2 Years!

Two years ago I married my best friend. These last 2 years have been full of joys, trials, laughter, tears, and all of the in-betweens. We've gotten new jobs, bought a house, bought a dog, killed a car and bought a car. We've enjoyed making new family traditions (i.e. chopping down the tree for Christmas - that's new for both of us) and holding on to old ones.
We can't wait to see what the next years will bring and what adventures the Lord has for us!
Thanks for encouraging us on our journey. We love you.

Here Comes the Fall!

I can't believe that the summer has come and gone and we find ourselves at fall's doorstep once again. The summer was a whirlwind and was jammed with experiences, both great and challenging. The start of the summer was rough with Uncle Lloyd finishing his race well and going home to be with Jesus. If you're reading this, please continue to keep Aunt Janet, Jeffery, and the girls in your prayers. We also dealt with the washing away of the Malibu, my old faithful car since college, in the Great Tyler Flood of 2010. The Lord was so good to keep John safe during that scary ordeal and we were amazed at His goodness to us to provide us with an awesome car with better payments, better gas mileage, and was better for the environment (my guilt at teaching Environmental Science while driving a Tahoe is somewhat appeased). The Lord is good to us!


John stayed busy at Pine Cove, keeping things running smoothly for thousands of campers. I stayed busy working on curriculum for a new class at school, running with Em, and going out to Pine Cove to visit John. We also managed to get in a little play time. One of the highlights was the cookout at Wesley's family farm with some church friends. Thank you, Pine Cove, for teaching us our mad canoe skills.


The end of the summer held a fun adventure for me as Emily and I took on Barcelona and Paris in a once-in-a-lifetime sister vacay. There are way too many pictures to post here, but I'll attempt to put up a couple for you to check out. Pictures can't even do the experience justice! Hopefully I'll get to post about it soon, but if you want to hear a little more about it in the meantime check out Em's blog, Taste and See.
And alas! The fall is now upon us! We are grateful for so many things at the start of the fall. John's season is slowing down (enough for him to take a breath at least), we are settled in our house and not in the middle of house hunting like we were at this time last year, and it turns out that everyone was right - teaching is SO much easier year two! Praise the Lord for that one!

We love you and will write more soon!

The Mind of a Husband

i love my wife. i know that should go without saying, but the problem is that most of the time it does. i tell Lori that i love her all the time, but it doesn't come out very often in conversations with other people. Once again, i hope that it is evident in the way that i live, but why risk it? Let's just come out and say it out loud for everyone to hear! i love Lori Nicole Redfearn.
For those of you that are looking for some news on our lives, you should probably just move along, cause this post is gonna stay as mushy as it has started.
Things that i love about my wife:
i love that she is compulsive about cleaning. She doesn't really enjoy cleaning, but she likes everything to be clean... this is a problem, as my sisters will attest to the fact that i have never been a clean boy... ever. The reason i love this about Lori is the fact that, though she doesn't like cleaning, she disiplines herself to clean. Discipline is something i see lacking in my own life, and watching her do it so well is inspiring... and humbling.
i love that she is an encourager. i'm not so good with the sitting down and writing notes to people thing... probably has to do with the discipline issue again... but my wife is incredible at this. She has a unique ability to encourage with sincerity. She doesn't flatter. She doesn't tickle ears (well she does, but not like that - also a favorite). She can find the Holy Spirit inside of you and speak identity into your life. Most of us feel like we're trying to find our "place in this world" (thank you Michael W. Smith), and i wish i could introduce everyone to my amazing wife, so she could tell you just how the Lord has been using you.
i love that i can be silly and joke with my wife. For a lot of us "He-man-woman-haters" out there, being a goofball is a bad thing. It's not manly. It's not cool. The problem is, it can be pretty fun... and like to laugh. Lori is easy to laugh with. That was actually an observation that my father made about her before he had even met her. Pretty observant guy.
i love that my wife can be a mama bear. For those of you that don't know what this means, i pity you. Probably because you will most likely find yourself in her jaws at some point. It's not just when she's hungry, and it's not when you have wronged her most of the time, but it comes out when you injure or disrespect those that she loves. Man, she will rip your arms off and beat you with them. She is FIERCE! and i love it!
Lastly (for this post), i love my wife because more than cleanliness, she desires purity; more than knowing and encouraging others, she knows and is, herself, encouraged by Jesus Christ from whom she receives her own identity; more than silliness she has joy overflowing, that comes from knowledge and fear of a gracious God who loves her, and loves to give good gifts; and more than being fierce for those who have been placed in her care, she is fiercely and passionately in love with her savior. i LOVE the Jesus that i see in my wife!

Summer and Such

Hi friends! John has been asking me to update our blog for a while now, so I figured I would finally get around to it while I wait for him to come home from work. :) Why not?
A LOT has happened since our last post. Deen has gotten huge (and I think likely to get even bigger!) and can now hold her own when playing with the other dogs in her life. She is doing a better job at sleeping (yay for no more middle of the night bathroom trips!) and loves playing with her toys. We have only purchased her a ball and a chewing rope. All of her other toys came from the skill crane at Dave and Busters - thanks John and Jonathan! One by one the toys have been destroyed, but she has LOVED every one of them. I have one left hiding out in the closet...hopefully it will last us a while!
The summer means the end of the school year for me and the start of summer camp for John. It has definitely been an adventure these past couple of months. My kids did well on the TAKS test (yay!) and I am eagerly awaiting the results of my kids' AP exams. Life post-testing was fun at school. We built and launches water rockets - some successfully and others not so much - with my Research and Design kids, and watched some Captain Planet episodes with my AP kids (and did some labs and other very educational things of course...). It was a blast. In the meantime John was burning the midnight oil at camp, trying to get things ready for trailblazing and orientation. I got the chance to see my man at work on a Friday that we didn't have to go to school. He is so good at his job! It was fun to watch him in action. I also got the chance to celebrate Dad's birthday with him for the first time in 7 years (it falls right at the start of camp) and meet up with a group of girlfriends from college on our annual get-together. This time we took on Austin...or I should say took on Austin's restaurants. Eating is what we do best!
This week we've been busy with family in town, rescuing our car that floated away in the rain (awesome), taking care of the lawn, and making sure that camp runs smoothly (John takes care of that part). Even in the summer, we are sure looking forward to the weekend!
For a lot that's happened, this sure was a short post! More to come later, I'm sure. We love you and look forward to hearing about what is going on in your lives as well!

It's been so long since our last post, we can't even remember when it was. Let's start with what's happened recently. Jon and Becca came and stayed with us for the last two nights. That was awesome. We got some good hang-out time, but Lori and i were still working during the day. Why can't we all just live next door to each other, and have the same days off? Or better yet, we all just don't have to work. Yeah, that would be nice. For those of you that don't know, Jon is a really talented photographer. He took some good pictures while he was here, which leads me to my next update.
Last Monday we got a dog. She is a beautiful little mutt who we call Deen, in honor of Paula Deen. She's supposed to be a Boxer and Australian Cattle-dog mix, but we got her from a pet store, and you never know how much they actually know about their background. She is pretty, though.



We also traded in the ol' Mazda 6 for a '99 Chevy Tahoe (4x4!). It is also beautiful!
Lori is driving it, and she looks GOOD!
Spring Break was two weeks ago for Lori, so we took a trip to Georgia to visit the Greers. Man, that was a blast! We got to hang out, rest, and make an appearance on the Nancy Grace Show... you know... no biggie. It really was a lot of fun. Every time we go to North GA i have to remind myself that we're not moving there. Also Beautiful!
Lori is excited about there only being ten weeks of school left... that thought makes me want to wet myself because it means that camp is upon us. Yikes! Welcome to the busy season. So what do we do?... we get a dog... what was i thinking? It is fun, though. She's learning quick, and sleeping pretty well, lately. Speaking of sleep... we'll probably get to that pretty soon here. That's enough for now. Hopefully we will get back to writing a little sooner this time. Ya'll have a good day.