Things

Not a lot of output coming from me today. We haven't even been home a week, but these last few days have been intense, difficult, and emotionally draining (concerning the ministry to others department of our lives). And considering we were pretty tired coming home that means there's a whole lotta tired in this house right now. Not that I'm whining. It was a good tired coming home from Nashville. Still a lot of residual goodness looming around from that which will keep us encouraged for a good while, even in the midst of craziness happening. And as hard as it is, it is a privilege and honor to do life with people we love and care about. It's always worth it for us at the end of the day.

In light of the above, we took it easy today. We split up today for Boy time and Girl time. The Boy's time didn't end up as planned because they had to walk out of the movie- it was a little too intense for Addison. He's pretty sensitive so even some kids' movies are too much for him. So they went a couple of other places and Addison got the new long version of his hair trimmed and shaped up. As for the Girls, well we did a little shopping. Which Addison did not get at all. That is not fun for him! Pictured below are a couple of things Cadence managed to come away with. She was totally into it. In my mind I was thinking about how much fun we'll have together as shopping buddies. And while I was talking her out of a meltdown because we were not getting the rainbow sandals, I was also thinking about not letting her get too into it and using teachable moments along the way so as to not create a monster. :)

Girls just wanna have fun!

(She's been wearing those wings all week long!)

This evening Cadence came into my bedroom with her new purse and told me she was going to work. When she came back she told me she got a new shirt at work and pulled it out of her purse. Work=shopping. Now that's funny.

Randomly changing the subject, here are a few more pictures of the wonderful people we had the honor of meeting in Nashville. We really connected with these guys, and I hope we have made new lifelong friends in the ministry.

Rollan and B (Barbara)- going to plant a church in Chicago- she had her two month old with her the whole time (their fourth child). Strong!

Trevor and Yvette- currently in London going to Belgium! I thought their accents were awesome- until I met their little boy and heard him talk. It was the cutest thing!

Pasha and Tanya going to Russia!

Greg and Suzanne going to London! Greg would call Suzanne "my lovely" when they talked, and Chris thought he would try to bring that back home because it was so cute, but it just doesn't sound the same when you don't have a South African accent.

Corey and Jessica staying in the Tennessee land

From the left to right: Trevor and Yvette, Jay and Ginny, Joel and Jennie (both couples in FL right now but I think will be moving soon) and Amy and Ross who are currently in the DC area but are going to plant in Miami

This was an actual photo given to us that I took a pic of with my phone (so it's probably pretty terrible quality), but it's the entire group- the ten couples plus the team of fifteen assessors. We are standing in front of the historic house that I was talking about. What an amazing cluster of people right there!

Oh that made me happy to see those pics. So that's about all I got. There's not going to be much news coming from us for a bit- just a lot of figuring things out. But in the meantime, fortunately, we have two little people that live with us that always provide pretty great material for the blogosphere.

And now that I'm back home I can say peace out from the Pate house :)