ATL recap

To cheer myself up after the Brazil/Netherlands game, I've decided it's time for an ATL photo dump:


My plane outfit consisted of my faithful Banana jeans and Banana blouse with turquoise sandals and a scarf for the freezing plane. It's an easy, plane-friendly summer outfit: comfortable, easily adaptable for heat or cold AC, and stylish. My mom gave me that necklace and the bracelets, and I love them. My bad posture is clearly something I need to work on.


Saturday morning, I met B's old teammates, St. and D., who later got married and had two adorable children (and have one on the way). It was good to hear some crazy stories about B's Mission Year experience from eye witnesses.

We did some driving around in the city:

This sign cracks me up....

Anyway, we went to a picnic that afternoon, then went to Community Grounds to watch the US/Ghana game, and after that, it was time for hanging out with my girls and going out to dinner. I wore something that would take me from day to evening with few changes, so I went with the denim dress: flip flops for day, wedges for night.


This is my Mission Year team attempting to recreate our first team photo. From front to back, S, me, J, BK, and M. We were just as cute in 2003 as we are in 2010. It was so good to see them all again.
B and I live in Philly, J and her husband live in Florida, M and her husband live in the Florida panhandle, BK lives in Atlanta, and S lives all the way out in Washington state, so it's hard to get together on a regular basis. Both BK and M were in my wedding back in December, so I'd seen them fairly recently, but I hadn't seen S since M's wedding in November of 2008 and none of us had seen J since her wedding in November or October of 2004. It's crazy how you can live with a group of people during a really intense period of your lives and get back together years and years later and still "know" each other. We might not be totally up on every little detail of our lives, but we kind of settled into something really comfortable and easy over the weekend, goofing around and hanging out like we used to.


Look! It's a proper outfit pic!
Denim dress: Ann Taylor (remixed)
Zebra print belt: Target (remixed)
Red wedges: Nine West (remixed)
Turquoise cuff: Chaps (remixed)
Silver flower earrings: gift from my mom
Red bracelet as hair tie: gift (remixed)
Flowered scarf: Liberty of London for Target - gift from M
S was an enthusiastic photographer; I have a ton of great pictures thanks to her.


Look at that sunset!


Y'all have no idea how I love that skyline. Oh, Atlanta, you'll always, always have a special place in my heart....


Monday, we stayed in B's old neighborhood, and his landlord and some old friends threw us a BBQ. BK came over to hang out. She and M are definitely two of my besties - I cannot tell you how much I love these girls. We all shared a room that year and would frequently stay up doing ridiculous things like talking with Minnesota accents late into the night. Good times. Also, how stinkin' gorgeous is BK?! She has tons of style and a shoe closet that made me squeal in absolute delight. I showed B and tried to convince him it was the kind of thing I needed in my life, but it wouldn't fit in our itty bitty Philly closets.


We took tons of pictures.


I met some folks that B was good friends with while he lived in the ATL and had good, good food and good conversation. The guy in the middle there, Brother L., is a grill master. A patient, patient cook and a man who really loves the Lord. The other guy, S. is a total sweetie, even if the picture doesn't convey that. He works at the airport now. And to think that he was in, like, 8th grade when B. first met him....

Overall, good times with good people.
Mission Year was an experience that changed my life and B's and all of our teammates' lives, too, actually. I'm really grateful for it and it's good to go back and see how things have changed in our old neighborhoods and to see how Mission Year continues to grow and impact lives.