playing catch-up

i have been scolded by enough people (and read the constant updates of friends who are much more dilegent than i) that i am finally getting around to an update...and trying to resolve to be much better than i have been about staying up-to-date (is once a week too much to hope for)? we'll see.

things have been busy for us...i took on an aditional ministry role at church when we added a new worship gathering on sunday mornings...we call it 'Crossroada' and it has been very exciting to see how the Lord is using it to draw folks to Himself through the church. With this added gathering, i have been given the opportunity to bring the message each week (this has been crazy since it is something i never saw myself doing); this has meant a great deal more work as i am trying to find a rythm between that, youth ministry, and my family as well. piper has been amazing in all of this and continues to encourage me in the call that is on my life. i truly could not do this without her.

the best way, i think, to catch up on the past 4 months will be with a few pictures as there is no way i would ask you to sit through my commentary on such a long stretch of time in the life of our circus...

Fall is one of our favorite times of year...leaves to be raked (though i somewhat loathe this, as all of the leaves in our little neighborhood somehow seem to end up in front of my house...the boys love this, obviously)

One of the ways my amazing wife loves me is to allow me (and encourage me) to go and spend a week with some of my guys (reavis, myles, offner, adam, clawson, dannals, holden, and others) for our annual fishing extravaganza on the outerbanks of north carolina...(i hope to have a post up on my journey chronicling that adventure...albeit belated). Piper is sure to let me know that one of the ways i am able to recipricate such a loving gesture is to make sure we make it to one of our favorite places (the place that would actually be next on our list of places to live if we weren't here)-black mountain, nc. We stayed at the bella luna inn for our second visit. what a cool place; and we really like the folks who own it. we had the opportunity to sit and do nothing, to eat lunch at the 'veranda cafe', dinner at 'my father's pizza', we went over to chimney rock (okay, in addition to relaxing we totally did the tourist thing). we also got to sit down and catch up with adam boyd, a dear friend (and my former 'boss' for 4 summers at camp timberlake)...Wait, i said no commentary...okay, no more-just pictures...

Brayden's 3rd birthday was amazing...my wife is a theme-party genius (he wanted a farm party this year)

He continues to be such a blessing to us; what a joy it is to watch him become the 'little man' that he is...by the way, he is hilarious...i'm just hoping he doesn't realize how funny he is, it would be trouble.

Christmas was a blast...gresham was all about spider man (which is strange b/c he's never seen a spider man movie, cartoon, or read any spider man comics), brayden is easy: thomas, thomas, thomas; and bailey: we probably could have given her a box and she would have loved it.

Oh, and we had like 40 of our youth friends over for a super bowl party...i'm pretty sure there have never been that many people in this little house-EVER. it was ten kinds of awesome.

Okay, enough for now...blogger might hate me for so many pictures. more SOON (promise).