donnavan, giggly girls, and an ar-15

i love my husband! he is amazing. he works hard at his job, is an awesome husband and father, brings me flowers... oh, and teaches gun safety courses to a bunch of giggly teenage girls for me. you see, in church i work with the young women who range from ages 12 to 18. for an activity this month it was decided that the girls would have a gun safety course. i quickly volunteered donnavan's name (yes, the same donnavan that can barely catch a breath of air being so busy with work, church, etc. but i knew he'd love to do it). now the girls i work with are seriously delightful - but gunhandlers they are not! so you see, donnavan had his work cut out for him. first thing he does is to strut from the car decked out in camo gear and toting an ar-15 and 10 mm handgun and proceeds to tell the girls that if they drop his guns he is going to be very, very angry. you should have seen the girls eyes pop out of their sockets... and needless to say the girls were VERY attentive and careful.

before i continue on with the endless babble, let me slip in this awesome picture my dad took of our family this summer. thanks dad! (okay, so getting a natural smile from donnavan and hayden is impossible. we were ecstatic to get just one.)

its been one of those summers where you feel like you're caught in the surf being thrown back and forth and you just have to lay back and enjoy the ride. the ride was enjoyed. we now lay on the beach after being thrown up on shore and have a few minutes to rest. oh wait... never mind. rest is highly overrated. i think i'll take a photography class instead. but let me just say, it was definitely worth missing out on some rest. it's been a long time since i have done something like this just for me and i loved it. the following are some fruits of the class.

as i mentioned earlier, hayden and smiling don't always work out so well. i decided i would have to take a more serious route with him.

for part of the class they took us to these most amazing gardens. i thought you could only take so many pictures of flowers. oh but not when there are a thousand different kinds...

on my way to the photography class one evening this old barn caught my eye. barns are just cool and old barns even more so. this one i believe only has days left to its life. so even though i was late to my class i thought it worth my while to stop and snap some photos of its last days