LARCation, Part One

who you do life with shapes your entire existence.  really i am more and more convinced that the 'who' in the journey is just as important (if not more important) than the 'what' and the 'how' and the 'when' and the 'where'.  in our case, we do life with an incredible group of people here in rva.  and some of those people, eighteen of us to be exact, just spent a long weekend at the beach in carolina.  

the entire time i was there i felt the urgency to write and record and document because the whole thing felt like a dream.  i remarked to more than one person that i could not believe we were actually on vacation together and that i knew it was a great trip because i kept feeling like i needed to pinch myself to believe it was actually real. you see i have always considered that i hit a ridiculous jackpot when i landed at our church and in the community group where i initially met most of these folks.  i knew i was no where near cool enough or artsy enough or creative enough to hang in the game with them, but for some reason they just kept letting me hang around.  and i think part of me keeps waiting for the day when they realize that im not up to par. but until then, ill keep pinching myself.

our time together was unique for a number of reasons.  one of the primary factors was that i really love all of the kids who were on the trip.  all six of the big kids (there were also three babies) are super fun, creative, polite, obedient and hilarious.  so part of what i was looking forward to was being with them.  and i was not disappointed.  each of them made the trip special and the three babies just had all us grown ups enchanted with cuteness (even if they did collectively keep us parents awake at night and wake us up far too early).  these are the kinds of kids who i want hanging around my daughters.  the kinds of kids i want eden and etta to be like.  the boys i want to arrange marriages with. so it was great on that front.  

obviously it was also unique because of the grown ups.  the seven other adults on the trip are some of the men and women whom i most admire.  they are women who have challenged me and encouraged me as a wife, friend, mother and believer.  they are men who have encouraged my husband and lifted us up as a family.  these women have sojourned with me through some of my darkest hours.  and so having the chance to get away for a few days, with no work or life or stress to sort through and just hours and hours of time stretched out before us...you can see where i am going with that.

in this post ill just share a few of my very favorite photos, and then ill share some more in a post to follow.  there is no real order to them, they are just a few of the photos that capture that feeling i had of wishing i could just pause it and savor it.