The Great Smoky Mountains

It has been a while since the last post, but it seems that the month of October has flown by too quickly.....more fall pictures coming soon! In mid-September, we went with my mom to the Smoky Mountains and had such a great time. We stayed at a resort with a new indoor water park on the property. The kids love riding the little trolley back and forth. We picked the perfect day for the water park, as it rained outside the whole day. It was a blast and just perfect for the kids. We spent two mornings at Dollywood where the boys and Graycen had tons of fun riding all of the rides. We spent a day at the aquarium and Ryan's parents were able to meet up with us to enjoy the marine life!! Here are some pics from the trip......

Not the best picture, but the best of all three from the whole trip (can anyone feel my pain.............)

Spencer and a sting-ray

Everyone at the aquarium

Spencer

Gran - Gran, Spencer and Connor

Train ride at Dollywood

Graycen "driving" on one of the rides at Dollywood

Connor taking Gran-Gran for a spin....

........and Mommy

Spencer loved the bumblebee

Connor

She's such a big girl, now!

Soccer, Soccer, Soccer!

In case you're wondering, these are their game faces.....

I was once voted "Most Likely to Be a Soccer Mom" by some of my counseling colleagues back when I was working and the prediction has now been fulfilled. Connor and Spencer have officially become little boys and are playing on a soccer team with our local YMCA and loving almost every minute of it. When we first signed them up, I took them to buy their shoes and shin guards. It was in the afternoon when we made our purchases - they put the shin guards on immediately, wore them until bedtime, then put them on first thing the next morning and wore them until after their first practice when they had to take an afternoon nap. Can you say, REALLY EXCITED! Ryan and a good friend of ours are coaching the team and the boys are doing really well. There was a bit of an adjustment from practices where everyone has their own ball to games where everyone is trying to get one ball. Let's just say there were tears and lots of hurt feelings. However, things are looking up and they had an absolute blast at their last game.

The sun was a little too bright for Connor's liking.......

Spencer

The first game.....Goooo Red Team!!!!

Note to Self: Apply Bug Spray Before Hiking

In early September, Ryan and I took the kids and Cooper hiking near our house. We had so much fun and the boys loved investigating all the things the woods had to offer. Graycen was too interested in the hike to take her nap, but she had a great time even though she had to be tired. While we did not stray from the trail, Connor and Spencer managed to get themselves covered in those little tiny seed ticks.......well, Spencer only had a few, but I probably picked at least 30 off of Connor with tweezers. He was such a brave little trooper through the process. And Cooper, well we didn't even bother to check him - Ryan gave him a wonderful chemical spa treatment in the dark that night to take care of any little pests he may have brought home. Needless to say, we learned our lesson and will be applying lot's of bug spray the next time we venture into the great outdoors!

'Tis the Season to Play Football

Ryan got the boys football jerseys to wear while cheering on the Titans this year.....let's hope they give us more to cheer about for the remainder of the season. Anyway, the Titans have practices that are open to the public at certain times, so one afternoon the boys dressed up in their gear and we took them to watch a practice.......I'm not sure who had more fun, Connor and Spencer, or Ryan!

We had to get one Finnegan jersey to support our fellow Samford alum....

In case you're wondering how much Graycen has grown since the last post, here's one picture of her. Most of the time this is how I find Graycen when I go into her room to get her out of bed in the morning or after naps........just sitting on the edge of her bed dangling her feet.

The month of August flew by in a flash for us. Graycen did not start walking while Ryan and I were gone the first couple weeks of August. However, she is moving now. She is so cute walking around and chasing after her brothers. Later in the month of August, we took the boys and Graycen to the Williamson County Fair. The boys had a great time at the this year and were interested in the rides for the first time. They loved playing farmers in the Little Farmer Area.

Check out the face of this cool rider.....

Connor thought this was Ramone from the CARS movie....

Ikot Ekpene, Nigeria

Hi dear friends and family! I wanted to share some photos with you, thank you again for all of your prayers and encouragement and give you a brief summary of my trip to Nigeria. There were six team members from our church here in Nashville and eight team members from Watermark Church in Dallas, TX. We had an amazing time in Nigeria and completely fell in love with the people of Ikot Ekpene. They are such a gracious people and were so welcoming of us and full of joy. In light of their circumstances, it is so evident that for many of them, "the joy of the Lord is their strength" (Nehemiah 8:10). Many of you have heard that we missed our direct flight from Atlanta to Lagos by 20 minutes, forcing us to sleep in the terminal and reroute our trip through JFK in New York and London. We traveled for about 44 hours before landing in Lagos. We spent the night in a hotel in Lagos, Nigeria, before catching another flight to the port city of Calabar. We were met in Calabar by the Minister for Religious Affairs and a few other men and given a police escort all the way to Ikot Ekpene (about a 2-hour drive). We met the mayor of Ikot and several cabinet members the next day and were provided with a group of armed guards to travel with us throughout the week (it's amazing how soon we became unphased by the machine guns and AK47s the guards carried with them :)) They were very nice soldiers and we felt well-protected even though we saw nothing that would have made us fearful. We started VBS on Tuesday morning and you can imagine our amazement when 1,164 children showed up on the very first day - talk about logistical chaos. It was definitely a crazy morning as we tried to get that many kids to a classroom with a teacher, but God is good and we were able to talk to all of those kids about what it means to be lost in sin. We talked all week about walking in the LIGHT, with each letter representing a specific concept each day. L-Lost in Sin, I-Investigating the Truth, G-Grace Undeserved, H-Honoring God and T-Telling others about Christ. We had more and more children each day, with almost 1500 by the last day - all hearing the gospel in their class on Thursday. I was amazed at how well they have memorized Scripture, how much they know in their heads about the Bible. Our hope and prayer for them is that we were able to help them truly understand Christ's love for them and believe that only he can save them from their sin. We spent some time at a medical outreach center and at a government orphanage. It was a heartbreaking experience to see these children abandoned by society and living in poverty. There were no toys or book or grass to play in - they have been on my mind and in my prayers so much since I met them. I have to trust in God's sovereignty as I work through my feelings about those sweet children. We were able to attend a church service at Fellowship Bible Church, Nigeria and attend a graduation ceremony for the first graduating class from Africa Theological Seminary - it was so cool to be at the place we have been supporting through our church here in Nashville! One cool story that speaks to how God is using Aniefiok (the pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Nigeria, President of Africa Theological Seminary and our host for the trip and dear friend) and his family in Nigeria: We met a Nigerian man on the flight from Lagos to Atlanta on his way home to Baltimore. When we told him we had been in Ikot Ekpene, he replied, "Oh, there is a very, very good seminary in that town." It was sad to leave our new friends, but I was soooooooo excited to get back home to my babies and my wonderful husband and family.

Esther, Promise and Blessing

3 Sweet Children Living at the Orphanage

Older Girls at the Orphanage

Sweet little boy named Blessing

Pastor Aniefiok and his family:

Judy, James, Stephen and Samuel

The girls on the team (and Judy) in our traditional African dress that a wonderful seamstress made for all of us to wear on Sunday

Sweet Kids at Vacation Bible School

A street in Ikot Ekpene

The orphanage is the greenish buiding in the back

A shot of the school where we held our VBS every day

Site of Fellowship Bible Church, Nigeria and

the Africa Theological Seminary

A sweet, adorable little girl I met at VBS

One of my classes making their silly face for the camera

Another class, more silly faces.....

The kids gathering for big group worship at VBS

Some of the boys in one of my classes - they LOVE taking pictures