A Few Pictures From TN and GA

Here are a few snapshots from our time in TN and GA.

Lillie, Elliott, and Jack got to ride on Gramp's lawn mower. I didn't catch a picture of Jack, but here are Lillie and Elliott.

Elliott playing with Freddy T.'s old truck "Smokey". It's a little blurry.

This was the first time I've ever taken all 3 kids into Walmart. I think it was Lillie and Elliott's first Walmart trip ever!

The reason for the trip was to buy a baby pool for my mom's patio. Here's how we got it home.

They LOVED playing in that little pool.

This is very random, but at my mom's Lillie got into my old curio cabinet and took out my first pair of ballet shoes and wore them around the house. She loved wearing them.

We took a trip with my Dad down to Georgia to visit my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins. I hate that I didn't get a picture of my dad or my grandparents with the kids. I don't know what I was thinking. We were only there for about 2 days. Our full day there was spent around the pool at my aunt and uncles house. The kids had so much fun. Lillie and Elliott warmed up to the water pretty good. It was perfect preparation for the beach. Jack is a little more timid when it comes to pools. He takes his own sweet time getting comfortable. We had a major breakthrough that day though. Jack for the first time moved away from the pool steps. He was quite proud of himself, and so were we!

We left from GA on a Saturday morning, I rented a car for me and the kids to drive down to the beach in Florida for vacations with Freddy T.'s family. It was a 6 hour drive and I managed by myself. The kids were champions. We only stopped once and it was for a quick pee pee break and to walk around for a few minutes, other than that we kept moving along. I can't believe how smooth the drive went. This was us leaving my aunt and uncles house headed to Florida.

More pictures to come from our time in Florida.

A Taste of More To Come

The past few months have felt so busy. My blogging has really taken a back seat to all we've had going on. Freddy T. has shared with you a little about our moving process, but we actually began packing 2 or 3 months ago and are now just a few things short of having everything pretty much in place. It will feel so good to be settled in. The kids room still needs some decorating attention, but it's going to have to wait. Once that is done is when everything, to me, will feel finished, but that will take some time. I'll try to post some pictures of the apartment next week. So far we LOVE being in a new location and new apartment. Our apartment feels like such a good fit for our family. Even though we've down sized to a 1 bedroom, everything fits in this apartment better than any other we've had. Our neighborhood could not get any better. One day soon I'll take pictures outside so you can see how wonderful it is here.

In the past month we did some traveling. We spent a few weeks in TN with our family. My sister graduated from high school and it was great to be there for that and celebrate with our family, the kids had fun playing with their cousins, I got to take a special, quick trip down to Florida to celebrate my best friend getting engaged, we traveled with my dad down to GA to visit my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins, and finally finished up our travels with a family beach trip to Destin, FL with Freddy T's family. I'll post pictures and more detailed posts later, there is just so much to catch up on.

Since we've been home I've been trying to get back in a routine, but with 3 weeks of travel and moving right before that, it's taking me a little longer than normal to find my rhythm again. That being said, we've spent quite a bit of time out in the new neighborhood enjoying some of the new playgrounds and activities offered down here. Again I'll blog about this in more detail soon.

So... that was kind of a jumbled mess. I'm ready to get back in my blogging routine and look forward to catching everyone up. The next few posts will be mixed with some recent things going on and some out of date, but I still want to have things documented, so bear with me.

I'm trying to get some pictures off my phone and I need to get a few more from some other people. Thanks for hanging in there with us, looking forward to being back on our normal track.

Here's the only picture I have at my fingertips for this post.

Congratulations again Sarah!

(me, my sister Sarah and my brother James)

A Wild and Wonderful Week Part 2

Last Friday morning Susan and I loaded into my dad's explorer and began to drive to Louisville. This was a drive that we had made at least 75 times in 2005-2006 while we were living in Louisville and I was preaching in TN on the weekends. It was almost surreal stopping at our normal Starbucks. The power of good memories are difficult to put into words. Even more so, when those memories are laced with the faithfulness of God, worship is the only response. Starbucks in hand, we began to drive down the long two-lane that would eventually lead us to I65 in Bowling Green and then on to Louisville. Reflection overload kicked in and in a matter of minutes we were so overwhelmed with God's faithfulness to us over the years that we erupted in prayer and praise to God. The reflection continued through our whole weekend. Once we arrived in Louisville, we drove past our old apt/house, went to my favorite coffee shop, and spent some quality time with some of our best friends, Kyle and Ashley Barrett.

We were in town for the wedding of a dear couple that go to the Gallery Church. Counting our old worship pastor who now lives in Portland, OR, there were 22 people from the Gallery Church that made the trek to the wedding. Once again, Susan and I had an opportunity to reflect upon God's faithfulness over the last couple of years and how He has beautifully woven together this community of faith.

Another unexpected thing I experienced on this trip was a bit of what felt like closure to our first chapter of our lives in NYC and the dawning of a new. A little over 2.5 years ago, Susan and I stepped out with the biggest faith either of us had ever known in our move to NYC. Every step of our move was in partnership with two families, The Coes & The Rameys. Aaron Coe was the founding pastor of the Gallery Church and the man God used to mobilze us out of comfort onto the front lines in NYC. Aaron was Susan's college minister @ MTSU. He and Carmen have a son that is six months older than Jack and has been Jack's best buddy since we moved to NYC. Paul Ramey has been a good friend for many years and moved when we did with his family from Portland to be our worship pastor. If you've kept up with this blog over the years, you know that Paul's family had a very difficult time in the city and they made a brave decision to move back to Portland. Paul is now serving in a great church in Portland. Aaron has just recently accepted a position as the Vice President of Mobilization at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) in Alpharetta, which is a huge win and stride forward in the fulfillment of our church planting vision for NYC (more on this in an upcoming post), though it is a personal loss for Susan and me as the Coe's were our partners in ministry and best friends in the city. At the wedding, Aaron, Paul and I got to spend some quality time together. This time was very, very sweet. Getting to hear each of these guys talk about life and where they are at came with a real sense of rightness for each of them. And though Paul has been gone from NYC for some time now, getting to be with him and Aaron together, really gave me a sense of closure to our first chapter in NYC. Sad, yet so many reasons to rejoice. God is good. He is so, so good. A new day is dawning, and I'm excited to see what's on the horizon. Always grateful for your prayers.

(Aaron's move to NAMB is incredibly significant and I'll share more in an upcoming post about that, stay tuned.)

A Wild and Wonderful Week Part 1

The Saturday before last I played tackle football on The Gallery Church's Men's Retreat. The next day on my way home from church I had a scooter wreck because some crazy bicyclist cut in front of me at the last minute to the tune of a crushed blinker, bruised or cracked ribs, nasty bruised elbow, and shock shakes about two hours later. The shock shakes were a first for me. The morning after the scooter wreck, I packed a Uhaul (with the help of some awesome peeps) for our move from Harlem down to E 20th Street. The old man with Jack on his shoulders is "Danny Boy". I'm actually going to try to do an individual post on Danny Boy sometime soon, but to whet your appetite here is a video of him from Amateur Night at the Apollo. Details on why the move and about our new neighborhood in a later post. It wasn't really until Tuesday that I began to feel the effects of the scooter wreck = painful.

Tuesday we kicked it in high gear getting the new apartment set up. We had friends that helped us with the kids...and Susan put her cape on and did an amazing job getting things in their place. We LOVE our new neighborhood for many reasons, but the main reason we made the move was to be close to the church. Mission accomplished.

Thursday morning we woke early to catch an 8am flight to Nashville. I do not know what we were thinking scheduling such an early flight. About the time we were walking out the door I noticed a voice mail on my phone. Our Delta flight was delayed to 9:45. This really was going to be CRAZY keeping the kids chill in the airport for an extra almost 2 hours. I got on the phone with Orbitz and they couldn't help at all, so I called Delta who triumphed with amazing PR and secured flights for us that left at 8:30am and arrived 10 minutes earlier than we were to originally land. Way to go Delta!

We had a sweet time connecting with family and then left the kids and headed to Louisville on Friday morning...

My bottom lip will get me a hug and a kiss.

Susan captured this hilarious video of Lillie and Elliott today. Be sure to watch the whole thing. There are so many times Lillie reminds me of Diana my oldest sister. L and E are more fun every day! We love them so much!



We're moving to a new neighborhood May 16th, and the twins will move to big boy and big girl beds. So they need to get their jumping in the crib out of their system. Prayers appreciated for the transition. ;-)

Happy Easter

Happy Easter

Lillie and Elliott enjoying a few snacks after church.

A Little Catching Up

We are alive and well, even though it's been a while since the last blog post from me. I've hit a bit of writers block and since I've been doing school work with Jack that has taken some of my extra time that I typically found for blogging.

A little school update. We are in our 8th week of homeschooling and Jack loves it! He asks on a daily basis if he gets to do school work. A week or so ago we sat down and looked back through all the work he has done so far. He was so proud and could not stop smiling. It was sweet.

I'll just post a bunch of pictures with a little commentary to cover the past few weeks.

This was a month ago or so in central park. Not a great picture, but a fun one up on a huge rock. I never got them all looking and the sun was making a pretty bad glare, but in every picture from this day Jack is making the same face... fingers pulling his mouth out and his tongue sticking out.

This is how Lillie looks a lot of the time. A hat, a necklace, and a pair of shoes. And in this picture Elliott's paci.

One morning a few weeks ago we collected all of our broken crayons and melted them in the oven to create new crayons. I didn't take an after picture, but you get the idea.

This past Monday was beautiful. A little cool in the shade, but it felt nice and springy in the sun. Since schools are on spring break this week we were able to go to one of our favorite play grounds (it's used during the week for the schools recess). Across the street is a neighborhood garden. We love coming to this garden in the spring and summer. It's like a nice, private, unique space in the middle of a bunch of buildings and busy streets. Right now they are having a tulip festival.

Jack choose to have his picture taken on the bench, no where near any of the pretty flowers.

I tried to get a group shot, but Jack turned his back and the other two followed.

This old wagon/ wheel barrow was in the back corner of the garden and the kids had a lot of fun climbing around on it.

Another attempt at a group shot.

Lillie and Elliott ran up the hill with Jack. This is what they did when they got to our door.

You'll find Lillie in my black high heels a lot.

Elliott finishing up from eating his prized waffles. He loves them!

Today we needed to return some over due library books. I've been putting it off, just could not find the motivation to walk down the the library and "do" the library thing, but today was it.

This is how you'll find Jack a lot of times riding behind the stroller, when he is not walking, with a stick in his hand.

Of course we got the the library at 10:40 and it did not open till 11. They do not have a drop box ( I thought every library had a drop box) so we had to wait for 20 minutes to get in. And yes we did wait, I had no plans on coming back anytime soon.

I planned on just dropping off the over due books and paying my late fee (which only turned out to be 90 cents), but Jack wanted to go look at more books. So we headed up to the children's floor. After being there 5 minutes and looking through books the librarian came out with an Easter craft for all the kids.

They had a good time decorating their eggs and putting a piece of candy in it. You can tell Lillie is trying to get into her candy in this picture instead of decorating the egg.

And she put the stickers on her face, not on the egg.

And I caught Elliott hiding behind the stroller sneaking his chocolate.

We've been out of town quite a bit the past few weeks. We were in Texas the first weekend in April for Passion Ft. Worth. We had a great weekend. Friends from church stayed with our kids. It is a huge blessing to have people we trust our kids with when we need to be out of town for a few days. The same friends came and kept the kids last week while we were in Chicago for a conference. It was a nice time of rest. Not like the relaxing, sit by a pool rest, we were busy both times, but the kind of rest where you're not in charge of anyone else. It was needed.

Before we went to Chicago we made a little detour to TN. Freddy T.'s grandmother passed away and he had the privilege of preaching her funeral. He did a great job and I think she would be pleased with how it all turned out. And of course she would be proud of Freddy T.

In other news, we have a busy next month and a half. We have a lot going on at church this week for Holy Week and are looking forward to the Easter Services. The following weekend Jack and Freddy T. will be in TN for a missions conference and I'll be away at our churches Women's retreat. We're looking forward to spending some good quality time with family toward the end of May and early June. If all goes as planned, we will actually be moving out of our apartment at the end of May. I'll post more about that later, but we are excited to venture into a new neighborhood and area that we are not real, real familiar with, but it is closer to church and we think it will be a great location for our family. We have to be out by the end of May, so Freddy T. will be moving all our stuff while I'm in TN with the kids.

I'm going to get back in blogging mode. I'm so grateful and encouraged by people when they tell me they keep up with us on here. I want to be faithful to keeping it up.

If you made it this far thanks for reading! Hope you are enjoying warm weather where ever you are... and please send it all this way!