue ones were the good ones. he didn't seem to care to much, even though the green ones were so sour.

that was the extent of our long day pickin berries...join us next year for the 3rd annual berry picking day!

2 years

wow! i can't believe that this guy and i have been married for two years now. this year it was my turn to plan our anniversary celebration. i will admit, it took me a while to come up with something to do. finally it hit me! a nights stay in a cabin and biking in a beautiful park afterwards.

we rented a cabin at dogwood canyon, a nature park about 30 minutes from our house. it was wonderful. we got there and the first thing eric did was to fire up the grill. i had to go out and take pictures of the process. neither one of us really thought about it until i started to go back inside the cabin to check on the boiling pot of water on the stove. i started to open the door and realized it was locked. lovely...so what do you do when both of your cell phones are inside, it isn't a hotel where you can just walk down to the front desk...so my charming hero, whose shoes were locked inside, went to the other two cabins close by and tried to knock on their doors to see if they would let him use their phones to call security to unlock our door. since that plan didn't work he took our bikes off the bike rack and proceeded to ride his bike, while barefoot, to try and find someone to unlock our door. he finally found someone and they were there in just a few minutes to let us inside.

the next morning i was going to make muffins so we would have lots of energy for our bike ride. i was sad to discover that there was no oven...hmmm...again, my charming husband had a brilliant idea. use the gas grill to cook the muffins. i had my doubts, but they were awesome! they turned out just perfectly.

as you can see our cabin was deep in the woods...not really 'deep', but definitely secluded.

we started our bike ride in the park...it was GORGEOUS!! there were so many waterfalls and ponds and a few caves

the pictures are worth a thousand words so i don't think i really need to explain them...that, and my mind has started to wander a little and i can't think of anything else to write about them.