in pictures

Just a few pictures from our flight home...

I love flying through the sky.

about David and Jonathan

It's Sunday.

Aaron and I are back in town, but we are still taking a Sunday off of Journey. We don't miss a Sunday often, so it's nice every once in awhile to stay home and catch the livestream.

It's good for us, and it's good for our other leaders to get along without us sometimes. Right guys? Right?

Just kidding. They don't need us at all, and we know that God will give them a great morning. We are spending the morning decorating for Christmas!

Thanksgiving is next week, you know...tis the season. I will post pictures later.

Anyway, I am thinking of all of our friends at Journey this morning, especially my crew in MiNi CiTy.

This month in MiNi CiTy we are continuing to learn about David. Last month we learned all about how God helped David do BIG things (and how He'll help us do BIG things too!).

This month, our bottom line is God gives me good friends.

We are looking mainly at David and his best friend Jonathan.

You see, David was just a young man when he defeated Goliath and he started to become pretty popular in Israel.

The king at the time, King Saul, well he didn't like that very much. After all, shouldn't the king be the favorite?!

Jonathan was King Saul's son, and he and David became the best of friends despite what Jonathan's own father thought of David.

Jonathan stood up for David and even helped save his life when Saul wanted to kill him.

God gave David good friends, like Jonathan, and He gives me and you good friends too!

Good friends are always there for each other, comfort each other, are honest with each other, and help each other love God more.

I love teaching our preschoolers that God will give them good friends as they continue to seek after Him.

“Two people are better than one. They can help each other in everything they do.” Ecclesiastes 4:9, NIrV 

about Tennessee days 3 and 4

Our last two days in Tennessee have come to a close, and we are at the airport ready to head back to RDU and home.

Friday was not as exciting as the other three days. Aaron and I grabbed Starbucks for breakfast.

This is the only picture I have from Friday... :(

I spent Friday shopping and used all of my birthday gift cards. I was proud of myself for only spending $8 more than what was on the cards. 

Around 4:30pm Aaron came back to the hotel to get changed and pick me up to go to dinner with everyone at Jim's house.

I got to see my friend, Whitney, who is Jim's daughter. We became buddies the first time Aaron and I came to INFUSE for obvious reasons...I mean, we have the best name. She and her husband are great, and I wish we could see them more often. They share our love of Disney, so they are of course awesome.

That was our day 3.



Today, Saturday, we woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel before we checked out. We drove into downtown Nashville to spend the morning in the city. Our flight leaves around 4pm and gets into Raleigh at 6pm (time difference is worse coming home...). Here has been our day so far, starting with our first stop.

Delicious lattes at Fido

Sitting at the window watching for celebrities...Aaron thinks we saw one of the girls from Disney's  "Shake It Up"...I'm not so sure...

Me

Aaron

Before we left Fido, we ran into a guy Aaron graduated high school with, so that was random. He lives in Nashville now, and recommended a used bookstore right down the block. Aaron is a sucker for used bookstores.

Aaron in book heaven at Bookman Bookwoman

Walking downtown in the fall leaves

After the bookstore, we got back in the car and drove to The Gulch in Nashville. We were informed by friends that live in Nashville that Taylor Swift's condo is in The Gulch. I love her. So we went to check it out.

Pretty building on our way

We figure Taylor lives in the top of one of those buildings

Taylor Swift billboard on our way out of the Gulch

I was trying to get the billboard picture, but they thought I was trying to take theirs...so they posed for another picture.

Our last stop before the airport was the Opry Mills Mall. We heard a rumor of a newly opened Disney outlet...

It was a HUGE mall

Not too many good choices, but we got a few to trade, a nine inch park vinyl, and a Cars set to go with our new Pixar set next week.

So, now here I am sitting in the airport waiting for our flight home. It's been such a nice trip with Aaron. I love out of town adventures with him. It's nice to just stop every once in awhile and take a break from life.

 But, it will be good to get home too. :)

a Penny post

We have had a great time on our trip, but I am so excited to go back home.

There's no place like home, right?

We've missed our friends and family, but we have really missed Penny so much. She is having a great time with her Mimi and Grandy though. 

I can't wait to get home to our Penny girl today.

a Friday flashback

This flashback spans our marriage. Something that has been a consistent issue.

What is it?

Well, it all pans down to...

A fan.


I, for as long as I can remember, have needed a fan in my bedroom.

Said fan was ALWAYS to be on. And it was to be on high.

If I came in my room and the fan was off, it was immediately turned on.

I just can't stand to be in a bedroom without the sound of a fan.

So, I don't need it for the cooling off of the room as much as I just need the noise of it. But, since it does make the room cold on high, that just goes along with it.

Aaron knew this, but apparently he still thought it was something we could discuss and change. Silly boy.

We never installed a ceiling fan in our apartment, but we did have a stand-up fan.

When that broke, we used a desk fan for awhile.

The desk fan also moved to our house and was our fan until we finally bought a ceiling fan and had my dad install it.

That was last fall, so we've had it a year. And it has been on all year. I remember a minor "discussion" of the fan when it started to get cold last year. But it was quickly silenced.

Aaron must have forgotten that the fan must still be on in the winter this year. It started to get pretty cold at night a couple weeks ago...

Flashback to...a couple weeks ago...

We got in bed, and I'll admit it WAS cold in our room.

Aaron started whining and complaining about "that fan!"

"Can we pleeease turn it off?"

"Nope."

"Whitneeeey! I'm gonna freeze!"

"You'll warm up. It's fine." 

But, like I said, it was quite cold. I thought for a minute.

"Well, I guess we can try putting it on medium."

He jumped up all excited. He pulled the chain once. The wonderful hum noise was immediately silenced by at least half.

"No, no, no. This won't due. I need the noise!"

"Use the noisemaker on your phone!!"

"It's not the same!"

"But I'm freezing!"

"I need it back on high!"

Suddenly, I had a revelation.

"Oh! Lets reverse the blades!"

"Oh! Ok!"

Aaron got back up and turned the fan off by the switch on the wall so he could flip the switch on the fan to reverse the blades.

He waited for it to stop spinning, flipped the switch, and went back to the wall to turn it back on.

Just as he turned it on, he said, "Oh...do you think we should have dusted it first?"

As thousands of dust balls started to rain ALL over the room. 

"Oh. Oops. I thought I just dusted it a couple weeks ago..."

Needless to say, we spent the next ten minutes picking up dust, turning the fan off, dusting the blades, and finally settling back into bed.

I had my high fan noise. And the cold air was blowing up to the ceiling instead of directly on us.

I don't think Aaron was completely satisfied still, but oh well. He has his Vinylmation hobby...that's what I blame when I want something. :)

about Tennessee day two

We woke up early on Thursday so we could have time for a coffee stop before we met the group to carpool to breakfast.

I love him

So intriguing

Red cups

We met the other members of the group at Jim's church. A few people volunteered to drive and everyone else dispersed to those cars.

The drive to breakfast was about an hour, so the point is to ride with some people on the way and get to know them, sit with different people at breakfast and get to know them, then ride back with different people again and get to know them.

We offered to drive our rental car. I was glad, because if I don't sit in the front I get pretty carsick.

We arrived at our famous breakfast location.

I hadn't heard of it until INFUSE, but it's fun

It's some good, old-fashioned, country cooking.

We ordered the family style at our table. It came with pretty much anything you could want for breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, biscuits, gravy, grits, hashbrowns, fruit...).

I made Aaron try some fruit. He wasn't too pleased.

He refused the pineapple and gagged on the watermelon. Goodness. What to do with him.

My favorite part of breakfast was my milk.

Mason jar milk with a straw.

After breakfast we got to walk around the shops outside of the restaurant for awhile.

Fun tree boy

Beautiful day

We headed back to Murfreesboro. I love the scenery in Tennessee.

After we got back to the church around 1pm, Aaron went with his group for the rest of the day and I headed to the mall for a bit. I'm saving most of my shopping fun for Friday.

The rest of my day consisted of this:

Hence the blog posts, although I have been working on other projects as well.

It was a great day.