my little pyro

date nights are always great, but we keep coming back to our favorite one. eating dinner outside in the dark with a fire going and sitting out there for a long while. we like these nights best in the fall and winter so we can bundle up and see the stars with no leaves on the trees. we ushered fall in a little early the other night. felt brisk enough to me! we do not have a single pine tree on our property (odd for atlanta) but we have tons of hardwoods and therefore tons of dead branches that are great for fires. here’s the scene and here’s my awesome pyromaniac husband who can’t leave a fire alone for more than 10 minutes. but it was an incredible, raging fire!

almost a Rawlings

i am hesitant to start blog entries about various family members because i will inevitably not be “even” about it…will intend to write all the wonderful things about somebody… will procrastinate then forget. so forgive me in advance. ALL our family is wonderful, but i do want to take a minute to write about our newest family member. in 5 days, we’re gaining a sister-in-law! we’ve been so thrilled to spend more and more time with jessica (and reed) lately and we could not be happier that they are getting married. jessica is truly who God had in mind for my fun, spontaneous, competitive, driven, fearless, talented, full-of-life brother for all time! she is dear-hearted, easy-going and very fun as well. the first thing that endeared her to me was when she spent time with maddox when we had our family vacation at the beach. she could easily have been like “cute kid, but i’m going to lay out,” but she spent time with us and that spoke volumes, me being a quality time person. we’ve recently been to braves games, a girls weekend and they’ve been over here to dinner and to keep maddox lots. together, she and reed are going to be such a strong witness for Christ. plus, they love maddox so crazy much and that means the world to us. i am more excited about this wedding and marriage than i have been about anything in a long time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hard to capture

i’m not ashamed to publicize the fact that our 18 month old is walking! don’t get jealous. ha. he can walk a long way – especially when spurred on by friends. he just doesn’t do it super often. it’s still more in short spurts. however, we have yet to capture a long walk on video. here’s the best two so far. sorry, you’ll just have to believe us for now til we get better at having the camera ready every second.

jeremy

Don here. We had a rare chance this weekend to spend the day with some long lost friends. We packed up Maddox, Joy (and, in a package deal, Baby#2) and headed down to Newnan to see friends Kevin & Carolyn, their twin girls and son. As an added bonus my friend Jeremy was in the country and made time to drive down as well. Maybe Joy will post some pics of the weekend later. It was great fun.

But I wanted to tell you about Jeremy and why I am so impressed with him. Jeremy, Kevin and I became friends around the same time back in 1997 – we were in a small group together. Kevin and I had just started law school. Jeremy was working with troubled teenagers in downtown Atlanta. And when I say working with, I mean living with: day-in, day-out, investing through relationship in their messed up lives. After that Jeremy felt God leading him to Brazil, where he has been since 2003, working with children living under some of the worst conditions I have ever heard of: these kids have been abandoned by their parents and many beg, sell drugs, steal, or prostitute themselves in order to stay alive (not to mention that the government may well kill them if they are caught). And again, when I say Jeremy works with these kids, I mean living with: day-in, day-out, investing through relationship in their messed up lives. And yes, I know I am repeating myself, but I think it takes guts actually live with those you minister to, don’t you?

Jeremy’s a smart guy. He could pursue any professional tract and be very successful. While he has been pouring his life into these kids, I’ve gotten married, been through law school and have built my little successful life and started a family. And I’m not saying my choices are therefore evil and Jeremy is some perfect saint. But I can’t help looking at what the past ten years have allowed me to accomplish and realize the opportunities that Jeremy chose to pass-up so he could be obedient to God’s leadership in his life and minister to the poor and the helpless. That is admirable and deserves some recognition.

I’m no fundraiser but if your looking for a worthy cause, here it is. The ministry is called SombraRoad and their website can give you all the information you might want. I’ve added their blog to the blogroll although I get the feeling they don’t have much time to post very often. They have their hands full, believe me. Regardless of whether you feel led to donate money, please consider committing to pray for these kids and for the people that have committed themselves to their well-being.

my must-have list

i get rather intrigued by moms who like to tell everyone their must-have-mom-product list because i have found by trial and error that, of course, different things work for different ones of us and we prefer different things! therefore, i am really careful not to push the things i like on someone else because, honestly, someone else might hate whatever i like! anyway, as i was laying in bed one night sleepless, i decided to really think of my list of things i would go to bat for: items i absolutely love and actually get excited about. i thought for a long time and i thought i’d share my list with you:

that’s it. that is my list. i love our high chair because 1) it cost $23; 2) it is made of one piece of plastic so there are no creases to catch food and nothing to have to put in the washing mach to clean – cleaning is just a wipe away; 3) it weighs like 2 lbs total so i can carry it, maddox’s food, m’s drink and M to anywhere in the house; 4) it looks just as good as the day we got it despite 3 meals a day every day; and 5) unlike most kid things we own, it actually doesn’t look disgusting as part of our house. so there you go! end of commerical.