a short story and a Smorgasbord of pictures

we were so blessed this last weekend to have some wonderful friends (craig and rachel and their children and niece) come and visit us from dallas. we met them when we lived in racine WI. they moved to dallas, and then we moved here. so it has truly been wonderful to be able to reconnect. even though we don't see each other very often, to quote a michael w smith song, "friends are friends forever when the Lord's the Lord of them". they are such and encouragement and we just really appreciated having them here with us! here are some of my favorite pictures from our visit:

load 'em up - we are going to the pool!

cornell family + nathan at lake travis

we really had a great time!!

here are some other "catch up" pictures:

nathan showing his sympathy for his sick mommy (i am WAY better now!)

i took nathan for a bike ride and he kept trying to move his helmet around. everytime he did, it would pull at his chin and he would scream. so we had him 'practice' wearing it in the house to get used to it. it worked!

i baked some brownies for a church tail-gate party at a baseball game. i thought i would make them special so 1/2 had chocolate chips and the other 1/2 had white choc chips and there were pecans throughout. i don't know if all the extra ingredients did something to the receipe or what. but i have NEVER seen a brownie bake up into such a weird shape! it just came out looking really funny. maybe someone could give me some insight as to what you think went wrong??