a new context

A year already?

It has gone by so quickly. August 1st, 2009 was our big day. One year ago. Now we’re just an old married couple. Who says the first year is the hardest? We’ve loved every minute of it. Now, we’re not naive, but it really has been a good year. God has greatly blessed us with one another.

So, how did we spend it? In style, of course. At least for us. We went up to Brevard, NC and stayed in a Bed & Breakfast: The Red House Inn. Our time included a nice dinner on the town, a great, relaxing evening, and a hike and a milkshake on Monday to wrap up the trip.

I am truly blessed to have Kristen as my wife. The Lord is good. I know this more and more everyday. What I have learned the past year!

I’ve been ordering books lately. This isn’t too out of the ordinary. It’s safe to say the wife and myself splurge on books. It’s what depletes our entertainment budget. Something I came across a while back has led me to these specific books.

9 Marks

“a ministry dedicated to equipping church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources. Our goal is simple: churches that display the glory of God.” (from their website).

I first found 9 Marks through Together for the Gospel. A biennial conference that encourages pastors to take their stand together for the gospel. Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan began the conference. And so I started listening to all the sermons from past years. It’s amazing how the Lord speaks through his word being preached.

Back to 9 Marks. It began at Capital Hill Baptist in Washington D.C. where Mark Dever is the pastor. A well read pastor in Ecclesiology, he has studied the church for many, many years and makes very apt observations concerning the state of modern evangelical churches.

From 9 Marks I’ve been led to a few books:

The one I’m currently reading: The Shepherd Leader by Timothy Witmer.

Biblical Theology by Michael Lawrence. Who was the associate pastor at Capital Hill but is now the lead pastor at Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, OR.

The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne.

and finally Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin

I commend all of these resources to you and will hopefully get a chance to write a little more on them individually.

last weekend the sandlins and ashley pickers made the trek up to south kakalaki for some good hang out time with corey and me. this is the first time in a loooong time that i’ve hung out with shawn and katie for more than an hour or two at once (i got pickers last summer on our cross-country adventure). can i just say it was BLESSED. oh! the joy and comfort of good friends. i think my favorite moment was Friday evening at dinner. we were sitting at a round table in the window of a downtown restaurant, laughing, talking, and i just looked around the table at all of their faces and thought how comfortable and good it was to be together again. close friends are a precious gift. corey and I are realizing that especially during this time of our life. somewhere between college and here, making good friends got harder. are we just getting old and biased? i’m not sure, but we are thanking Him for our weekend with these three.

among other things, we made the drive up to table rock state park for bluegrass on the mountain (they gather the second saturday of every month). so fun, and completely surprising. we entered the lodge to find a circle of chairs in the middle of the room. anyone who wanted could join the circle and play a song as they passed the mic around. there were tables in the back, and it was almost like pot-luck dinner. everyone brought something to share. my favorite was the strawberry cake. yummm. we got a fine samplin’ of tunes upstairs, and downstairs after pot-luck was even better! corey and i hope to visit again around christmas.

I noticed our blog posts are beginning to coincide with major holidays. It seems these are the only times we get to do anything remotely interesting. Okay, so that’s not completely true. But it is about the only time we have to actually write a blog post about what we got to do.

We hung around Greenville for the actual 4th of July. No big plans. We drove downtown and watched the fireworks display from the car. It was pretty impressive. Fireworks, I think, always make you think of childhood. They conjure up countless memories of almost blowing your hand off playing with those things. Oh but how much fun they are.

We drove up to DuPont State Forest, as we both had Monday off work, to do a little hiking. It was a great day for a trip to the mountains. Actually, any day that involves the mountains is a good day. It was nice walking the trails in the coolness of the shade with one another. Talking and holding hands as walked in the quiet. From one waterfall to the next we strolled. Here are a few more of the things we saw: DuPont State Forest

I hope your 4th weekend was filled with as beauty. We’ll try to post before the next major holiday. But if not, be sure to check back on Labor Day!

It was nice to have an extended weekend for a change. This gave opportunity for “the kids” (minus Katie who we sorely missed) to come to Greenville for a visit. Their first real trip up here to visit Kristen and myself and see our home.

Thunderstorms. That seemed to be the theme of the weekend, but they manage to be mostly scattered, allowing us to find time to hit the road for a little visit to the mountains on Sunday. The only times it actually rained hard, were the times in the car while driving, so that worked out well.

We hiked little and had a picnic lunch at a waterfall that afternoon and returned to see some of downtown and have a nice pizza dinner at Barley’s.

Today, we hit the road again and headed due north towards Asheville. We arrived just in time for a nice brunch at Mayfel’s and walked up and down the sidewalks to different shopping venues. And of course we had to see the Thomas Wolfe House. It was a full day, with a trip to REI thrown in there.

We returned in time to head to Chin Chin’s for some Chinese food. The perfect way to end the weekend. Michael left this evening and Jenni will in the morning.

We had a great time! Thanks for visiting!

Here’s all the other pictures from our hike and Asheville: Memorial Day

The first time we saw him was at the The Hotel Cafe in L.A. with a good crowd of people.

Part II was quite different. He came to the Handlebar in Greenville which could easily hold as many, if not more than the Hotel Cafe, but that’s assuming as many people in South Carolina know who Joshua James is as in California.

Well, they don’t. He played before a crowd of maybe 20 people. Yes. twenty.

Once on stage he said, “We are few tonight… but mighty, I guess”.

No matter the crowd size though, he still played, and he played with a passion that we’ve come to expect from him. and nothing less.

He believes what he sings and is deeply affected by it. All those who came witnessed a true performer.

We can’t wait to see him again. Until next time…

driving home last night, corey and i spotted a big, yellow sign advertising the greenville county library book sale! much to our delight, it was still going on this morning when we arrived ( i was afraid we had missed it). i love library book sales. you can’t beat the prices, and it is so much fun to spend a morning digging through piles of old books and uncovering treasures. when we drove up, there was no parking and people were leaving the building with boxes of books in their arms. because i’ve only been to library book sales in arab, i was a little worried that there wouldn’t be anything left. in arab, the only car in the parking lot is mine, and the only people inside are me and jenni and the little old lady who takes up money. but, oh my word. today there were shelves and shelves of books and crowds of people. corey and i spent an hour or so perusing, and ended up leaving with a box of our own.

I would’ve liked to include a picture of the Béla Fleck show but “photography was prohibited”. The Orange Peel in Asheville hosted the concert, which was part of his Throw Down Your Heart tour. A project he did while traveling to Africa in 2005 to discover the roots of the banjo. It was a great show. He is an amazing banjo player and has definitely worked at breaking down the barriers that most people have in associating the banjo with the bluegrass genre. Having said that, though, he can play some mean bluegrass! Especially when the guest performer came on stage and was none other than a fiddle player.

We stayed in the guest suite at the Singer residence for the night and were given free passes to see the Biltmore Estate mansion on Saturday. I couldn’t believe the size of it, extravagant. It is definitely quite the the architectural wonder. We meandered through the rooms for hours along with the thousands of other tourists taking in the sights that day.

Another good weekend of travel.

We took our first Spring trip to the mountains yesterday, at least it was weather that felt somewhat like Spring. We went to Rainbow Falls at Jones Gap State Park.

As today was one of the nicest, warmest days we’ve had yet, there was quite a crowd that had the same idea we did. This resulted in having to wait at the gate to the park a while until people came out to open up parking spaces.

However, the wait went by quick and we were on the trail before long. The beginning of the trail meanders along the Middle Saluda River for 3/4 of a mile before taking a sharp right across the river and heading straight up the mountain for another mile and half, climbing over 1000 feet in the process.

It was a beautiful hike. The peaceful serenity of the forest accompanied our companionship. The sights of open vistas and sounds of the wind rushing through the trees. How much good the fresh air and exercise does for one’s body and mind.

The sounds of the river running down the mountain as the trail parallels and then leaves it for a while, only to return after a long switchback up the mountain.

And with that return comes the anticipation of the magnum opus of the hike: Rainbow Falls. The power of the river getting louder and louder and you round that final bend. Then, opening up before you in all its grandeur is the falls.

Pouring over the precipice of the falls it streams down to the rocks below, some of it seeming to dissipate before it reaches bottom. And the breeze. The cool breeze coming off the falls chilling your warm body from the hike up.

What can compare? Is this but a glimpse heaven? Can you just imagine it?

More pictures on our flickr site here: Rainbow Falls

This is a repost from the design blog, but I thought was very relevant to us and something that we would like to share on here so I figured it wouldn’t hurt.

It only took me a little over 6 months, but my promise to make our first bed has been kept, It is now complete!!

Check out a few more pictures on Flickr: The Platform Bed

What a project to undertake. It’s a rather simple design, but has taken a while to come together. Especially only having the weekends to work on it for a while. Not having any work lately has allowed me to get it finished up.

Another part that took a while was finding the wood. I wanted to use rough sawn lumber, for a finished, rustic look. So after scouring craigslist for weeks I finally found a guy who had cleaned out a saw mill that had closed.

Kris and I went late one evening on the spur of the moment and it ended up getting dark by the time we got there, so I tried to pick out these huge planks of rough sawn lumber in the headlights of my car. After planing it down we discovered that we ended up with a mix of pine and oak.

Only when we bought this wood I forgot to calculate for enough to make the head board. So, the frame has been together for a while now, but I just recently found another guy to buy more wood from, some beautiful white oak, and was able to finish the head board.

All in all it was a fun project, but I’m glad to say that it’s finally done. Whew.