Renewed and Challenged

Last week my husband and I were blessed with the opportunity to attend a spiritual workshop called Polishing the Pulpit. There were over 2000 in attendance throughout the week, and it was a blessing to be surrounded by such a large group of Christians with a unified goal in this life: get to heaven and take as many people with you as possible.

 

Throughout the week I was able to hear wonderful lessons from God’s Word ranging from modesty to disciplining children to how to dig deep in the Word to how to mark your Bible to why true science is a Christian’s friend to what it means to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. I was blessed to worship with over 1200 Christians Sunday morning, and to feel a glimpse of what heaven must be like when we sang together. We were able to fellowship with wonderful Christian families, and I am so thankful for their friendships.

The week greatly challenged me, and I’m thankful for the challenge. I need to be a better student of God’s Word; I need to be a better influence to those around me; I need to be a better spouse; I need to be a stronger parent; and I could go on.

(Ladies’ Session)

 

During our time there we were able to do a little bit of sightseeing in the Smoky Mountains. It was a beautiful location, and the weather was a wonderful reprieve from the 100 degree temperatures we’ve been having in Texas. I rented a lens for our vacation – the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens – and I really enjoyed it. I didn’t want to send it back in! However, I’ve decided that I do not have an eye for landscape photography, and I need to do a lot more practicing. I feel like it should be so easy to take a photo of something that isn’t running away from me (like my toddler), but it is definitely a skill I don’t possess!

(Cades Cove)

(Cades Cove)

 

(Clingman’s Dome  - the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park)

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I really enjoy blogging, and I'm fairly certain I would write even if no one else read it (but I am thankful for those who do read!).  I've been so incredibly busy lately that I haven't had time to write lately (you've probably noticed that my blog has been kind of empty of new posts recently), and it has been driving me crazy that I haven't had the time to write. I've found that blogging (reading and writing) is really a great release and I do miss it when I'm super busy. But this post isn't meant to be a complaint about being busy, but rather a little catching up over the past few weeks.

I'm very thankful for the reasons that I've been too busy to write. The spring semester ended, and we finally had a break from our normal crazy schedule. We took the opportunity to head out of town to visit with our families. We don't get to see them as often as we'd like because we have so many activities going on.  Ella sure does love being with her grandparents! We greatly enjoyed our time with family as well.

Trent and I also had the opportunity during this break between the semesters to take a vacation to Washington D.C. while Ella stayed with the grandparents. We've never been to D.C., nor have we really had much of an opportunity to go on vacation since we've been married. I missed Ella greatly while we were away, but I'm thankful that we have such wonderful family that we can leave her with when we travel. Any time we leave her with family, it reminds me of how absolutely blessed we are! I plan to write some more about our vacation, because it was eye-opening to me in a lot of ways, but for now I leave you with a few pictures of Ella om our entire time away.