winter break in pictures.

Here's what our winter break looked like:

We played some games. Josh and our cousin Robert were on a team for Yahtzee. 

We opened some gifts. This is our cousin Mary in her newly acquired Broncos outfit.

Layla is learning a lot about nutrition and is doing a sugar detox. 

Josh and Uncle Gary taking a break from the present opening shenanigans. 

Christmas meal. You can see Gregory and Ruthie in the mirrior :)

Robert, Mary, and the dog's cage are great playmates.

Layla, Josh, my mom, and I spent an afternoon in St. Louis one day. We got lunch at Seoul Taco on the Loop, which was amazing, then did some shopping and walked around the Laumeier sculpture park.

Layla turned 20 on January 2nd! We celebrated her life with an awesome sushi dinner at Wasabi and then ate cake (red velvet raspberry with buttercream frosting) and opened presents back at home.

 It was so good to be with family and friends!

around here.

Here's what's been going on around here this fall.

It's apple season and my housemates have gone apple crazy. Josh, Lauren, and Daniel have been making applesauce on and off for weeks. We have tubs on tubs of the stuff in our garage freezer and Lauren and Daniel are bringing back more apples from an orchard today! We hope to have enough applesauce to eat all winter, spring, and summer. It's wonderful!

Josh is a bread baker. Look at this loaf! The night Josh made this loaf we happened to do "highs and lows" (aka "pows and wows"). This beautiful and tasty loaf of bread was my high for the day.

We have a cat. Josh has been advocating for getting a pet cat for a while now. We tried to get a kitty last spring, but it didn’t really work out. When we told our woeful story to Josh’s cousin April over the summer she offered to give us one of her cats. Her two cats were not getting along, so towards the end of August she drove from Ohio to Kansas with one of her kitties. Now we have Amèlie! The transition was pretty tough. Amèlie hid under the couch for the first three weeks, but now she lounges all over the house and makes us laugh by playing with twisty ties. She has the softest fur! We love her.

I'm enjoying this tasty coffee roasted right down the street from where Layla goes to school.

Last weekend I was with my parents and sister in Chicagoland, walking along Lake Michigan and watching Trinity International University Sports. I sure do love my family.

I am getting ready for a craft fair next Saturday, hence the messy desk. There's lots to do and make, but it's lots of fun. I'll share more on this later.

What's new with you? Do any of you have a newfound skill or a new pet?

Happy Saturday!

more photos of our home.

Our Upstairs Bedroom & Bathroom:

Downstairs Chapel:

Kitchen & Living Room:

Our home has come a long way since I last shared an update. We have carpet in our sink/closet area. We have a much needed new door in our room. Our oven actually works! Up until a few weeks ago we had been using our toaster oven for all necessary baking. That oven is small, so I'm thankful for a full sized working oven. Our house plants are thriving, too! Josh enjoys house projects a lot; he has put in a new window and fan in our bathroom, installed a new door to our room, and he's put together some temporary shelves for our bathroom.

We're pretty happy living here; our home if functional and cozy and we have great housemates!  

our thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving highlights just in time for Christmas! I'm a little behind on the blogging, but I thought it's never too late to share gratitude. 

Last Thanksgiving Josh and I cooked all day to have a Thanksgiving meal with some of our European friends. We had fun preparing the meal and hosting friends, but my favorite part was going around the table to share what we were each thankful for in the past year. Our friend (and Josh’s advisor) Martin said he hadn’t shared his gratitude like that in two years. I found it really special for a diverse mix of people (a Swed, some Germans, a Ugandan, and two Americans) to gather around the table and express our thankfulness. This year I found myself thinking a lot about Norway. When I reflected back on what I'm thankful for in the past year I couldn't stop thinking about the people who became our close friends and for the challenges that brought Joshua and me closer together. Thank you friends and Norway for a good year!

This Thanksgiving we were surrounded by our family in Wichita, Elise (who came from Greenville), and some new friends. It was wonderful and restful, but also quite active; somehow I felt sleep-deprived by the end. I made rolls for the Thanksgiving meal; we all gathered at the Overholt's house. The JRLD household, plus Elise, did a Turkey Trot run. (Let me explain JRLD. It stands for Joshua, Rachel, Lauren and Daniel and it's pronounced "Gerald." It's a whole lot easier to give our house a name than to say Lauren and Daniel's house, where Josh and Rachel live.) On Thanksgiving day we enjoyed delicious food and copious amounts of pie, played games like "Dictionary" and "Off the Wall,"took an afternoon walk, and played with sparklers. Throughout the weekend we spent a lot of time with family, I did a little Christmas shopping (NOT on Black Friday- I refuse), we ate dinner/watched movies with friends, played disc golf, and skyped/phone-talked with our parents. There's a lot to be thankful for this year like a good job, a cozy place to live, great housemates, new friendships, old friendships, family, and God's love. I'm feeling very blessed.

And thanks to you for reading what I write here! 

around here.

Around here it feels like fall. We've gone apple picking, we've made & eaten a lot of applesauce and we've been admiring all the beautiful trees. We've gotten sick, we've consumed copious amounts of tea, and we've gotten better! I've been painting, practicing yoga, riding my bicycle to school a few times a week and even running again (a very little bit). Josh has been editing the rough draft of chapter 1 of his thesis this week!! He's also been working on getting a new door for our room, but has already been thwarted twice. We have a door in our room that leads to an outdoor balcony and stair case to the back stoop. This door is rotting and needs to be replaced, but finding a door that fits for the right price is proving to be a challenge. In other news, we're thankful for lots of time with family lately; Celeste came to Wichita a couple weeks ago to celebrate Grandma Kay's 90th birthday! And this weekend we're heading to Lake of the Ozarks State Park to hang out with my parents. We're staying in a cabin and we'll be hiking and cooking our meals outside. It should be great! We also have five new family members; Lauren and Daniel now have pet ducks (Indian Runner ducks to be exact.) Josh and I just get to have fun and watch them splash in water while Lauren and Daniel actually do the work to care for them. Actually, I've helped out a little bit with building an outdoor house for the duckies. Josh is really wanting to get a kitten, but Daniel and I still aren't so sure. We're excited that we get Monday off work! Anyone else this lucky?

Have a beautiful weekend!

legacy ministries (part 1).

When Joshua and I decided to move to Wichita to be close to his extended family we figured that we'd probably get involved in their church, Church of the Savior (we have), but I had no clue how involved we might become in Legacy Ministries. Church of the Savior started a branch of Legacy in Wichita about 10 years ago and now most of the people that I'm closest to here are deeply involved in Legacy. The purpose of this ministry is to share the love of Jesus with at-risk youth through creativity and community. They do this through summer camps, where kids can learn to bake, paint, sing or act, as well as through a few different programs throughout the year, like GardenWorks, Legacy Stars After School Program, and the Salvation Army Outreach.  

Since we live across the street from the Legacy House it's been natural for us to start doing Legacy stuff. The Legacy House is where a couple of the staff members live (Kenzi and Cora), where a lot of the programs run, and where many a meeting happen. According to Meme, Dan and Lauren, who’ve told me the most about Legacy, I can tell that Church of the Savior is very committed to Legacy and they’ve maintained connections with a lot of the Legacy campers over the years. I seem to learn more and more each week about the history of Legacy and the people they’ve reached. 

I’ve participated a bit in all the year long programs, so I’ll tell you a little about what I know and my experience. (Just to keep in mind, I may not be exactly correct about all the particulars of the projects or this ministry, but I wanted to share some of the details that I do know and the relationships that I’ve made by being a part of Legacy.)

GardenWorks is an urban garden project that employes at-risk youth or teens that might not be able to get a job elsewhere. They work together to plant seeds, tend the crops, and share their produce with the community at weekly farm stands. This summer they had the farm stand on Monday nights and asked costumers to take some produce or homemade pesto and leave a donation if they could. I love garden produce and gardening, so I was delighted to eat the veggies and occasionally help tend the garden or make pesto. Currently we still have a bunch of tomatoes and squash from the garden. Yum! The GardenWorks crew will continue to work in the garden this fall by adding manure, decorating the fence around the garden, planting seeds and possibly hosting a fall food stand to serve soup and bread to neighbors. 

Legacy Stars, the after school program, is a fun, laid-back Monday afternoon hang-out time. Neighborhood kids are welcome to come to Legacy House to make art, bake muffins or read stories. One day we all made little “mailboxes,” really just envelopes made from National Geographic pages, so we could leave each other notes throughout the week. Sometimes kids are content to hang out, talk or get help with their homework. Other days they want to make or bake something. I like the natural spontaneity within the group. I started going to Legacy Stars regularly before I got a job, so once kids learned that I lived across the street they started coming over sometimes to visit me, as well as Lauren, Daniel and Josh. One neighborhood girl has been coming over quite a lot and I’m often amazed that an elementary school kid would want to hang out so often with some newly married 20-somethings. She loves to help us cook and bake, and will often take time to lay in the hammock with me or show us her songs and dances from school. I love getting connected to the people in our neighborhood and Legacy Stars has been a catalyst for that.

While I really want to be regularly involved in GardenWorks and Legacy Stars, the timing makes it too hard now that I work full time. But, on Sunday nights a group from Church of the Savior goes over to hang out with the teens living at the Salvation Army (S.A.) facility, a place for underage drug and alcohol offenders. The guys live at this center, go to high school, and come back to the S.A. facility. They don’t have much freedom or much outside time and I know they get bored in there. These are the same guys that attend the Legacy summer camps and COTS likes to stay connected to them throughout the school year too. I guess the Salvation Army is a Christian program because they guys are required to go to church every Sunday. This year they guys are allowed to go to COTS for church if a S.A. staff person will go with them, which is pretty awesome. To my understanding, Church or the Savior wants to give these guys creative outlets, exposure to the love of Jesus, and a support system they can lean on while they’re in Salvation Army and when they get out.  Sunday nights look like this: 10-12 COTS people break up into three groups to lead activities for the three different groups of guys (arranged according to age). Two groups do some sort of art project, game, or cooking activity, usually accompanied by a small time of sharing, prayer or talking about God. The third group is in the gym playing basketball and maybe praying or chatting. I've been to the Salvation Army four times and plan to make this a priority on Sunday nights. Some weeks I'm just not able too, but I think it's good to take a break every now and then. For the sake of not making this post incredibly long, I'll share more about my S.A. experience later. If you have any questions about Legacy Ministries, feel free to ask or check out their website and blog.

All photos are from the Monday night farm stand back in August.