Sounds of our Summer

We know we've neglected you quite a bit this summer so we'll do a quick re-cap to catch you up to speed on all fronts. {Because Saturdays are for Bonding.}

1. A lot of people have been asking me for an update on Francis Becks, my team and leadership development company. 

Thanks for asking!

I actually took off the entire month of July from working on it. I hated to lose momentum, but something had to give. (See some of my below #s.)

2. WE MOVED into our very first house. Praise, Jesus. We've been shopping for a house since *last summer* and it was an arduous process that didn't bless our hearts.

We love our new house, our neighbourhood, and the journey of making our space our own.

We promise to post some actual photos of our adorable space soon and soon. You know, as soon as it ceases looking like a disaster zone.

A couple of fun facts:

- We live directly across the street from some of our Very Dearest friends. We so love running across the street to borrow a cup of sugar, swap stories while we're taking out the trash or sitting with them as we hunt for bats. (More on this in a minute.)

-We live in the ghetto...and love the chaos and character of our new home sweet home.

2b. We were sitting in the living room last week, chatting with our aforementioned friend/neighbour, Tamarah, when a bat performed a rather exaggerated dance above our heads. It was terrifying.

So to re-cap on the "first world trauma" we've experienced in the last 6 weeks:

-we have bats

-we are still in a boundary dispute with our title insurance

-our car broke

But don't worry, our dog didn't die, nor did we break up.

We keep asking ourselves if the ridiculousness of the season is our imagination or simply adulthood.

We have yet to firm up an answer.

3. We are in Seattle for a wedding this weekend. (!)

Wandering the streets of Seattle in a wedding dress with Hailes.

Hailey and I attended the same university and the same YWAM base for our DTS and became solid friends the year I was graduating. Through all the years and all the miles between us, we've been able to connect here and there. 

Now we have the honour of being her wedding photographers this Sunday.

Can't wait to show you the photos.

4. We've rather neglected social media this summer, partly because we've been too busy having adventures and partly because we don't have the wifi at our new house. (We are tightening our belt on all fronts.) The simplicity of this decision has been refreshing, though we'll inevitably cave within the next five years.

Do you remember that we went the first full two years of our marriage without wifi at our apartment? We're getting back to the basics, folks.

And there you go. A teensy re-cap on the life and times of the Jono Laynie.

Tell us about your summer?

xo.

Sisters are Forever//Atlanta Days

I know we've chatted a dozen times about My Great Love for my sister, over coffee, in the midst of this space.

There are several reasons for that, but we'll narrow it down to two today:

1. She's awesome (and I love her more than all the drops in all the oceans).

2. The width and breadth of our history is so rich and ripe with heartache (etccc.) that no one else in the world fully understands the layers of our past or how they've come together to form the people we are today. Let's just say "It's complicated" and keep it at that.

Though we lived together all through university and graduated on the same spring night, the following years have found us in many different (and often opposite) corners of the world.

People, this is hard for the heart.

From D.C. to Thailand, from Chicago, Texas, Hawaii and beyond we've seen each other as much as humanly possible through the years and of course it's still not enough.

Thankfully, the past couple of years, we've taken a long weekend together in Atlanta in July to celebrate her birth. Catherine's arrival all those years ago was the very best thing that could have happened to me, though as an usurped older sibling, I had little idea just how much I would need her through the ensuing years.

So party in Atlanta it is.

I'm grateful for my sister-for the hard conversations and the heart conversations. I'm thankful for someone who has seen me in a myriad of seasons, who loved me when I was unlovable and who believed in me far more than I ever believed in myself.

I'm grateful to know someone so incredibly generous, hilarious, kind, thoughtful, giving, witty, talented and brilliant.

Catherine Elizabeth-you are a wonder. I'm proud of you, I adore you, I'm so happy I get to call you MY sister. 

Until we hug again.

xo.