Weekend in Chattanooga

The last weekend in March we went to Chattanooga with Clay and Ashely. We went to Unclaimed Baggage which is way over rated, except of the man who bought an oil painting for $65 and a few months later discovered it was work between $15,o0o - $20,000. Then we got to Chattanooga and visited the MoonPie store - I do not like moon pies, but everyone else enjoyed it. Then we went to the Chattanooga zoo...it's a laugh. There are deer and raccoon and coytotes. i can see these in my backyard if I wanted too. Then we visited Bluff Park - it's an art district. Fabulous place. They have a statue of an artist's idea of the progidal son (seen below)

Afterwards, we met up with Angela!! She was my former boss at the seminary! It was so great to see her! A breath of fresh air! As for the shirt that Brent is wearing in the picture, he wore it in honor of her. If you can't read it, it says "fat people are harder to kidnap". A group of us who worked together got a group up to go to a baseball game and Brent wore this shirt. When we arrived someone said they liked his shirt. I proceed to tell everyone that Angela has the same shirt! Silent pause as everyone realizes what I just said. Then much laughter! It was hilarious! Brent and Angela do have the same shirt - only it says "sarcasam is just one of the free gifts I offer." That's the shirt I thought he had on. You really had to be there. It was great moment in history!

Oh! As for the hill with the people below - we drove past a park and at this hill there were tons of people with card board surfing down the hill - it looked like so much fun!

Progidal Son statue

Hooray for Angela! Love her!

What a great weekend!

April getting married!

April and Tobi are getting married on Saturday! She is beautiful! Brent will be performing the wedding, while I will be telling everyone else what do to. :) HA! or at least attempting to......

April and Tobi are a very fun couple and have managed to plan a great wedding in 3 months!

We have a pretty fun present to give them, but can't say anything till next week.

Yesterday our Aunt Barbara and myself did a family shower for them. I had great plans to make chocolate covered strawberries and some fruit skewers - but those plans completely and utterly failed! It was pretty sad. I ended up just throwing all the fruit in bowls and grabbed the chicken salad and left in a trail of tears. - it's been a rough week. I even had a breakdown at work on Friday, with a customer in the lobby of course (way to go, Marianne)! That has never happened before in my life! I have never had a breakdown at any job I have had in all my years of working. I was a little shocked myself. The word rough does not really do it justice though. It all started on Tuesday and ended yesterday! :)

This week has to be better. :) The shower ended up very well and the fruit looked very nice in the bowls -thank goodness for people who by you crystal for wedding presents! You never know when it will come in handy! :)

Adoption update

Well we have offically, yet sort of unoffically finished our homestudy!! FINALLY! oh my goodness - I know that God's timing is perfect and everything happens right when He wants it too, but sometimes I do not understand it. For instance why in the world did we send in our application in May 2009 and just now February 2010 finish it! That's ridiculous - of course we did not help the process by changing to domestic and then changing back to Peru and then changing placing agencies! And now that it has taken forever we will have to get our medicals over again and wait for the child abuse forms to come back from Alabama before our social worker can offically send off our homestudy to DHR!

Once our homestudy is sent off, we can begin working on our dossier!
In the meantime we have so much reading to do! It's like the paperwork - it never ends!
But that's okay, it helps us to be prepared. And some days I do not feel prepared for raising a child and then some days I wish we were on the way home from Peru!

I have just finished reading a blog of some friends from Texas who are in the beginning of adopting from Ethiopa. They were talking of all the paperwork they were doing and amazingly enough was encouraged! Who knew paperwork could be so encouraging! :) But along this road of adoption, there can be much frustration and waiting. And listening to other people stories gives me encouragement and reminds me that we are on the right path and this will all come to completion.

As a side note continue to pray for our friends adopting from Nepal. They are so close to end of their journey!

We recently visited the International Adoption Clinic for an all day seminar. It was amazing! I loved learning all about what we might face with adopting internationally. We heard all kinds of the information about traveling to the country, medical issues, developmental delays, emotional stuggles (for the child - and us), but also hearing about the love, and the joy and excitement of adopting children and raising them!

I have mostly been learning about hope the past few months and not only with the hope of adoption. Hope is a such a vital part of our life. Without hope, all seems lost. Hope bring life!

This week has been a much quieter week for my soul, more peaceful. Until this weekend. Just let me say if evil plans to come on our land, it will be met and defeated by the host of angels that are standing, armed with flaming swords and shields because they are surrounding our land and home. I know this because I have prayed that all weekend! And now we must pray for them to surround about a mile or two radius around us to encompass our friends who live around us! CRAZY weekend. :)

1 Thessalonians 3:16 - "Now may the Lord of peace Himself give you peach at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all."

I hope you are able to follow this. I think I have talked all over the place!

Well just let me tell you that Depot Days was downright depressing. The one bright spot in the day came at 5:30 in the morning (and no, it was not the sun!), a former church member gave us enough money to finish our the cost of our homestudy. This was after he graciously helped us put up our tent in the pouring rain too! Other than that the whole day was a wash, literally. It rained all day long. We finally packed up at 2:30. We actually weren't supposed to pack up till 5 and not bring the truck in to get our stuff till 7, but seriously, some rules were meant to be broken. We desperately missed our friends in Texas that day too. So needless to say, I was very glad when it was time to go to bed at 8:45! (we got up at 4:15am!).
There a semi-funny part in that I'm pretty sure that the angels that were supposed to attract people to our tent got confused and stood by the tent in front of us, because the lady in front of us never had a dull moment, there was crowd at her tent even before 8:00 offically came! I think for about 30 minutes, during lunch, there might have been a small lull! So funny.


But this is the excitment of the week! Our friends have received their referral from Nepal! I think their baby boy will possibly be coming home with them around Christmas! You can read the excitment for yourself on her blog: www.achairtospare.blogspot.com
There is also an amazing detail that can only be worked out by the Lord in her blog. So check it out!

Our last homestudy visit is coming up in about three weeks. And then I don't know what to expect.

Wedding # 12

Brent performed wedding number 12 on Saturday. Ben and Ashley. It was a great wedding ceremony. The reception was also very nice. Afterward the newlyweds, the wedding party, parents, and a few other family and friends went to the bride's parent's house and enjoyed a luau, complete with a wiffle ball game! Thanks for letting us be apart of your day, Ben and Ashely!

3 Summer Weddings

A few recent pics of Destin. I love this kid!

Here are a few snapshots from the weddings this summer and there will be one wedding coming up this weekend.

Kami and Brett

Rachel and Thomas

Above is Steffi - she worked with me and Rachel for a few months in Texas

before heading back home to Germany. Steffi flew in to surprise everyone!

Above is CharmingCharlie - a fabulous store in South Lake!

http://www.charmingcharlie.com/

The storms have been pretty violent this year. This is the beautiful oak tree that once stood in my mammow's yard. Now it's a bunch a sawdust and there is a HUGE vacant spot in the yard.

You may be wondering, what are Brent and Marianne doing?

Here is our summer:

VBS was last week
Wedding last Saturday
We go to Texas for a short 2 1/2 days for a wedding this weekend
Church picnic Sunday
Leave for youth camp Monday
Mission week the first week of July
Baby Charleigh Reese Colee will be born - this is Britt and Drew's baby girl.
Then MAYBE, MAYBE, MAYBE we will be able to start our home study!!! :)
We go to World Changers in July as well!
And Chris and Christy are coming 4 days after we return!!!! I am totally stoked about this!

So in short, I will see you in August! haha! Just kidding. I will try to blog a bit here and there.
Enjoy the summertime!

A Friend

My friend, Erika and her children came for a visit this weekend. We haven 't seen Jay and Erika in about a year! It was so great to see her and catch up. We met her and her husband in seminary. When we first met they were a "single" couple - no children, but now they have 2! She was up visiting family for a graduation, so she stopped to spend a few days with us! We were sad that Jay was unable to make this visit, but perhaps he will be able to come next time! Erika and I worked together for a bit, so that is how we met. Then me, Brent, Jay and Erika began attending a class Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University, where we met some other dear friends, Danna and Aaron. Another semester we began meeting once a week on Wednesdays for dinner and usually a rousing game of Carcassonne! Occasionally, we would watch a movie. If you have never played Carcassonne, you are missing out. It's a game of strategy and risks. Invented in Germany. It's great and we have spread the fun to our friends, Rachel and Thomas.
Below: here we are just beginning to play!


Thanks for coming Erika! Love ya'll!

DiscipleNow 2009

Well, we had our first DNow at church May 1-3. Not West Point's first DNow, but the first one that Brent has planned here at this church. It was so great. Algernon Tennyson was our speaker. He's really great and has a great passion for the Lord and the Word.

Here is his website: http://www.awakenintl.com/

We met him back in Texas through some dear friends, Kent and Jane.

A local church provided music for us and did a wonderful job!

We played Couch Wars on Saturday afternoon. Thanks to Chris W.

We loved our study leaders, April, Ben and Adam, Jodi and Matthew! They were fabualous!

Here are a few pics from the weekend:
Junior High Boys Couch Wars

Junior High Girls

Senior High - they burned their couch at the end.

Next up: Summer Camp!

Weeks of Fun

The past two weeks have been so busy. Here are a few snaphots:

One day was craft day. I've been doing a Bible study with one of our youth and it was the last day of the study so I planned a little project for us to do to end the study.

Then Brent decided he needed to push a dead tree down in our yard!

Ready! Set! Down!

Then my family took a day-trip to Auburn. When Mike and Britt arrive to pick us up, they both got out of the car and shut the doors, when Britt went to open Destin's door - the car had locked itself! Thankfully the car was still running with the AC on. Fortunately this car has OnStar. My parents left the day before, so Brent called my parents - to get a pin number while Mike called OnStar - in a matter of five minutes OnStar unlocked the car - from wherever they were! Sometimes you've got to love technology! Once that fiasco was over we were on our way!

It was a fun day. Since part of my childhood was spent in Auburn, it felt like going home for me.

We hiked to the rock to take a family pic, visited an old neighbor, and walked around the campus.

Destin waiting calmly for the door to open - thank goodness he likes to play peek-a-boo!

Everyone needs 2 passies! haha

(i don't have the picture with my mom and dad in it)

So that was week 1, the last week and half of April, this was a quick catch up!

Week 2 is last week which was DNow - this was a fabulous weekend! Pics to come - I'm about to have to head to church - maybe one day I will be caught up.

Speaking of catching up - Christy I think that I am not the only one in need of updating her blog!!!!! LOL haha.......