Everything's a buzz.....

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been a little while but everythings just a buzz around here right now! We're getting ready for our Christmas production this weekend. It may be a small scale right now but there is plenty to do. We're excited about it and looking forward to it.

Then of course, many of you may know, we're getting ready for our family to come in today actually. So, we've had many things going just getting ready. We're excited about the next couple of weeks, not only with family but for the church.

Hope you all are having a wonderful season! Enjoy the hustle and bustle and make a memory! We'll be back with a post soon!

Love you all and miss you.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

The lights are up, the tree is decorated and bears are everywhere! You may or may not know, but we are getting ready for a wonderful family Christmas! Our family from Fresno will be arriving in just a week and we can't wait! Gingerbread houses to decorate and Christmas lights to see, and the ICE Grinch at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, and Christmas cookies to bake.....all waiting for the family to arrive and start enjoying our Christmas together!

Decorating was fun but a little bit of a challenge. Considering we are working with less than half the space of last year, trying to figure out what to use and where to put it all was quite interesting and fun!
I love my huge NOEL letters!

Christmas Moose (is it moose's or meese or mooses???) are some of my favorite things!

Love my big sleigh full of Christmas bears! Some very special friends gave me my big sleigh for Christmas last year and it's quickly become one of my favorite things!

This is one of my favorite areas! I love the whole woodsy theme. Someday I'm going to have a cabin in the mountains! I know, something few people know about me but I love that!

Max wasn't really the least bit interested in any of it. All he knew was he kept having to move from place to place in the middle of his naps!

So, I wasn't planning on using our big white tree this year just because we were so limited on space, but Ashley insisted! This tree is one of her favorites that we do. So, she put it up in our entry way area, might I add, our small entry way area! Oh well, it's Christmas right! So what if the house is way more cluttered than I would normally have it. Except for the fact, we will be having more people in it than we've had before! That's the holidays!

Then we have our regular tree. This is the tree that has all of our sentimental ornaments. The ones we've all collected since we were kids. We normally use our big tree for this but we didn't have the room so we had to use the smaller tree but it worked ok. We like to raise it up off the floor so we have plenty of room for the kids train and bears, climbing Santa and presents of course!

This is my favorite globe that a dear friend gave me last year before we moved. When you turn it on, it glows inside the house and the little people move around and it plays music. It is very dear to me because of the person who gave it to me. Brought tears to my eyes when I opened it because it made me miss her so much! Love you and miss you my friend!

Just a couple of our many Christmas bears! I have to say I do love them though.

Then of course, above the fireplace! I just love the glow of the lights.

So, there you go! Can you tell we are ready for a wonderful Christmas! We are so blessed to have our family all together again especially at this time of year!

Hope you're all getting ready for a wonderful Christmas! Take the time to enjoy it with your kids and families! It only comes once a year!

Love you all!

Sunday Update!

Hello everyone! Just wanted to pop in again and share a quick update with you. We had a great service today. God is always so faithful. We are so excited about what He's doing here in Nashville. We know God has something great in store. We know that Nashville is going to be known for more than just country music! It's going to be known for a move of God. This place is ripe for it and there are many other ministries and pastors that are believing for the same thing. We know the God is going to pour out His Spirit on ALL flesh!

We have been blessed to have developed relationships with several of the other pastors here in the Bellevue area. These guys are tight in relationship! We've become friends, encouraging and supporting one another. Even though we may have different views on some things, there is one thing everyone agrees on! And that is that in order to see a move of God, we must be united. Not fighting one another over people or places, but joining together in the fight!

We were honored a couple of weeks ago by being invited to a luncheon one of the other churches was having. This pastor has developed such a love and connection with Rick, it's been amazing. They invited us to this luncheon they were having for their entire volunteer staff. At this luncheon, this pastor called us up in front of his congregation, to welcome us to the area, to honor us and to pray over us. He presented us both with a gift. That was amazing! That just doesn't happen a lot with pastors in the same town. We are blessed by the relationships God is developing here and we are excited that we are all working together for a common goal...and that is to see God turn this city upside down!

Continue to keep us in your prayers. There is never victory without a fight! We love and miss you all!

All I Needed Was A Little Push.....

As you saw from our last post, Zach and Cortnee are visiting this week. Well, in the course of talking about Cortnee's lip piercing, I made the comment that I had always wanted to get my nose pierced. That was all it took for Cortnee. It became her mission to find a piercing salon and push me to get it done! Then Cindy gave the challenge that if I did it, she would too. Well, I really wanted it done, but honestly wasn't sure if I wanted to take the plunge. I used the excuse of my hair. No, I couldn't get it done until I got my new haircut....that bought me a little more time. Well, then haircut day came! Cortnee and Cindy had found a great place downtown! Now was the time to do it if I was going to. So.........

I DID IT!

I couldn't believe I actually followed through with it. It took a lot of coaxing and pushing from Cortnee, Ashley and Angela but finally Cindy and I decided to just go for it!

Ashley is trying to convince Cindy that it won't be that bad and she'll look soooo cute with it!

We all ended up getting something done but this is all you see! I don't want to let the cat completely out of the bag for the others. I'm sure they'll post on their own blogs!

It was such a cool tattoo and piercing salon. Right in the heart of downtown Nashville. And the whole place is owned and operated by believers! All the artist and people working are Christians and they work to Christian rock playing in the background. They were the nicest and coolest people. We had 13 people in there when we were all getting done and they were so much fun and great about it.

Get this! They even have New Testaments on a bookshelf to give away to people who come in! How cool is that?

And downtown Nashville is absolutely beautiful right now. Christmas lights and decorations everywhere! We just love it down there.

Ok, my face looks pretty bad in this picture. My eye was all red and watery and the guy had wiped off some of my makeup. But other than that, I liked the picture so I wanted to share it anyway.

Cortnee....

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Sunday Update!

We had some special visitors with us on Sunday! Zach and Cortnee came to Nashville for vacation! They said they came to see Mike and Cindy but I think they really came to see us! (Just kidding.....) We've enjoyed visiting with them and seeing them.

So, if you look at the above picture, knowing Zach and Cortnee are so tall, you're probably wondering how it is that we show as tall as they are......This is how! We had to stand on the steps just to meet up with them!

Short people....do what you gotta do!

We had a great service on Sunday. People engaging in worship and just so

receptive to the Word. We decorated for Christmas! Yeah! We'd love to have done more but with setting up and tearing down every weekend, we're just a little bit limited. A huge tree would have been great but don't think we'd have time to decorate it and un-decorate it every weekend! We'll have to wait until we get our own building for that. But for now, this was great. Ashley did a great job on planning the set and getting it all put together!

Thanks for stopping by. We love and miss you all!