Our Atlanta trip...

I know this trip was like 2 weeks ago, but I've been slack with posts for some reason. My mother-in-law told me the other day that she keeps checking for updates, so I finally felt guilty enough and decided to get it together! :)

Anyway, Christopher and I went to Atlanta for July 4-9th. It was a super-early anniversary trip (our anniversary isn't until August 12th). Christopher will be back in school by then and I'll be back at work on August 4th, so we knew we needed to do whatever we were going to do early. We stayed downtown at The Ellis, which was a really cool boutique-style hotel. Our room was really pretty...the only thing was that our view from our window was literally of the building next door, which was 5 feet away. :) Wish I had known about that!!

On the 4th of July, we went to the Braves game, which was SO MUCH FUN! I haven't been to the new stadium yet, so that was really cool. The weather was super-nice, too, so that helps!

They had some extra-special stuff since it was the 4th of July, which was really cool. I wish that you could have seen how big this flag really was! It was HUGE!!!

There's definitely a story behind the picture below. :) Christopher and I were given a gift certificate to a restaurant called The Palm when we went on our honeymoon to Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Needless to say, it was AWESOME! (Thanks Jameson!) When we were there, all these people around us were eating these HUGE lobsters. Neither of us had ever had lobster before and decided against ordering it, but we've been talking about it ever since. So when I realized that there was a Palm Restaurant in Atlanta, I checked it out and they were doing their summer lobster special again. So we had to take advantage of the opportunity. I got to wear a lobster bib. :)

One really cool part was the Georgia Aquarium. It was SO COOL! I know that all of you who have kids would really, really like it. You even get to pet sting rays and sharks!

I don't have any pictures of this, but the whole reason we went to Atlanta was to go to see Dave Matthews, which was AWESOME. His saxophone player had just been in an ATV accident a couple of days before that, but they had a substitute who was the saxophonist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It rained a little bit, but we definitely didn't care. :)

That God...he's so tricky. :)

So, I have a couple of pictures to post, but I don't have the time or energy to do it tonight. :)However, I thought I'd let y'all in on a little something that happened while Christopher and I were in Atlanta over the weekend.

The whole reason we went was to celebrate our second wedding anniversary a little early. We got there on Friday and just came back today (Tuesday). We had some fun things planned, one of which was to go to Buckhead Church on Sunday morning. I am really, really inspired by some good old praise and worship music and my memory had been jogged by a friend about this church and how great it was. So we decided to get up and go on Sunday morning.

I had printed off directions from Mapquest, plus Christopher and I had borrowed a GPS for the trip. We were running a few minutes behind what I would have preferred and we started following the directions, which appeared to be the same. I was a little snappy and anxious about trying not to be late. And I don't like to drive when Christopher and I are together...I just like to give directions. :) Well, Christopher didn't take a turn that I was instructing him, ever so gently and with such a great amount of kindness (NOT!) to take and we ended up a little turned around. Thanks to the GPS, we got our bearings back, and were going down a road that we had been travelling and were somewhat familiar with. He was silent. I said, "What's your problem", we shared a married people argument about how you should have done this and I couldn't because you told me too late. I'm sure you can all imagine. :)

ANYWAY. We were going down the road in the Buckhead area and we couldn't find the building, which I had seen a picture of on the directions I had printed out. We finally got to where the GPS stated "Arriving at your destination on the left" and shows you the little checkered flag. Yay! We're finally here!

We parked in a small parking lot, which seemed a little off to me because the church website mentioned 3 different parking garages. Hmmmm.

We walked into the front doors of the church and were greeted by a very small group of people. Hmmm. Now, I know this is an extremely large church.

We seated ourselves in the "sanctuary", which consisted of about 100 folding chairs and a stage with several rock-type musical instruments, a sound board at the back, and a screen at the front left, with a PowerPoint slide of a really cool photo and the sermon series advertisement. Hmmm.

People trickled in and were seated. I said, "Christopher, I'm kinda confused. Nothing seems to be matching up with what my perception of this church was going to be." He agreed. I went outside for a couple of minutes and checked the address on the building.

No way.

We were at the completely wrong place. What do you do??? Church was about to start and the preacher, who seemed super-cool, had already come up to us and introduced himself. The music started and it was really cool music from the Passion series. So of couse, we just stayed put!

And boy, am I glad we did.

When the preacher got up to do the sermon, he announced that they had been going through the book of James. When he announced the scripture, I quickly skimmed it, smiled, and showed it to Christopher with some serious conviction. Let me quote it for you...

"What causes fights and quarrels among you?

Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?

You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet,

but you cannot have what you want.

You quarrel and fight." James 4:1-2 (NIV)

How fully aware am I of the fact that I am selfish and prideful. My husband is so special and kind. And I realize that I sometimes take his passive nature as a signal for me to just run over him. How dare me to be that way! I am so thankful for Christopher and how much meaning that he has added to my life. And I am also so, so thankful that I serve a God who keeps me in check, even in the most "accidental" kind of way.

Someone help me! :)

I can't stop myself! I've been shopping every single day this week! :)

Christopher is in clinical every day and I'm still getting used to the fact for some reason that I'm off for the whole summer. I think I'm in the mindset that I need to get errands done and accomplish things with every free minute, which is definitely not necessary. We're going to Atlanta this weekend, and I don't think my school nurse uniforms would be appropriate attire for a baseball game and a concert. :) So I started looking for a couple of outfits to wear while we're there. And it just spun right out of control. I think I'm okay now...tomorrow is the only other day this week that Christopher won't be with me. :)

I've been corresponding with Christopher's brother, Jameson while he is in Thailand and he says that things are going really well. They've already seen 2 (maybe 3, I can't remember exactly what he said) of the college students come to Christ, which is really exciting. They have the weekends off, so he's been getting to do some really neat stuff touring around the area.

Tonight we're going to eat sushi with our friends Jeremy and Tiffany. They just got a new puppy and he is so unbelievably cute! He's a yorkie and he weighs less than 3 pounds. So tiny!!! The last picture is actually him at their back door next to Jeremy's flip flops.

His name is Bentley. What a doll baby! :)

This past weekend...

Do we look like death warmed over or what? :)

Well, I guess I should speak for myself, huh! This past weekend, I worked at McLeod in the Children's Hospital on Saturday night (7P-7A). I haven't worked since the end of April, so I made sure to tell Tammy as soon as I got there that I wasn't sure I remembered how to be a nurse, so she might have to help me. :) Working prn is a good idea in some respects because it keeps me up on my nursing skills that I don't get to use at the elementary school. Plus, it keeps me up to date on hospital gossip...you know...who's pregnant, who's trying to get pregnant, who got married, who found a new job, etc. I miss my friends at McLeod SOSOOSOSOSO much! But that drive is killer, especially with the price of gas right now!

Other than that, Christopher and I didn't really do anything. He had clinical every single day this past week, including Saturday, so he was pretty busy with that. He gets up at 4:00 AM and gets home after 4:00 PM. Plus, he tries to go to bed early. So he's no fun. :) He did go with me to Florence Saturday night, though, which was pretty nice. His grandmother and uncles were in town, so he went and visited with his family and spent the night with Maw Maw (his other grandmother) and then picked me up on Sunday morning after I got off of work and chauffered me home. :) Christopher's PaPa died last year the day before my birthday. Talk about a change for the family! And Sunday was PaPa's birthday. So it was really neat for Christopher to spend time with Maw Maw that morning and eat breakfast with her before he came to get me. Maw Maw is such a wonderful, fun, outgoing and friendly lady. I LOVE her...she cracks me up. I was so glad that things worked out the way they did so that he could spend time with her.