My Trip to Slovenia | Personal

My Trip to Slovenia | Personal

When I left for Slovenia I never imagined I would leave with a 4-week old baby back at home. The last month has been a difficult, surprising, and beautiful time. When Willow came home I had to make a lot of decisions about what I would keep and give up this summer – with constant travel booked, I knew I couldn’t make it all happen. I decided to forego every trip except this one with The Good Story for a lot of reasons, but leaving her at home is one of the more difficult things I have done.

I traveled to Slovenia through Venice, Italy, to photograph the Reach Global European Division Conference. Reach Global is a missions organization that has workers all around the world. Every two years they hold a conference to encourage, equip, and refresh these people who selflessly give all of themselves to serve hundreds upon thousands of people. To say it was an honor to in turn serve these missionaries is an understatement – I am truly in awe that I was able to participate in such an amazing endeavor.

The first few days of the conference were extremely difficult...

University of Virginia in Charlottesville // Personal

Last month, my husband and I took a much-needed vacation together. We'd both taken a week off earlier this summer. The only problem was that I went to New Mexico for my cousin's wedding (yay!) and he went to Nashville with our church's student choir. We both LOVED our trips and had an awesome time, but it meant that we had only a little vacation left to actually spend with each other. 

I love the beach. Love it. It's hard for me to do absolutely nothing until I have sand under my feet and I'm watching the waves. It's so relaxing. So my first thought for vacation is always to go to the beach. This time, though, we did something different - a mini road trip around Virginia. We hit up Richmond, Roanoke, and Charlottesville, and chose some awesome places to eat at each. We even got to stay at Hotel Roanoke - a dream of mine since I used to live there. 

The night we stayed in Charlottesville, I wanted to take a walk around the campus at the University of Virginia. I'd actually applied there and gotten in as a senior, but decided to go to Virginia Tech instead. However, I've always loved the campus and thought it was beautiful. It was crazy to explore the entire place and hardly see anyone there. What a treat! I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I loved taking them, and I hope to go back and visit UVA someday soon! 

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I'm sneaking in one of the hubby...hopefully he won't mind :)

I'm sneaking in one of the hubby...hopefully he won't mind :)

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Construction was happening EVERYWHERE. I wonder how different it will look come fall!

Construction was happening EVERYWHERE. I wonder how different it will look come fall!

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Love him 

Love him 

Atlanta // Nature

Last week, I took a trip to Atlanta with my mom. We had a great time, especially when we got to eat at Canoe, a local restaurant that really does look like a canoe from the inside. I wish I had better pictures of the food because it was delicious. I think the highlight was the chocolate caramel grotto, a small dessert with a dark chocolate shell covering salted caramel mousse. Man. I could eat some more right now (even though I just had breakfast).

​The rest of the time was great. I met a ton of new people who were so kind to me, I found a Starbucks (on the first day, no less), I got sunburnt in the month of April, which really should be impossible, and I enjoyed spending time with my mom. I don't think we've ever taken a road trip together just the two of us. It was usually my parents, my 3 siblings, and me, crammed in the back of a minivan driving for 16+ hours with constant fights, broken windshield wipers, and God only knows what else (for the record, those are some of my favorite memories anyways). It was nice to do something different.

I'd never seen the suburbs of Atlanta before, and there are some beautiful homes around the area! One afternoon I just took a walk down the road near where we stayed and took pictures of everything I could see. The flowers were gorgeous, the houses should have been called estates, and the weather was just perfect. I wanted to share these pictures with you, so enjoy (and I FINALLY started remembering to add my watermark...I always forget!). I hope you get a chance to tour Atlanta sometime, too!​