Here's to Mom & Dad!

Happy 30 Wonderful Years Together, Mommy and Daddy!!

We are all so very blessed by your commitment to each other and to the Lord. Thank you for being such an incredible example of a godly marriage. We have such a rich heritage because of you two!! Many, many congratulations!!!!

To the most amazing woman I know,

Happy Birtdhay, Mommy!

All tied up..

"Oh, I get it! You think I'm all tied up inside, and you want me to figure out how to untangle myself!"

Yea, this is basically how I feel about now. I've had so many meetings with different faculty at UK that I could probably tell you each of their middle names, what side of the bed they sleep on, and how many times they sneeze before they get in the shower. Yea. Pretty impressive, I know.

It really boils down to this: I eventually want to graduate with a master's...like, sometime, say...next May 6th. There is one sole problem: I have not had the class I need in order to turn in a 26 pg. proposal outlining my plan of research. Small problem, great big obstacle.

So, what do I do? I don't know. I plan tons of meetings; read a book on research methods in two days; research tons (ok, more like 100 articles) of literature pertaining to my area of study; skim through the abstracts of each article; actually read a dozen times 2 of the articles; write notes for each meeting I have with each faculty; sleep very little; cut back on eating; forget how to stop the car and push the accelerater (twice on two seperate days); fall into my dresser while getting up from the bed too quickly; ask lots of people many, many questions; sing as loudly as I can; cry once, possibly thrice each day; check out 15 books from 3 different libraries; fall asleep at night singing "I surrender all"; and most importantly, spend time each and every day with my Precious Lord.

Yea, as you can tell, I've been busy. I had a break between meetings and thought I'd catch you up on all my doings. This meeting with the director of graduate studies will most likely determine if I graduate in May or not. Hmmm. I don't like that, but I need to face the facts.

The Lord is so, so good. I am continually amazed at how He loves me and how He so freely gives of His strength to me. He is such a generous God. I'm also thankful for the people He has placed around me. He knows exactly what I need, exactly when I need it. What an encouragement to know that my Great Love pays such close attention to me.

I hope each of you are doing well. If you are ever in the area, stop by and say hey..and cook dinner for me ; ) haha. I love you all!!

just a little while longer...

i just looked at the calendar and it seems that in three weeks, i'll be coming home! i can't wait to rest and love on you guys! i miss you all.

love and peace,

sarah

TheCall- The longer and more informative video

Hey! If you want to see a shorter version, then check out our blog. But I like this version because they explain the sound device they created : )

I love you all!!!!
L-



Untitled from A. L. Arnold and Vimeo.

Three different families.....

To our lovely family...

Happy 4th of July!!!

It just gets better

This is Mt. Shasta. We can see it from Redding but it takes
about an hour to drive there. It was beautiful.


Meet my new friend Motoko. I went over to talk to her because she looked like some of my family. I decided to show her a picture of my sister Sarah and her family in Japan. When she saw my Japanese sister, Ako, she grabbed her mouth and exclaimed, "I know her!" It turned out (through a conversation with the Gordon's we found out that she indeed did know the Gordon family and that her mother works with my sister in Japan. ) Is God good or what??? She was blessed, I was blessed and everyone who realized that the LORD had sovreignly connected us. I get to hug her everyday.

This is a picture from the conference. The art pieces that you see were drawn during worship. They are incredible and usually very prophetic. There is room for every expression of worship here. I am very blessed to be here.

My turn..

So, this is whats we has a gots going on over here...

A May 15th Sunset in Lexington
John's other job- feeding water to bird's laying on their sides so they pop up and fly away!

Us on our first anniversary...we were a little tired from all our travels

If you can't tell, the clock behind John says 6:30..am! That was the morning we got home from the ER and he decided to cook me some breakfast before we went to bed..SO sweet : )

Our first ever professional baseball game: The Cincinnati Reds v. the Texas Rangers. These cute little guys in the picture would come on the field between plays and "sweep" the dirt smooth. It was quite comical. Before the game they were watering the dirt to keep it from being too dusty. There were 13 guys holding one hose. Yea, it was funny.

My home fry Danessa and her husband Corey went along with us

The Reds lost by a lot, but it was still a fun experience. Oh, and the Ohio river is backed up to the playing field.

The day after the game we took our beloved friends, Sarah and Jesse, to Six Flags. John and Jesse are demonstrating how to ride the rides.

Our small group from church had a cookout Wed. These little boys are the leader's children..and they are so cute (especially the one with sunglasses!)

Here's our small group. It is mostly people just out of college and then some of us in graduate school.

Like I said, this little fella is a doll!

Our fearless leader, taking a water balloon shot like a man

Our sky at 9:05 pm...

Can you imagine waiting up for this sunset all the time??

Last night it wasn't completely dark out until 10-ish. It was crazy insane..I think that was the longest day of the year!

We love and miss you all.

what i do in the summer

mom has inspired me to chronicle a bit of my life right now:
here's the scenario- 1 am on a weeknight, me with my german book, pad of paper and pencil, translating, sighing, groaning, weeping, then dreading waking up at 7 the next morning.
this will all be over soon...i tell myself...





(this last one's for you, laura. it has been discovered that we share the same skill.)

Hey Family - some of my favorite pics from San Francisco

My sentiments exactly!!!

This one is for Laura : )

Some things beautiful

I really took this picture Suz!

Yes, Brian found me and wanted a picture of us.

Mom and the Summer Girl flying to Atlanta!

miss you guys.

Here on the other side of the US

My luggage!

This is where I am staying!
and this is 9:00 at night!

I ate squid legs yesterday!


<3 Summer

Ta-Da!!

Ok, so I finally did it. I finally brought myself into the now-a-days with a haircut....

I love ya'll!! and miss you sooo sooo much.

to the wells, love the arnolds and wells

hello from kentucky!

If I....

I'm going to "post something weird." Sarah said it would work if I wanted comments. So here it goes...

The other day John and I were visiting in Chicago when we saw this man...he was a curious sort of man, kind of standing half-tall..looking everwhichway.

Ok. I'm terrible at this.

We really were in Chicago the other day and had some of the most interesting adventures. The first night we were there we saw this truck on fire a few yards from the apartment we were staying in! It was up in flames..completely. They reached at least fifteen feet high and were all blue and yellow and orange! John called the police and they trasfered him to the fire department, which kindly let him know someone was already on the way. By the end, there were five police cars, a large firetruck, and eight or so witnesses. It was weird. The truck is no more.

On Saturday, we practically walked all around and over downtown Chicago, visiting Millinium Park, Sears Tower, The Magnificant Mile, Navy Pier, and um...other places I can't remember. And we ate such goooood food! They really know how to make pizza up thar, ya know! haha.

We visited Willow Chicago (one of Willow Creek's campus' in downtown Chicago) and got to take communion with our brothers and sisters in the Windy City. What else? I got a bagel at almost every stop we made! mmmmm! Delicious. I finally found the perfect one. It was grand.

Oh, and on Sunday John and I went to the Musuem of Science and Industry! It was magnificantly HUGE! We could hardly do everything we wanted..in fact, we didn't get to see it all. But we got to see how they make toys, take a tour in a coal mine, walk through an airplane, observe several old planes, walk around the submarine U505. It was amazing!! They literally built the walls around the sub once they got it in place. This submarine was captured from the Germans by the Americans in World War 2. You could even see the gun shot wounds the sub had gotten during a fight! It was crazy neat. So, all in all, we did a ton of walking, saw some interestingly, strange, amazing sites and ate tremendous food all with the company of our neighbors and her sister and boyfriend...Though there were some times when John and I just wandered around the city. That was great fun too..We did that Saturday and Sunday night. Such fun discovering new places (and rare eating places).

So, do I solicit some comments now.....

Pretty lil' pups

Two pretty puppies! Guess which were the "lickee" and "licker"?

and another

whoever wrote that last post is right- and i would've written something similar at an earlier date, but i've been in school mode.

the above is a watercolour i hope to finish soon. it is a scene from new orleans- a bunch of street musicians situated around a park bench. good stuff.

now i must go study for a music theory test that is going to make me cry.
ah. such is life, right?

kisses&hugs.

sb

We get stuck

Well, here is a cool picture of us that has nothing to do with this except I thought it should go on the Fam Blog.

We all view this blog from time to time but none of us enter anything.

Come on you guys...what are the Jone's to read if we don't blog??? But alas, we seem to be stuck. Stuck at Feb. 27. A good day, I admit, but we have got to move on.

Moving on is the hard thing isn't it. I mean things were the way they were for so long then one day you look up and something changed and you have to make a choice to accept it and stay where you are or...move on. What to do? Didn't Paul Simon write some kind of song about this?