:: great things in great places...

these past few days have been fantabulous. unfortunately, i couldn't find my camera before we left (it's in a box somewhere and hasn't been recovered yet), so i don't have any pics to attach to this post. i'll post some when ange and colette send theirs to me.

we left early wednesday morning for south bend, indiana for the innovate conference at granger community church. with all of our moving and business with fuzzy bison going on, i was in no frame of mind to get on a plane and go on this trip...up until the night before, i was honestly dreading leaving scout and matt, but i knew once i got on the plane, i would be fine and would enjoy myself. i just didn't have any idea how much i would learn and how much i feel now that the Lord wanted me to be on this trip. i heard lots of things i already knew, yet just had never heard them from a different point of view...and that different point of view was what i needed for refreshment. it was great. fantastic. if you work within a church (or from outside a church, like me..in the freelance arena), i would definitely recommend this conference. check out gccwired.com or wiredchurches.com for more info. there. there's a plug.

okay, so i'm really ready to see matty and scouter now. i've missed them so much, but i have honestly enjoyed this break away from routine and work! haha! but it's time to get back and see my brabies.

thanks ange, for inviting me along on this trip. it was amazing. :)

oh, i forgot about the title of this post...here's why...
· great quesadilla and taco salad - la esperanza in mishawaka, indiana
· great conference - granger community church in granger, indiana
· great pizza - giordanno's in chicago, il
· great weird bike race - streets o' chicago, il

i'm sure there are more, but our flight is loading now, so i must sionara. sionara.

:: gettin' there

we moved all of our stuff from the lake house garage and from ralph and regina's garage in greer to the house in taylors yesterday! yay! go penske! penske has become our friend...although a dear friend, i am glad that we won't see his shiny yellow self for a while...i'm tired of seeing him.

thank you, stephen, for all of your help yesterday. and thank you, holly, mom, carey & jack, for keeping scouter while we loaded and unloaded! what a mongo help! now comes the unpacking. oh joy, oh bliss. tonight, matt and i worked for a few hours while ange kept scout (thanks, ange!)...scout's room is finished (for now). we'll probably be spending the night there tomorrow night, although the loft bed hasn't been put together. we're waiting on the hardware to arrive. hopefully, will be here in the next few days. yay! thank you, ange, for letting us crash yo' crib fo' the last 2 weeks. what a huge savings in gas moolah...i owe you lots of mochas.

next week's chicago trip is coming up way to fast. i'm lost for how i am going to get my fuzzy work finished in time and get our space livable and be scout's mom all at the same time. she's getting older and has been really clingy these last few days as she has been staying with everyone while we've packed and moved. poor thing. she's never really acted like she really cared much if i was around or not, but i guess she's getting at the age now where she really knows what's up...even if she does call me "ca". i was looking forward to the chicago trip, but tonight i cried thinking about having to leave her with all of this chaos going on around her. ugh. it is that time o' the month, but i was sad/stressed, fo real. ha.

fuzzy gotta get to work.

out.

good tunes: colbie caillat

:: backpedalin'

As I've intended to do for several months now, here are the pics of our move from Williamsburg, VA back to SC. The week of June 3.


June 3
Scout said good-bye to her faithful Sunday School teachers...Mrs Donna and Mr Paul. Scout loved them and they loved her. Awww!
Here we are saying good-bye to Edilson...one of the youth we had in Sunday School. He is from Cape Fear, Africa...one of the most beautiful places on earth! I wish we would have gotten pictures of all of the kids...they were so sweet.


Mom and Mary were SOOOO kind to come up and help us pack up the place! What a huge help they were! We couldn't have done it without them! Thanks so much, y'all!

Here's Scout helping MiMi get in the car.



See y'all in a few days!


Byeeeee!


The night before the move...I always hate those few last straggling boxes and random things!



June 8
We decided for Scout and I to go ahead and get on the road. Matt had to work until 2pm, so Scout and I headed out just as soon as we got the last few things packed up. There was no need for us to wait around since there was nothing to do in the house...haha!
Scout waiting patiently for the train to leave...


Packed to the gills...where did Scout go?


Bye baby birds. I hated to leave them. We had been watching their mother and being careful not to disturb the eggs for several weeks. They hatched about 4 days before we left. I had to leave my fern. :(


Bye ol' house. We'll miss you.


One last look at the ol' homestead.


Scout didn't waste anytime finding creative ways to entertain herself. Maybe she was trying to tell me something about my driving! HA!


Happy Meal Picnic in the McDonald's parking lot. Somewhere in NC.


Scout deemed herself the "drive thru greeter". It was quite funny.


All tuckered out.


Chillin' with a good read. She was sooooo good to have been in the car for 9 hrs!


"Lookie Scout! Someone put up a billboard for us! Awww!"


Kaylee was so happy to see Scout! I think Scout was just happy at this point to get out of the car! But then she kissed on her cousins! HAHA!

'tis the season...for re-vival

sorry for the long season o' no posts. i've really missed blogging...lack of time has not allowed me to this summer. i have enjoyed the quickness of facebook (thanks andrea, for getting me into it!)...blogger just seems to take a lot of time at one sitting that i just can't seem to find anymore. fuzzybison work has been booming and keeping me extremely busy. so most often, when i sit down at the mac, it's to work...and i must maximize that time as scout is sleeping. because when she's not sleeping, fuzzy is not working. just not possible.

next week, we move back to the same rental house that we lived at from fall of '03 to late summer of '05 before moving to st louis...so we are really looking forward to that! we loved living there...great house, affordable rent, great location, close to the gym, church, and family and friends! one challenge we have before us is fitting back into the house that we outgrew while living there...since now we have an additional member. with this challenge, we're adopting a lifestyle that has always been enticing to us, yet seemingly unattractive in our world. simplicity. simple stuff and not a lot of it....(minus our macs and hiking/camping gear. bwhaha!) stuff that perhaps has been used for years, but needs new life. re-usable, re-newed, re-lifed, re-vived. we've been reading ReadyMade magazine for several years and we're ready to really adopt it's ideas and practical ways of living. it's somewhat of a spiritual calling. i sometimes feel all of our stuff and paying for stuff/keeping up with the Joneses gets in the way of God's calling on our lives. i look at how Jesus lived when he walked this earth and i wonder if he would get caught up in all of the "stuff" that i delve myself into on a daily basis. i honestly don't believe he would. i don't even think he would live in taylors at the tiny rental house. he didn't even have a house during his years of ministry on this earth. he had shoes and the clothes on his back. he had friends. he had a calling. he needed nothing else because he was here to minister. so with that, i feel that maybe all of our "stuff" gets in the way of our ministering...maybe in a way, gets in the way of our real reason for being here and doing what we're called to do. i realize he lived in a different time than i do...so it just makes me wonder how he would live in our day and time. i don't know exactly how that would be, but i would like to try and attempt to model that in my life. i want scout to grow up and realize that re-use is a good thing...not just an okay thing. that the newest thing, isn't always the best thing. that she is blessed because of who she is and not because of what she has. i am finally coming to realize that for myself after 30 years. mom and dad tried to instill this in us as children, but it's funny how stubborn kids can be and how influenced they can be by the world...kids meaning carla the child and carla the adult. :)

"Small [house] equals less material possessions and lower rent, which equals, most important, less time spent working on things I don't care about." -Joseph Costa

:: it has been TOOO long...

Gosh. I know y'all are just sitting on the edge of your seats wanting to know what the heck we're doing. Ahhhhh, I kid, I kid.

I have SO much to post about, but the short of it is this...
· we're back in SC (Townville for the next 4-6 weeks...then to Taylors for...get this...longer than 6-12 months! Oh, oh! And we don't have a move planned for the next 1-27 years, at least! HA!)
· our move back was pretty uneventful, although, i do have some great pics to share of Scout when I do finally post the play-by-play
· Matt is starting real estate school...soon. He's sad. The class that he had registered, pay for, and anxiously awaited has been cancelled. He got a phone call today that it was cancelled. That would have been nice to know more than 3 days before the class started. Ugh. So, poor Matt. Pray that we'll find a class soon that he can get into.
· Fuzzy Bison biz is boomin'! Dang. Anybody looking for a job? I could use some help. Okay, I'm not THAT slammed, but it would be nice to have a secretary and a babysitter. HAHA! (btw, having family close by has been a life saver in that!) www.fuzzybison.com <---lil' plug there

Okay, that's all for now...sorry, I'm all blogged out. Actually, I'm just about to fall over in the floor. You know John Tesh says that the best way to get sick is to stay up past midnight. It's 12:17am. I'm doomed.

Here are some pics to keep the blog alive until I come back...

Scout met spaghetti for the first time last week and boy, did she have a blast-o-rama! Photo credits: Matteo Carter





Look at those WILD eyes! She is WAY too into this activity! HAHA!

:: PicsAsPromised

As soon as we got there, Scout was off for another ride! I think she enjoyed this one more than the 7 hr one! Maggie looks like she is havin' a good ol' time!

Chillin' with Poppa Friday morning.


Maggie is Scout's new best friend.


Great-Ma and Great-Pop came to visit for breakfast Friday morning. I love this picture.



Off to Mom and Dad's on Friday for lunch. Stephanie had grown so much!


Scout had so much fun exploring in Papa's yard.




We gave the girls some watering pails and boy, did they have fun with those!



Having fun with MiMi and Papa!


We took the bike and trailer down in the UHAUL since we had so much extra room. The girls really liked riding in it...I think. Ha!


Scout had fun having a passenger along for the ride since she usually has to go solo. Sunny went to get her Jeep to keep up with the pack!


Scout doesn't look like she's having fun, but she really was. Haha!


Saturday morning came and it was time for Olivia's birthday party!


Scout loved the slide!




Tami and Scout.


Ben, Olivia, and Tami. Happy Birthday, Olivia!! It was also Tami's brother's birthday and my birthday and they were so sweet to get us a cake too! Awwwww! And it was YUMMY! :)


Olivia wasn't the least bit shy about diving in.


After the party, we booked it back to Simpsonville for Sunny's dance recital. Sunny looked precious! That's her kickin' it down there on the far left! Go Sunny!


Then came the Daddy Dance. Oh my. This was so sweet. They were dancing to "Let Them Be Little". I, along with all of the other females in the joint, was boohooing! Haha!




And after the recital it was Happy Birthday to us! YAY! So much fun even if I did turn 30! It was great to be home and see everyone! Regina made my cake and mom made Stephen's and they were SOOOO good!!


So it was quite a busy weekend, but it was great to be home...made us long for it even more. Hopefully, it won't be long before we are back! Wheee!

:: BigFatFun Weekend

We just returned from G'vegas this morning around 12:15am-ish. It was a LONG 10 hr trip that should only take 7 hrs, but oh well...traffic got the best of us. I am a horrible midday traveler...so is Matt. So I'm not sure what we were thinking by leaving at 2:30pm yesterday. We really wanted to go to BCBC for church, so it was worth it. We left around 2:40 after Grandmomma (Regina) introduced Scout at the "Grandmother's Tea" that the GA's were having at the church. Matt started the trip off in the driver's seat, but a mere hour later, he was falling asleep, so I had to take the wheel. I already felt like I was going to pass out (remember? I'm a horrible midday traveler? Yeah.) So, another 30 minutes later, my eyes began to cross and there were 4 northbound lanes instead of 2. I have come to realize that is one of the worst feelings in the world. My eyelids felt like they had 27 pounds of pressure on them, and the sun beaming through the windsheild wasn't helping matters. (that's my issue with midday traveling...the sun makes me SO sleepy!) We pulled off to get gas. Matt got out to pump, and I fell asleep in the car! Oh my. He was gone for probably 7 minutes. Apparently, that was a double-charged power nap, because I was rarin' to go after that! One stop for a power drink, 2 stops at Starbuck's (with extra shots of espresso), and 1 stop at Moe's for supper...oh, and a couple of gas stops later, we found ourselves parked on I-64 a mere hour from home...road construction. Ugh. We were stopped in traffic for 50 minutes! Scout slept 90% of the trip back, so that was great! We were pulling a UHAUL trailer too. BCBC donated some sound equipment for our church here in da 'burg, so we rented a UHAUL for the round trip so we could deliver the weight bench that Stephen and Holly is purchasing from us, too. It was good to get that to them (along with some winter clothes that we're hoping we will need in Greenville and not here in Williamsburg). So we tried to lighten our moving load by getting some stuff home in advance.

Regardless of how our trip back to W'burg was, our weekend spent with family and friends was fantabulous. It was hurried as always, and it seemed like something was going on every minute, but it was still good to be home. Olivia turned 1, Sunny danced her first recital, Stephen turned 33, and me...well, I turned 30. It didn't hurt. All was well, and I'm happy to be a 30-year old regardless of how "old" that sounds. Funny how it doesn't sound old to ME anymore! HA! We haven't uploaded our pictures yet, but we'll do that and I'll get some pics posted. Here are some pics I stole from Lindsay because...

...on Friday, I got a phonecall from her and received this news! ( The ring finger on the left hand is the one of interest in this pic...haha)




AHHHHHHHH!!! Congrats you two! We couldn't be happier for you!! Can't wait until the big day! We'll be counting down!! :)

Be back later with some pics...