first snow

unfortunately this is about the extent of snow that hits the ground here in missouri. we are entering a brown, muddy, cold season. they call it winter in missouri. nasty stuff. oh, how i miss the snow. i mean, if it's going to be 20 out we might as well have snow right? however, with all its shortcomings, missouri did afford cody the first opportunity of his life to put his hands in come snow. and for missouri's efforts, we thank her. 

christmas lights

we put up our lights a week ago

hunting trips

we have thousand of pesky rodents living in the woods around us. they get to our bird feeders and eat all the food, they get into a storage shed and make a mess, and they have been dropping in number one at a time. ellen and cody love to spot them and go hunting with me. cody really does start to squeal if he sees one out the window. its pretty funny.

last month or so

here are some pictures from the last month or so. we have had my parents in town, been to chicago to welcome in the bowmans, and have been busy around the house. 

tessa is in the process of moving to the ER and switching to night shifts. i'm still working with the youth group, and for those of you up north, we will be coming your way for wintertainment. 

cody is about walking on his own now. couple steps and he falls flat on his face, but he is getting better.

facebook

i'm sure you have noticed that our updates have gotten less frequent. we are now dividing our time between the blog and facebook. so, if you are looking for more updates or something more frequent, find us on facebook. 

bridal cave

it has been a couple weeks now since our last post. everything with the youth group is good and busy and growing. the kids are getting huge. ellen speaks the whole dictionary it seems. fall is in the air. in summary, things are good. 

these are some pictures from a couple weeks back when one of my college buddies, brad, came by to visit us. we went to bridal cave. 

little update

wanted to keep you guys in the loop. the newest development has been a new job for me (scott). i have taken a interim youth pastor position at osage hills. it is the church that we have been a part of since we got here. i am 3 wednesday nights and a couple outside events seasoned now. it has been fun, and extremely stretching already. the timeline is not really sure. i was hired along with another guy to keep the boat afloat while the search team looks for a permanent hire. i might be there for 5 months or just a couple more weeks. only god knows. 

www.ontheledge.org

that is the website for the youth group. it is fairly recent (8 days) so there isn't much there yet, but if you keep checking back you will see a bit more of what is happening in the youth group.

so there you have it. 

smoky mountains

the following pictures are from our vacation to tennessee in the great smoky mountain national park. we made three different hikes for a total of 13.9 miles. every foot of the trails were beautiful. the smokys are like no place i have ever been before. 

wednesday night

we got into the park with enough daylight to make some supper set up our tent and fall asleep to the sounds of the river. we had a site that was 10 feet from the river. extremely peaceful. great way to fall asleep. even better than a fan. 

thursday

this is the view of the chimney top from the road

this was our first full day at the smoky mountains. we got up and out of the campground at about 11. we spent a little time at the welcome center and then headed up the new found gap road to find our trailhead. on the way up we decided to climb the chimney tops. it was a really cool trail that crossed 3 rivers. at the top, as you can see, there was a rock face that you had to climb to get the view from the peak. tessa and i took turns making the trek and the other stayed with the kids at the bottom of the rock face. on the way back down then we spent time playing in the river and jumping from some of the rocks.