Photography Challenge Week 16 || Spring

I wanted something quintessentially spring for this week.

I've been sitting on my couch bird-watching whenever I have the blinds up. I see sparrows, mourning doves, house finches, starlings, and the like multiple times a day.

But what bird says spring more than a robin, right? And it was my lucky week to witness a robin building a nest and then laying eggs!

What a cutie.

Caleb let me climb on his back so I could see if there were any eggs while the mother was away.

And there you have it, the neatest thing ten feet outside of my door!

(If we're lucky maybe we'll see the babies in a few weeks! I'm so excited!)

Photography Challenge Week 15 || A Cause

Well, yeah, I've been pretty bad at keeping up with this, but I've got to say...I'm proud of myself for still doing it, even if Wednesday is my new Saturday/Sunday.

This weekend Caleb and I went to our former college ministry's Czech Mission Trip Spaghetti Dinner. They head over to Czech in the summer and spend a long time there working with youths, teaching them English, and sharing their love for God when presented an opportunity.

These photos were on the fly, but were mainly to give those donating and following the RFC pages an insight into how passionate these students are about their trip. (I mean, they served all of us messy eaters themselves and were quite professional...most of the time.)

Buying a ticket to get in!

The food behind the scenes.

One of the dessert auction winners.

Photography Challenge Week 14 || Quick

I had just a few minutes of sunset left and just a few minutes before we got really hungry. So, I snapped a few quick shots of my sister-in-law (in for the weekend!) and our former roommate! And honestly, that is all the exposition I have for you. Oh, and we practiced smizing, which, if you do not know, is the art of smiling with your eyes, and a phrase coined by Tyra Banks herself.

Photography Challenge Week 13 || Adventure

Boy am I behind. I tell myself each week that I'll post on Sunday, and then Monday rolls around, and in this case, we make it all the way to Wednesday.

Last week Caleb and I decided we wanted to go see a new waterfall over the weekend. If you can't tell, we're really into waterfalls and the like, i.e. here and here. If it's water and it rushes, we're there. After lots of research and realizing most spectacular waterfalls are 2 hours away from us (which would be fine for a normal Saturday, but we had plans for that evening) we found one right over the border in Oklahoma, only 40 minutes away!

Natural Falls State Park had a lot to offer--hiking trails, water everywhere, prairie, picnic areas, woods, gardens, little caverny things, and even a disc-golf course. Oh, and the most blue-greenest water I've seen.

I got real inspired on our break by the water. Prettiest water I've ever seen.

I've got to say, going to a different state (just barely) made this seem like a really big adventure to us. It was like exploring a new world. I mean, we've basically internally mapped the lake down the road from how many times we've been there, but we haven't gone exploring out of town much, if at all!

I don't know what this is, a plant, a weed, a fern...but it looked really neat.

It's funny, when I was a kid I remember finding snake vertebrae, rolly-polies, worms, those teeeeenny toads and all sorts of things around the yard. Now, I don't see stuff like that as much. Is it because I'm taller than I used to be, or because I forgot about those kinds of things, or because I lost that sense for seeing the small things? Thankfully, this weekend put some of that verve back in my brain and I saw all kinds of little things, from weird plants to green beetles to deer tracks.

The most handsome pack mule (who didn't even complain about carrying the backpack!)

And remember, folks, if you're out adventuring, don't forget to bring lots of water! (Like, the kind you can drink.)

The Falls in all their glory.

Oh yeah, and here's one of me too (Caleb took this photo so be proud of him!) I'm on the edge of a mountain being really hardcore with my jazz hands, I promise.