Google Chrome and Arcade Fire Team Up... What!? Yes. So Excited. :)

Good Morning Everyone!!

We just wanted to share this super awesome link with y'all that our friend Shannon Donelson shared via Facebook. Click here for the Wilderness Downtown and make sure that you put your childhood address because you might start crying. :)

The Wilderness Downtown
www.thewildernessdowntown.com
Check out Arcade Fire's new interactive HTML5 music experience, “The Wilderness Downtown”.

The Onion Chopper & a Life Update

We realized today that we haven't posted anything in one week!! Gosh, has it flown by! A couple of my (Whit's) cousins have been turning an old shed attached to the back part of our cabin into a super nice closet! :) Gingin, JD and I will be getting paint and a couple of racks to put up this weekend. We can't wait to show the video of the true transformation of our bungalow.

Thursday night, we had a wonderful little "newlywed couple dinner" with our friends at the lake, Bo & Angie and John & Robyn. They are both fantastic couples and amazing people. We have planned a couple of other ventures soon to come in the fall... with that being said, you will probably meet them via video soon enough.

In other news, I started volunteering at the First Call Pregnancy Center in Greensboro, Ga., this past week. We had training yesterday and today. While the entire center is complete with confidentiality, I will not be able to share many stories with yall, but please know that we will still be asking for much prayer on the behalf of the girls and women that will enter its doors unknowingly seeking more than just help for their unborn babies.

Most importantly, we have an incredibly exciting update for everyone... the Lord has officially blessed JD with a paying technology job at Lake Oconee with TechKnow Gurus. After four months of searching in basically four or five different states without more than a reply of "You are too qualified" or "You are not qualified enough," he has finally gotten the opportunity to exhibit to an employer the knowledge he has and the potential he has in order to build the company dramatically. Praise the Lord! :) What element adds even more to this blessing? We get to continue living in our sweet bungalow right next to my wonderful grandparents in the same town as our new friends. After being close-minded at the fact that we wanted to live so far away from both of our families in the beginning, God definitely brings us to a beautiful humility. We are excited to be living in a place that He has obviously appointed us to. Thank you everyone for your prayers! A sincere word spoken to our Father is never wasted. Please continue to pray for us both as we now enter into the realms of a workplace, that through all situations Christ's name will not only be known but that it will also be lifted high and glorified. :)

Oh yea, and here's a quick video of one of our favorite household utensils... the Onion Chopper.

Morning View and Watermelon Smashing

In honor of our special move-in today, we wanted to post a video from July where JD shows everyone what we see when we wake up in the mornings. Unfortunately, we won't be waking up next to the blinds anymore... but my desk will be right next to it!! We can't wait to show you all what our room looks like now. We might wait till we finish all of the changes but just a little hint: it has a feeling of shabby chic. My grandparents will be putting in a closet door soon and then we will be giving the room slightly a different wall color. I've been wanting sooo badly to decorate our home. I'm glad the time is finally here.

Also during this video, JD will show you our little friend that, in the past, would hang out beside our bathroom window. She is classified as a Black and Yellow Argiope, yes another little animal. Also known as an orb weaver, she creates beautiful webs (Orb web means it spins its web like a circle). She looks terribly scary because of how huge she is, but she's actually harmless to humans and in essence, protects our house from many pests. And yes, we did research on this spider via Internet from various sources -- this being the main one.

Whit's Hair Changes with the Seasons

It was time. It was time for a change. And what is a greater change for a woman than a new hair color and a fresh cut?? Ok... we're thinking on a small scale here, not a car or house or anything like that. In fact, we would most certainly not consider either of those too great of a change for us right now. :)

So in reference to the original question, nothing. Thus, that's why I was thrilled to make this transformation just as the leaves are starting to turn...


Both the footage and the video are basically incomparable to JD's seeing as inches and inches continued to fall from his head, but we still wanted to share my exhilarating hair change too! Plus we love this song "Shooting Star" by Air Traffic. :)

A huge thank you to Alli Roberts at Alli Roberts Hair Salon for doing such a wonderful job on my haircut. ALSO a huge thank you to her and everyone who decorated her salon because I feel completely inspired every time I walk out of there!!

...Little known fact, Shooting Star was my "indian name" that my parents gave me as a kid.

WE FOUND THE LIZARD!!!

Ok... so we're not sure if the lizard you saw in the previous video ever left our bungalow, but we found it (or its relative) sitting in the middle of our bedroom floor when we arrived home a couple of days ago.

After doing some research, we found that the lizard is actually classified as a skink. Thanks to www.kaweahoaks.com, we have taken a few points to help increase your knowledge of this particular lizard. For those of you who don't have time to read this site or have no interest in the skink, here's the executive summary.

It's one of the two largest lizard families and is found in the southeastern United States and in the great forests of Africa and Indoaustralia. When you watch the video, don't worry about the lizard's tail being "pulled off" because it wasn't. In fact, lizards break their tails (autotomy) when they are confronted by an enemy or roughly handled. Five-lined skinks have a bright blue tail, at least as juveniles, which serves to draw attention away from more vulnerable parts of the body. If attacked, the bright blue tail wriggles when broken off, catching an enemy's eye as the skink escapes. Although tail autotomy may seem like a drastic measure, in actuality it does the lizard little harm, for a new tail is soon regenerated.

Saturday Surfing... wakesurfing, that is.

We finally have a "recent" video for yall! We hope to complete some more very soon. :) This past Saturday, we had the pleasure of spending the day with our friends Katelyn Bridges and Daniel Day, as well as Katelyn's awesome family. We spent a little time hanging out after we arrived but soon ventured onto the lake, seeking answers to the new trend wakesurfing.

I will use Mrs. Leslie's (Katelyn's mom) explanation from her facebook album of what, exactly, wakesurfing entails.

The theme of the weekend was getting up on the wake surf board.... then once you are up...you walk it in closer to the boat in search of the "sweet spot" where you can let go and "surf".

As you will be able to tell from the video, this task is quite difficult as a beginner. Katelyn was the only one who got somewhat near the "sweet spot" and let go of the rope but JD beat us all in staying up for the longest amount of time.

We also did a little slalom skiing - which was awesome because it was the first time JD has ever been able to watch me ski. After my legs were shaking to no end while going back and forth across the wakes (for about 5 entire minutes... gosh, I need to get in better shape), JD attempted at skiing and actually did pretty well. We're just going to have to work on his balance a little.

We had such an amazing time with the soon-to-be-married couple. If you get a chance, check out Katelyn's blog. She's going to start doing "Wu's" (aka: wedding updates). She's hilarious. You don't want to miss out on that. To Mrs. Leslie & Mr. Tony - thanks for letting us join yall for dinner too! It was AMAZING. :)

Speaking of weddings, yesterday JD and I celebrated our 3-month anniversary! What what!? We'll be posting a video up soon about what we did to celebrate. Be on the lookout! In the meantime, here's our Saturday Showdown Vid.


Music: Ode to a Butterfly by Nickel Creek, All I Do Is Win by DJ Khaled (would we recommend this song for anyone to purchase...? No. The lyrics are pretty bad but we all talked about it Saturday and thought the chorus would fit the wakesurfing collaboration perfectly, please don't get upset.), & Down River by Temper Trap

Amphibians and Insects

Hello!! Sorry we haven't written in a while! :) We have missed blogging but here's a special video for you that we put together quickly. We're actually working on the Barbados videos right now so hopefully we'll get those videos flowing soon.

In the meantime, here's a video from a crazy day in the bungalow.

Amphibians and Insects from Whitney Todd on Vimeo.

Other news: This past weekend we had the pleasure of traveling down to Ward (JD's hometown) for Theresa and Brandon's first bridal showers!! It was so wonderful seeing everyone and being able to witness the sweet sight of Brandon proposing to Theresa on Friday afternoon! :) Congratulations you two!

A Week of Visitors & a Special Request of Prayer

As most of you have probably noticed... we failed to post a blog last week. It was a crazy busy week filled with three wonderful guests. We wish we were able to share an awesome video with you but we seemed to have misplaced (or lost) our flipcam somewhere (we think in a mexican restaurant in Birmingham). JD had some wonderful footage of my good friend Courtney Pearce's wedding pre-reception and we wanted so badly to be able to have some footage of the entire week with Theresa (JD's sister), Jennifer (Whit's old roommate) and her boyfriend, Kyle. Oh well. Fortunately, Theresa got some footage and a few pics on her camera so we will try to post a short vid from that soon. Meanwhile, here are some of the pics...

Jet skis, dinner picnic on the pontoon (complete with taco ring, cucumbers, grapes, pringles and cookies), and we ended each night off with a delicious Root Beer Float. Mmmm!!



In other news, JD and I have been blessed with the opportunity to speak to the Faith Baptist Church youth group in Monroe tomorrow night (Wednesday). We are so excited to share our individual journeys which both led us to each other a little over one year ago. The main topic will be purity but we will also be addressing the importance of praying for and thinking about the husband / wife that the Lord has set aside for them. So please please keep us in your prayers tomorrow... that the Lord will truly rock these students' worlds and even our own, that He will give us the confidence to speak boldly yet with much vulnerability, and that His Truth and His name will be known above all things.

The Bungalow Part 2 [Transformation]

So here's the video of our transformation of our sweet little bungalow!! We absolutely LOVE the lyrics of this song... there is one dirty word and we greatly apologize for that but we thought it went so wonderfully with this video!! ...Simply because "home is wherever I'm with you." The song is "Home" by Edwarde Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (great names too).

Sorry this was a short post but we're getting ready for our BUNGALOW GUESTS this week!! : Theresa Todd, Jennifer Stuart & Kyle Beesley. Can't wait to see you all!!!

Bungalow Part 2 [Transformation] from Whitney Todd on Vimeo.