Some Wonderful Summer Time Fun

We've been having a nice summer, and can't believe how quickly it is going by! How did it get to be mid-August already???

We had a chance to visit Nassau, Bahamas for both business and pleasure! While I won't get into the craziness that preceded our trip, let me just say that the devil didn't want us to get away! We had some amazing time by ourselves for a couple of days before I flew back to take care of the babies who were safe and sound at Pepper & "John-John"'s house.

We then spent some time together as a family at Myrtle Beach. We had fun riding waves, eating out, and sitting in the sunshine as much as possible. Ella had a blast playing in the surf, making sand castles, jumping in the pool, taking nice naps in a dark cool room after lunch, and hanging out with some people who love her a whole lot. My diet went out the window, but it was all worth it!

As soon as we returned from a two week hiatus, we hit the ground running and had 4 weeks until our annual youth conference. There were long, hard hours put in, but God seems to enjoy showing off, especially when the natural is all in order. I have to say that Brandon's team did an excellent job organizing and pulling off such a huge event. I think we had over 1000 young people from all over the country, and many dynamic speakers and musicians. Perhaps the best part was the unity that came as different denominations came together from the upstate and worshipped and served together...that was Brandon's heart, and it was awesome to see it happen.

We were also bombarded by a lot of...how do I say this?...crap. Someone hit our new car as Brandon was taking it to get serviced, we also started having unexplainable mishaps occur that tried to distract us, and Mom had some hard news regarding the progression of her lung disease delivered to her that we have all been dealing with since. All of us got sick, we were all way too busy, and didn't get much sleep...honestly we approached the youth conference on empty. But when we are weak, God shows his strength through us! Afterwards, we celebrated Ella's 2nd birthday Elmo-style, which was a lot of fun.

Now, I know I just talked about our vacation, but believe it or not, after one month of youth conference prep, we had to get away again to recharge. We did so in Charleston with some of our closest friends. This was a much lower key vacay...we spent a lot of time in the house, just being there together and talking. It was wonderful. On the last day, we visited Seacoast, my old church, and spent some time with our friends there. We hit Columbia on the way home, and celebrated my dad's 60th birthday with the family.