top ten of the oh-oh's: #9

staying on track with this daunting series with the best decade there ever was. (catch up: #10: georgia tech)

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#9: the harper family: january 2003-present they should probably be #8 or higher but i haven't thought of #8 yet and i need to post something today. we know this family through CCF, that's georgia tech christian campus fellowship, the christian group that jesse and i met at and were involved in during and after college (that i had previously sworn to never step foot inside, deeming them a jesus cult). rick is the grand shaman, the campus minister. he and his gorgeous wife beth started ccf in 1987.

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agile and handsome.
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these jokers have technically been in my life since birth. my dad was rick's english teacher when he was in high school. my mom tried to set rick up with hotties at UGA when she found out he was headed there for college. we went to their church before we moved to north atlanta when i was 7.

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a triple scoop of harper boy goodness

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a weird serendipitous fact is that when i was working full time for rick in 2005-06 at ccf my dad was going through his old bible and found a church bulletin from 1987 (printed on a typewriter!) that announced that rick and beth were starting a campus ministry at tech and if the congregation knew anyone who would like to be involved to please let them know. the first time my dad read that i was 5 years old sitting next to him in the pew with nary a clue that that little paragraph heralded the birth of a place that would give me a husband, a family and a savior. needless to say we decoupaged the hell out of that program and gave it to rick in 2006. memento!

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at the braves game with gray and garrett the night before my water broke. it was raining and he didn't have a coat so he hid in my pit-vent

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a bunch of my teammates started going to ccf and getting involved and learning about jesus when i was a junior at tech in 2002. they became good friends with rick and his family. sometimes the harpers would go on little family weekend getaways that corresponded with our road matches and they would come watch us and then go out to eat at the same place we did for post game meal. i can specifically remember wanting no part of ccf or jesus at that point, but also being miffed when a bunch of my teammates/friends would go over to the harpers' table and hang out and joke with their adorable boys (who were 5, 9 and 12 at this point). especially since i knew that rick and i had the woodward academy/southwest christian church connection i felt like we should be friends even though i was outright rejecting his jesus and his life's work.

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after gray's baptism two summers ago...he loves that shirt's slogan
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so my BF marisa took me over to their table one time and i met them. i was quite surprised that rick wasn't a jerk to me and that beth didn't try to hide the sight of my heathen visage from her innocent children's eyes. over the next year or so rick would always invite me on retreats or to bible study but i always turned him down. so fast forward to the acc championship my senior year. we were #4 in the nation and should have won easily. we didn't. i missed 5 serves that match which is horrendous. i was inconsolable at post game meal and sobbing into my untouched chili cheese fries. everyone was wise to keep a safe perimeter from my snotting, sobbing, self-loathing vortex of despair. everyone except for the intrepid donovan harper, aged twelve.

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one of MANY rita's trips. donovan is a raptor devouring my eyebrow

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you should know that donovan is a strapping and handsome 17 year old now. in 2003 however he was...husky. to the max. so donovan is cluelessly sitting next to me not noticing the emotional landscape of the situation and he has finished his meal. he taps me on the shoulder and i am kind of shocked...who could have anything to say to me right now? through tear-soaked eyelashes i see him look up at me not a bit taken aback by my condition and ask, "are you going to eat those cheese fries?" i about died laughing. i don't think anything on the planet could have pulled me off suicide watch that night, but donovan's indomitable appetite and innocence did the trick.

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HOORAY! garrett's going to tech!

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from there i was tricked into babysitting for all 3 of the boys one weekend at the beginning of 2004 and came to fall in love with grayson, the youngest, with his speech impediment and penchant for extreme sleepwalking. i decided to live for jesus a few months later and that pretty much cemented me as a fixture at ccf and therefore in the lives of this family, who was always around.

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annual pic at the marina

in the summer of 2005 jesse and i had been dating a year and had just gotten back from our respective mission trips in spain and mexico. we were about to start our internship with rick at ccf that fall. i get a call at work that july from rick saying that the couple who had been supposed to go on vacation with them the following week had backed out (sorry and thanks, tiff and jorge!) and would we like to go instead and help/hang out with the boys. this was amazing. i begged my dad to let me off work, selling it as a "intern training" trip. since jesse and i were just dating i got to sleep with 7 year old grayson every night...boy was that fun. every year since 2005 jesse and i have gone on this vacation with the harpers and judah made his first of hopefully many of these trips last summer. we have called dibs on being their extra family member for all eternity.

raw bar binge
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the boys are now 12, 17 and 19 and they are all 3 our best friends. they are brothers to us and uncles to judah. beth and rick have opened their doors, wallets and hearts to us hundreds and thousands of times and we love them more than words. whenever we don't have anything to do, our default is to go over and hang out with them.

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garrett and donovan kissing at the restaurant that shall not be named

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the oldest, garrett, is now a sophomore at tech and has fully made the transition from our little brother to our equal and friend. he worked for jesse as a youth intern last summer and was with us during the great car debacle of summer 2009. he doesn't like cheese or onions on his mcdonald's hamburgers and salsa makes his nose run. he has a girlfriend who is so cool and amazing that i am a little intimidated. he was the last harper to hold judah (lat as in final; not as in most recent). he loves sweet tea and always lets me have his lemon. he once said "daddy likes" to me which almost made me throw up. garrett has the best tan and the smallest tongue of anyone i know. his nemesis is their dog stella who has actually pooped ON him before. garrett showers more than any other harper and always smells good. garrett's printer at tech has toothpaste on it.

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precious moments. learning to tie at tie while prom shopping.

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donovan is named after jimmy donovan who is rick's mentor and who married my parents and and also me and jesse. he is a shining gem of a kid with a newly discovered sense of sarcasm. he is an amazing soccer goalie and has excellent penmanship. he is the king of unintentional humor and has the purest heart of any 17 year old i know. he is the neatest harper and loves to wash his hands. he looks good with long hair and when he wears navy and red. donovan has the best defensive beach volleyball game of anyone i've ever played with and is becoming a more supportive bocce teammate. i once watched donovan lick chocolate frosting off of a hotel floor.

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trimming his eyebrows into a frisbee in my car. standard.

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grayson is the youngest harper and is my littlest best buddy. we are tight for life. he told me when he was ten that i was the girl of his dreams. i have pulled a tick out of his scalp at a pizza buffet and spent hours with him successfully designing a rube-goldberg course. he is the only harper who can't beat me at ping pong. he once spent the night at my apartment in college and there achieved his lifetime best of staying up late while watching smallville. grayson is the sweetest kid i know and is a popular 7th grader who is surprisingly not an asshole to the marginalized. he once was the only guest at a birthday party for a boy in his class who didn't have any friends. he is the harper who is most obsessed with judah, behind beth. he named jesse "lady hair" before he really knew him. he once said his requirements for a woman were hair and boobs. grayson is an awesome wedding dancer and we sometimes go on sushi dates.

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i LOVE him!
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beth is the hottest 40-something mom i know. she also is the nicest lady ever and is always willing to help anyone out. she is an amazing baker even if she doesn't realize it and has the coolest fashion sense of anyone born before 1970. she loves her boys more than anything and stella, their apeshit cocker-poo is the daughter she never had. she is tough enough to feed grayson's snake his weekly mice and sweet enough to buy presents for donovan's girlfriends when he forgets. she has sacrificed so that college kids can learn about jesus because of how much she loves him herself. she is an amazing mother and is SOOOOO good with judah. she is generous and graceful and loving and funny (even if her boys don't know it).

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beth doing what she does best: taking care of her boys (judah is hers by adoption) and rick doing what he does best: being a creeper.

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rick is rick. there will never be another. i will eat pepperoni pizza at his funeral and hunt him with a shotgun if he gets alzheimer's. he is eccentric and passionate to the point of speaking without verbs when he really gets going. he likes to think he is a scary hard-ass but he is the most approachable and accepting guy around. he adores his wife and cannot even believe how great his boys are. he is horrible at texting but is the best ping pong player in the seniors division. he cannot NOT look like a goob in pictures and is the youngest of 5 children. he secretly loves taking care of judah and trashy spy novels. he lives to do the work of jesus in his family, at tech and around the world. he baptized me and i love jesus because he worked his ass off to make ccf all that it is.

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jesse and rick eating baby goat in mexico. for real

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we adore this family. we truly consider them OUR family as well. they have given more to us than we could ever begin to repay. the day i met them at a macaroni grill somewhere within the ACC was one of the best days of my life. the love is big and i cannot even describe how much they mean to us.

fact: judah will grow up idolizing all 3 of these kids. i couldn't be happier if he turns out EXACTLY like them

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yet again...rick creepin' in the pic. and donovan with a backwards ticket at last year's peach bowl.