Celebrating in Two's!

This week was a special week for us as we celebrated our second wedding anniversary on September 15th as well as the culmination of two healthy trimesters in our pregnancy! Monday marked the beginning of our last trimester, and we can't believe we only have three months to go! At times it seems like it's been such a long process and at others it seems to have flown by. We are thankful and amazed at the process of the creation of life and can't wait to meet our daughter soon!

We celebrated our anniversary with a quick trip to Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, where we celebrated our honeymoon as well as our first anniversary. We love it that it's so close and easily accessible from Lawrence! Below are a few pictures from our trip. We found some new parks to explore and did some mild hiking to enjoy the beautiful weather and scenery.





Lake of the Ozarks is also where we take our student leadership team every Labor Day weekend for our annual Laborer's Retreat to kick off the new year. Our weekend together was a great time of connecting, learning, praying, casting vision, and of course lots of fun and laughing! On the Saturday afternoon of the trip we always have a special activity planned for the students that's usually a surprise. Last year it was a high ropes course, which definitely challenged all of us to overcome some fears, and this year it was spelunking in a cave. This was not a typical excursion into a cave, however. It included crawling through complete darkness and at times water and muddy clay on hands, knees, elbows, stomachs, etc. I, Kelley, did not participate, but heard all about it afterwards. They all agreed it was very intense, sometimes frustrating, but definitely worth it. Sounds like a good analogy for a spiritual journey of loving and serving God at KU!
Below is our group (all clean) before entering the cave. What a great group!