I am at a loss for how exactly one of my daffodils migrated to the middle of a scrub. My sorority sisters will understand why I was pleased to see violets in my yard, even if Tim saw them as weeds.

While the men were doing engineering work, Bethany and I were playing with the kids and taking a nice portrait of each of them. My hope is for them to have a picture that shows how beautiful and special they all are. Many of the children at the campus come from very broken homes or no homes at all. I was so encouraged by seeing their love of life, love for the Lord and love for each other. There is so much to say about an experience like this, but here’s just a few photos to give you an idea.

I do want to share that the mission has suffered a significant decrease in their funding and are really stretching to make ends meet right now. Many people wonder, how do I get connected or really help a group like this one? Well, this group is very organized and has opportunities for individual child sponsorship, listing of current needs and opportunities for groups to come visit and work on the property. I know their are so many huge needs out there right now, but if this group pulls on your heart, please at least take time to read through their site and think about what it might look for you to help in a small or big way. Tim and I hope that with the help of our church support we will be able to see the erosion control project to completion in the near future.

Well recently we had our hand at dog care as we watched Brinkley for a few days while a friend of ours was out of town. Brinkley is quite the dog, definitely the most trained dog I’ve been around (which was a good starting point for our friendship). She got many walks, most of which were in the midst of snow storm activity. I loved that she saw the world as a giant snow cone, while my job was to keep her away from the “lemon flavored” parts! We did a bit of jogging, though hindered by my snow boots.

It was neat to interact with a dog and see their loyalty and love. However, I was still happy to come back to my small, lovable and low maintenance Nacho.

We knew that high quality tiling was out of our league, so we called up Eric at Jensen Tile. While tile prep and setting were happening, Tim and I were running between Home Depots, Menards and Lowes to make sure we had everything we needed. Tim learned how to cut tiles in half (for the marble floor) and I was busy in the basement priming and painting the baseboards, trim and beadboard.

Since we had a tile team at our house we decided to also go ahead and tile our kitchen floor, which had been a project in waiting for about two years. So in our small Broad Ripple house, both the bathroom and kitchen were out of use. During the workday, we got accustomed to going to the Lowes or McDonalds bathroom. At night we stayed at a friends house who so willingly put us up for what totaled 8 nights! As Christmas approached we got the project to a good stopping point, one that involved a working toilet and shower, and headed out of town to spend time with family in a non-construction zone house. Directly following family Christmas gatherings, we left bright and early for the Urbana Conference in St. Louis.

I am super excited to shoot my first wedding of the year tomorrow for Amanda and Adam. They are so in love and so ready to be married!

You might wonder, why home improvement in December? Sure it’s freezing outside, time to enjoy the holidays, but it was also time when I had little Megelaine Images commitments and Tim and his dad’s man power were available. Yes we are frugal and yes we tend to be do it your selfers. I knew it was the real deal when the dumpster got delivered to our driveway. This pictures are the first two days of work. Lots of crow-barring and bucket loads of debris hauled to the dumpster. At the time of these photos we were still staying at our house overnight.

As a note, our house was built in 1926. Let me tell you that they built them to last back them, which is great but made demo hard work. It was neat to see how different the construction was from techniques and materials used today. Turns out the bricks for our chimney were made right here in Indianapolis. More to come soon in our adventures of home remodel…

Urbana is a giant (17,000+) mission conference for college students that is put on by InterVarsity. Last year I helped out photographing InterVarsity’s Greek Conference in Indy. I was thrilled that Tim and I were able to be a part of the photography team at Urbana. Working on a team was fun and essential to share the load of documenting such a huge event. The other fabulous photographers were Dave, Barry and Adam, who’s wife just had her first book published. A special shout out to the other wedding photographers on the team, Wayne and Angela! You can check out their Urbana pics here.

Urbana felt like shooting 5 weddings in 5 days with very tricky lighting situations. It was great for me to have the challenge of shooting so much. Each day consisted of two large gatherings, hundreds of different break out sessions, manuscript study, a 200+ mission organization exhibit hall, and feeding 14,000ish people in 2 hours for dinner. It was incredible to see so many passionate people in one place that are committed to living purposefully.

The festivities began with some at home tailgating at a friends, eating taco dip and playing my first competitive game of corn hole. Yes, I had been fighting it for a while, but as it turns out I’m pretty decent. The crew headed down to Elbow Room for some pre-game food. Good eats and good laughs. Then as Tim’s heart rate increased, we made the pilgrimage into Lucas Oil Stadium. I had no idea how many people and how crazy it would be just getting to the stadium. (I’m such a newbie) We had some incredible seats and I was just blown away by the energy and noise in the place as the game began. Home team advantage! I had fun doing a little of sports photography but then put it away until the incredible ending of the game. I couldn’t believe people were leaving the stadium and missed such an awesome ending. After the Colts pulled off the win, the madness grew! Pouring out of the stadium, people were screaming, giving high fives to each other and honking their horns. You would have thought we won the Super Bowl again. The only bummer of the night was being such in the same place in a parking garage for about 40 minutes and being hungry. By the time we got back home it hit me hard that it was 2am and needed to sleep.

Super thanks to my friends for organizing such a fabulous evening.

The wine was delightful as well as the company of our guests Sonja and Alex, who themselves have quite an interesting blog. While this kind of quality food doesn’t always show up at dinner time at the King house, it sure is a treat when it does. It’s always nice to have a reason to use the good china. Cheers to kitchen adventures that turn out stellar!

One side of my family always gets together at their lake house for Labor Day. It was great to have everyone there, including my cousin who is stationed in Georgia. The next few days were spent with my parents and grandparents while loving on my sweet niece.

From there we headed south to visit our friend John, who was one of Tim’s groomsmen, in Memphis. We checked out the Beale Street scene, listened to some blues, ate some fried pickles and drank plenty of SWEET tea. We loved hanging out and getting a flavor of the south’s food and hospitality. (especially at the Wolf River Cafe’s catfish night!)

Leaving Memphis, we headed over to Birmingham, where our friends Carrie and Michael had moved after their wedding in June. They are both in residency right now and we were so fortunate it worked out that they both had some time off. We went to the hippest downtown art fair, where all of these renovated old buildings were opened up as galleries for the weekend. We got a great tour of Birmingham and were completely impressed on how nice it all was. After a busy Saturday, we spent much of Saturday chillaxing. Their new puppy, Bexley, totally won us over. Carrie and I made some pizza on the grill – time consuming, but completely delicious.

Early the next morning we headed up to Mammoth Cave and enjoyed soaking up the natural wonder it truly is. I was completely impressed with how well my camera functioned in a cave. That evening we spent time with my cousin Jordan, who is a student at Western Kentucky University. The next day we finally made the trek back to Indy, including a stop for lunch and a nap in Columbus, IN and a visit to my cousin Allie in Greenwood. Our bed never felt so good when we got home.

With over 2,500 miles and 8 beds in 2 1/2 weeks, it was good to be home. We were so fortunate to have the opportunity to spend time with such special people and see a little bit more of what makes up our country.