Clemson stop on the way to Folly!

On Saturday, June 5, we headed to South Carolina. We decided to take a detour and spend a couple days in Clemson. We stayed at the Ramada Inn, and were able to visit with friends and former teenagers of ours. It was a lot of fun to see our old youth. (Most of them are finished with high school now, or at least close to being done.) Josiah and Aedan did well while in Clemson. However, Josiah developed a distain for picture taking, which lasted our entire week of vacation at the beach. Needless to say, he won't be smiling in most of these pictures.

Josiah didn't know I was taking this picture...otherwise he would have ran away!

Here we are hanging out at the Ramada! It was a lot of fun seeing everyone.

Ryan and Micah

Ryan and I with Matt and Whitney (soon to be married!)

"Go beach now!"

This weekend we head to Folly Beach for the O'Brien Family Reunion. The O'Brien reunions are every other summer, so most of my family has not seen Aedan. I'm sure Josiah will love the beach and have lots of fun. We've been preparing him all week for the beach. We've been asking him what he'll see at the beach. Some of the things he says are sand, waves, shark, fish, dolphin, whale, and crab. The other day he ran to the front door yelling, "Go beach now!" I still have lots of laundry to do and packing!!! Pictures to come...

Momentum Conference- June 22-28, 2008

This past week we headed to Dandridge,Tennessee for Momentum! It was a great week. Momentum is a conference put on by us and friends of ours also in youth ministry, Daniel and Rachael Lowhorn, and Ryan and Christie Russell. Daniel and Rachael (friends we met while in Clemson) live here in Cookeville and work at another church. Ryan and Christie (friends we met in seminary) live in Clarksville, Virginia. The theme of the week was "Remedy". We studied 1 Corinthians throughout the week, through teaching time, quiet times, small groups, and praise and worship times. Below are some pictures of our week.

Here is a picture of the band, who lead the praise and worship. Daniel (a member of the super group) is in the blue shirt. Wow...he's playing an electric guitar!

Here's a picture of Ryan teaching. Ryan did all of the main speaking throughout the week. Check out the awesome backdrop that Rachael made!





Above are some pictures of a few of the small groups. Of course, we had guy groups, too, but I didn't want to bother them by taking pictures. Ryan Russell (the guy from VA) writes all of the small group literature.

On Thursday night of the conference we had Andy Gullahorn, from Nashville come and play a concert for us. It was awesome, and a fun night. Above are the three (awesome) men in charge: Ryan, Daniel, and (my) Ryan:)

Since Aedan isn't weened yet, he came with us. Here he is hanging out on the loft. We spent a lot of time up here!!

My mom came to Cookeville to watch Josiah for us. Here's some sweet pictures of them together reading. Thanks, Mom!

My Koala!

I am loving Aedan's stage right now. He is like a little koala bear. Aedan is about 9 1/2 months and is crawling everywhere. He puts EVERYTHING into his mouth, so I am constantly picking up tiny pieces of nothing off of the floor. He just cut one of his front teeth, and the other is just under the gum. He is finally taking a cup some...yay!! He is sleeping well...through the night often, which is very nice! He loves Josiah and follows him around. Josiah tries to get Aedan to race him down the hallway! They don't actually race yet, though...maybe soon!

Josiah trying to race Aedan

VeggieTales!!

This past weekend, Ryan and I took Josiah and Aedan to see Bob and Larry at Lifeway, a Christian bookstore. Josiah loves VeggieTales, so he was happy to be there. Aedan was clueless, of course, but I'm sure he'll like them once he gets a little older. As you can see, Larry was HUGE!!