champaign visit

Before Christmas Alaina, Maggie and I conspired to have a much needed reunion. We hadn't all three been together since Alaina's wedding. So David, Maggie, Margo, Alex and I drove up to Champaign to spend the weekend with Garrett and Alaina. It was so good for the soul to catch up and be together. I can't wait until we're together again!

riviera maya, mexico

For the longest time Becky and I have wanted to go on a vacation without kids + our spouses. We tossed around several destination ideas but landed on an all inclusive, adults only resort in sunny Mexico.

We left on Sunday and had five glorious, lazy, sun filled days. We did nothing but eat guacamole and lay by the pool and beach. Our biggest struggle was finding four lounge chairs together. I think traveling is one of the best things for any relationship, sister and brother-in-law relationships too! Thanks for traveling with us Jared and Becky!

Since my foot was broken and the sand was really hard to walk on, Alex gave me a lift when needed

fall retreat

This year we took our high school youth group on a fall retreat the last weekend in October. In years past we've gone to the middle of nowhere Missouri but we always got lost and had car trouble. So this year we decided to stay a little closer to home and go to Camp Durley in Greenville.

The camp's facilities were perfect for what we needed and the weather held out so it wasn't too cold. We did all the normal fall retreat activities- we played games, had a camp fire, did a bible study, had small group prayer time, ate all the puppy chow, some of the boys fished and two of our fellas thought it was a good idea to jump into the lake...the very, very cold lake.

It's always encouraging to study scripture with our students and for them to engage and grow in their faith. Youth ministry isn't for everyone but we love our students and seeing them grow closer to Christ.

the house we sold

We lived in our brown house (maybe it's more tan?) for four years and made so many amazing memories there. Not only did we do a lot of the updates to make it our own, but we grew in our marriage, hosted countless game nights and backyard bbq's and brought Margo home from the hospital to name a few.

We loved so much about the brown house and it was far harder to say goodbye than I'd like to admit. We knew it wasn't our forever home and we felt (mostly) confident that it would sell. Thankfully it did and with virtually no hiccups!