Welcome Charleigh!

Charleigh Reese Colee was born today, July 16. She weighed 7.5lbs.

She was taken to NICU for about 4 hours with a little bit of fluid around her lungs, but she is doing great now. Brittany is also doing fabulous!

Charleigh is so sweet to hold. But I'm sure she will be a little fighter, esp. with her two older brothers who love to wrestle!

Ryder - above - he is really unsure about the new baby.

Gray - below - decided to hold her.

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!

The not-so-glamourous life of us, so far

So far this summer, our life has been less than glamourous. I will spare you the gory details, but for the past month and a half - actually I can tell the you exact date it started - May 30 - our life has been one thing after another. Really, I'm not kidding, you would laugh if I told you everything. At least once or twice each week something different has gone wrong. I know things go "wrong" in life, but now it's to the point where each week we wonder what will happen next! Nothing is a surprise anymore! HAHA!!

So this week, it was a biggie, Brent's car blew up. Yep. We bought it last fall and thought it would at least last for about 2 years. It was running hot and we kept putting water in it. Greg looked at it and then a week later, Brent is driving and the car quits accelerating and then the entire car locks up and Brent cannot turn the steering wheel. So he manages to manually turn the car into ....dum, dum, dummmmm....a funeral home parking lot, where it promptly died. HA! Appropriate, don't you think? We found out there was water leek that was sending water directly into the engine, so the engine cracked, some belt was completely worn out, and I think something else was wrong. So maybe the mechanic will give us a few hundred for it to use for parts. MAYBE.

On the flip side, youth camp was so great. We took 7 kids. 6 girls and 1 guy. We did camp with two other churches at Shocco Springs. It was great! The kids that went with us to camp are fabulous! We had such a great time getting to know them better. 4 are going into 9th grade and 3 are going into 8th grade. I will post some pics later on.

Also, on Tuesday we have a meeting with Renee at Lifeline. We have changed somethings about the adoption. So more to come on that.

Well I just wanted to give you the update our not-so-glamourous life, so far. Perhaps, August will bring better tidings.
Later.

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!

Fund-Raising

Last week, I told you it would take 5 business days before the social worker from the adoption agency would contact us. Well I was wrong. She called the next day! :)
She said we looked great on paper and to come up with an action-plan for our fund-raising. She still has to talk with the international director at the agency before we are offically approved or rejected (we don't have much savings and this is not a good thing considering the cost - even all couples have to raise and/or save funds for adoption, it's good if you have a little bit at the beginnging and we don't!) So we took the weekend and came up with a plan that we think is great.
It's amazing the number of people we know who have adopted or are adopting! We truly believe that the Lord really wants us to adopt, so I believe it will happen - even if this agency tells us to call back when we have more money in savings. But we really like this agency, so we hope to be approved. I called her Monday to tell her our plan and she said it sounded great and she still needed to talk with the director and that she would call me back.

The agency we have applied to is Lifeline Children's Services - they are a Christian-based agency.
Our country of choice: Peru
Our gender of choice: girl, but a boy will be just as sweet, in case we cannot adopt a girl! :)

So Brent and I will begin the lovely task of fund-raising, but I don't really see it as fund-raising.
There are many people who have impacted our life before marriage and after marriage and we hope that they will be apart of this time in our lives. We want to share it with them. We've been praying already for God to provide the funds - I know He will, He always does, and has done so many times in my life before, but His timing could be different than mine! I would have had all the funds last week, or I'd even settle for enough to pay what we need to, to begin and end the homestudy! But I will be happy and content in this time of praying and waiting. I love this song: click here or scroll to end of the blogsite to watch it.

Thanks for reading!

WE DID IT!!

We actually sent in our adoption application today!!! We are supposed to hear from the agency with in 5 business days after they receive our packet.

We have a few other friends who have adopted or are in the process of adoption. You can check out their blogs:
Kristin and Gregory
Tanya and Jay
These blogs are also under our friends list.
Tanya and Jay's blog is called "A Chair to Spare".

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.......