LIFE Retreat and a Baby Moon

Our December started out with an amazing two day conference at our church, followed by a trip to Chattanooga for a little get away before baby number three is born! Dave’s mom came up to watch our girls for the weekend. We were so appreciative of her willingness to come up and do that for us! Esp. since our refrigerator broke while she was here and she had to put our entire fridge in coolers! So thankful she was here to save the day!

For 13 weeks this past semester we headed out to bible study every Tuesday night. It was a guys/girls study where the guys met at one house and the girls met at another. It was called LIFE, which stands for Living in Freedom Everyday. It was a great study about getting closer to the Lord and truly living in His freedom, grace, mercy, and love every single day, not feeling bogged down or anxious by this world we live in. The LIFE retreat was a two day conference where we went through topics people might feel bogged down by and got prayed over numerous times. It was amazing to get that much prayer! Even when there were things I didn’t think I needed prayer for, I was just so uplifted by people praying for me. It was literally like closing out the world and being in the full presence of the Lord, with amazing worship, for two days straight! If that doesn’t strengthen your relationship with Jesus, I don’t know what will! It was just wonderful!

Back row: Kelly, Laurie Ann, Renee, me, Lindsay. Front Row: Elizabeth & Shelley.     I am so blessed by these sweet women! We had a lot more in our group, but forgot to take a picture before everyone left!

Here we are, hitting the road!

We left the retreat late Saturday afternoon to head to Chattanooga and stayed in this quant little B&B downtown. We actually had the whole Bed and Breakfast to ourselves, which was so nice!!!

When we arrived, there was some parade going on downtown and we got there just in time for the firework show! We couldn’t have timed it better! We basically did a lot of walking downtown (with quite a few contractions here and there, but obviously no baby yet!) …

Panoramic of the river downtown.

a lot of eating (there is some GREAT food in Chattanooga) …

went to a move (which hadn’t done in FOREVER!) …

did some shopping (Steve Madden flats for $12 at an antique shop! Score!) …

and had a lot of sweet quality time together. Have I mentioned lately that I just LOVE my husband?! Well, I do. I couldn’t have picked a better one. He is just precious to me!

This picture has quite the funny story! Dave was born just a few miles north of Chattanooga so we traveled up the interstate to check out the house he lived in for the first 2 years of his life. We got the address from his mom, Google mapped it, and headed that way. Google maps took us to a sweet older neighborhood and to a cul-de-sac where this picture was taken. The house numbers weren’t clearly labeled and it looked like this was his old house on Google maps. So, Dave got out of the car and we took this picture, so excited to have seen the house he was born in. .. A short while later we texted the picture to his dad, to which his response was, “That’s not our house.” This was the house next door and we were too far away by that point to go back and take a picture of his actual house! Oh, well. I guess the memories are enough! HA!

While we were visiting Chattanooga we also did some driving around the mountains looking at all the homes up there. Dave and I really enjoy taking note of beautiful homes and creating our dream house in our heads. While driving on one of the mountain ridges that overlooks the entire city, we came across this house…

The reason I share it with you on this ‘ole blog is because we saw this house being built on an HGTV show! We are big HGTV watchers. In fact, you might find us on a Friday night sitting on the couch watching old HGTV shows that have been recorded throughout the week! HA! Nerds, I know! :) But, anyway, it was pretty cool to drive by this house totally randomly and then realize that we saw it being built on TV!!! We were just a little star struck by it! And the view was incredible!

What a great start to the month!