the dog{gone crazy} days of summer.

May 25, 2013 1 Comment

starting tuesday, our life gets crazy(er).

for those of you who don’t know, when anderson and i first got married we began/took the reins of a new missions organization. “missions plus” was a dream of my dad’s. and though it’s taken a different form under our direction, the heartbeat is still the same — the true love of Jesus. {awesome post about our first dreams and visions for missions plus when we were initially plopped into the driver’s seat over a year ago —-> here.}

aaaanyway, husband and i have our first summer leading teams (together) in short-term missions trips! woo hoo! our goal for our first summer was to have four teams. well, we have three! which is really amazing and encouraging {plus, with the possible team with have in the works for sometime this fall, we will have met our goal! yeah!}

so this summer kicks off our fabulous life of being missions-hearted together. it is most certainly going to be a radical adventure and we cannot wait. i read posts about wonderful summer plans like tara’s from between you & me {seriously, don’t get sick of me linking to her blog, people. i love it. she inspires me. and i’m just not going to stop.}. my mouth waters at the mere mention of barbecue, homemade ice cream and slurpees. i can literally feel the grass under my bare feet and the sun on my cheeks. summer, you sweet flirty friend.

we will make time for grilling out and ice cream. we will have loads of beach time. we will read read read to our hearts’ content. these are the proclamations i am making for our summer. cause our summer is gonna look a little bit…. different. ready?

  • twoandahalf weeks in honduras. building homes. giving away food. loving orphans. showing honduras how deeply loved she is. building relationships. growing friendships. wonderful time.

home for two days and drive to….

  • north carolina for a week! the wedding of the year has arrived. cousin caleb and wife-to-be lauren will be kicking off a super sweet wonderful life together on june 22nd. and i. cannot. wait. {wanna read an engagement story that will bring tears to your eyes? theirs. woah.}

home for a day and fly to…

  • honduras! again! a week with our final team of the summer. more homes. more food. more love. more friends. more jesus. more more more. 🙂

home for two days and head to….

  • the beach for the fourth of july! minifamilyvacation with mama. this is our happy place. most of our sweetest memories of dad are here. its always so beautiful to feel the presence of my heavenly daddy and soak in the deep happiness of memories of my daddy at the same time. hard and beautiful and holy.

home for a night and back to…

  • the beach for a week! but this time, we’re bringing our church youth group to a beach retreat for love, worship, fun and jesus like they’ve never experienced him before. guys. expect a post about our youth. i didn’t think i could love a bunch of preteens and teenagers this much. i cry every time i think of spending a summer away from them. yep. a group of twelve to seventeen year olds has stolen my heart. weird.

then we’re off to…

  • south carolina for a week. anderson is finishing his MASTERS degree!! ahhh!! his last class is on campus — he’s been online for the majority of the degree — in anderson, south carolina. anderson, university. anderson, my husband. confused? the best part? we found a lake house that would cost less than the two of us getting a hotel when we split it with newlyweds lauren and caleb! so the four of us will spend a week on the lake (sad sad anderson will be in class eight hours a day, but we’ll be sure to take lots of sunset lake tours when he comes home!)

home for a day and back to…

  • the beach for a week! my husband’s sweet family {if you weren’t lucky enough to marry into the perfect family, i’m really sorry. cause i did and it rocks.} is heading to florida to vacation with us! hooray! this will be our third annual beach vacation together {which is weird but awesome} and i cannot wait. i literally inherited the perfect brother and little sister i never had. my heart…

then….

HOME!!!

whew! what an adventure. our second summer together is going to be so marvelous. two months of suitcases and adventures and craziness and fun! i know there will be moments when we just look at each other and laugh. expect many a post about jesus showing up in honduras. about true love celebrated in north carolina. about revelations had at the beach. about fun times on the lake. and about amazing growth in our marriage and love for each other.

what about you? do you have any awesome summer plans?

sixty hours of absence makes the heart grow fonder.

May 22, 2013 Leave a Comment

oh man, this weekend was marvelous.

my sweet cousin/bestie/really-she’s-like-my-sister leah {the one with the ridiculously awesome blog about living a fair-trade life} and i drove to north carolina to spend the weekend celebrating leah’s brother caleb’s soon-to-be-BRIDE lauren’s bachelorette party! did you follow that? {when i was in high school they beat run-on sentences out of me. sorry, mrs. vaughn.}

so many incredibly good things:

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twenty hours of uninterrupted car time/quality time with leah. (on the left is the other awesome leia! lauren’s sister.)

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time with lauren, the actual perfect match for caleb, and wonderful new friend.

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the opportunity to get creative in the kitchen with my fabulous aunt julie (mom to caleb & leah), decorating sassy, girly cookies before the weekend began (they were a hit by the way! recipe below!)

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delicious (and glutenfree!) lunch at childress winery in our private room overlooking the fermentation room.

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followed by a tasting. mmm.

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as if this wasn’t perfect enough, we also got to CRAFT all weekend long! katie (fellow bridesmaid, long-time friend to lauren, co-perfect-party-planner, and diy blogger) shared a post on her blog about how we created these adorable canvas totes! check her out, she’s super fab.

whew. it was a whirlwindy kind of blast! the best part? coming home to my prandsome hince — my perfect husband, anderson. i know it’s sappy and most people think we’ve lost our minds, but i spend almost every second of my days with this fella. so spending twoandahalf days apart was actually kinda tough. getting girl time (and him getting boy time — the bachelor party also happened this weekend) was soooo good for us, and we definitely recognize the need for those relationships in our lives. but when we came home to each other, it made it all that much sweeter. absence makes the heart grow fonder…. reuniting makes the heart swoon and the knees weak. i know i know. you’re probably thinking, ‘come on, danielle, it was like sixty hours. relax.’ yeah yeah yeah, i’ve got the hots for my hubs and i don’t intend to keep ’em quiet. being apart from him sucks — we did it for our entire dating/engagement so now we do it as little as we have to.

marvelous weekend made even better by coming home to the man of my dreams. perfect.

halleling for:

{fiftythree. finding the one who makes my heart swoon.}

{fiftyfour. sharing my heart, my home and my life with him.}

{fiftyfive. meeting and spending time with some really awesome girls and new friends this weekend.}

{fiftysix. quality time with my leah love.}

{fiftyseven. caleb and lauren found a love like the one i’ve got and this thrills me.}

{fiftyeight. sweet dad memories flooding me, bringing healing tears and joy all at once.}

{fiftynine. a day in tarpon springs with our super awesome friends.}

{sixty. cookie decorating with julie:

1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 eggs, 4 cups self-rising flour, 1 spoon vanilla.

cream butter & sugar.

add slightly beaten eggs.

add flour and vanilla.

this makes a stiff batter.

place on a cookie sheet.

bake at 350* for 12-13 minutes.

top with royal icing to decorate: 1/4 cup merengue powder + 3 cups water, whisk until peaked submission

for bellies that reject gluten, i’m thinking you could just replace the flour with cup4cup gluten-free all purpose. worth a shot!

i truly, madly, deeply tolerate you.

May 15, 2013 5 Comments

i’m feeling little to no inspiration to blog today whatsoever. i’ve sat down to write this post three times since monday. should i post a successful recipe? something delicious that i baked, like between you & me did this week? {omg can you say YUM?} well, i would, but my sweet hubs can’t tear himself […]

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time spent.

May 8, 2013 1 Comment

in my life thus far, i have spent a lot of time wasting time. like a lot. most recently, i’ve realized just how much time i’ve wasted worried about how i’m going to spend my time. did you follow that? i am an introspective extrovert. i feed off of having other people around me. i love having […]

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allow me to introduce myself. again.

April 29, 2013 8 Comments

my intentions are so good it’s scary. it’s been a YEAR (ok ten & a half-ish months) since i last blogged and in that post i swore… i VOWED to blog like i’d never blogged before. i promised to regain my (very few) readers’ trust again. i convinced you (are you still there? hello? is […]

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heights and depths and marrying up.

June 15, 2012 1 Comment

what a long time it has been… and what incredible things have happened since my last post. former readers will know (from past patterns) that the thing that has reopened my heart to “being rindercella” is a huge revelation. shocker: the lover of my soul found me and taught me something and now my fingers […]

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a wondrous weekend. also, photos photos photos.

February 2, 2012 Leave a Comment

a little late posting about it, but last weekend was a marvelous blast of a time. fiancé came in for a five day stay! the LAST of his stays in orlando before he is here for the long haul…. strange huh? in twentynine days he gets here, we run a half marathon, i go a […]

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vows.

January 25, 2012 3 Comments

so i started working on my vows this week. holy matrimony its hard. (did you catch that precious, nauseating pun i dropped in there?) no really. how do you use words to tell the person you love beyond words what they mean to you? how do you promise to do anything that could ever live […]

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number three.

January 21, 2012 Leave a Comment

the third big “woah!” was of course…. our house. and as promised, a picture tour is here! a little backstory: anderson and i found this house online months ago when we were trying to decide which STATE we were going to live in, let alone which house. well through the entire process this one house […]

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three big woahs of life.

January 20, 2012 4 Comments

so i think there are probably more than three big “WOAH!”s in a person’s life. but right now, anderson and i are right in the middle of three of them. yeah that’s a big one. i would say probably the biggest. ok so the picture has nothing to do with this one. but its a […]

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