Brrrrr.....20 degrees!

Believe it or not we had weather that literally went from 75 degrees one day down to 20 degrees the next. It was nuts! This was around the time that you all had snow back home. I mean if its going to get that cold here, it might as well snow! My parking garage is two blocks from where I work and it seems to get longer every day the temperature drops. I bundle up like you wouldn't believe. You know that scarf and gloves you gave me Sherry for Christmas? I wouldn't DARE leave home without them! I kid you not that when I walk down the street the wind blows right through my pants and I have to look down to make sure I'm not dreaming and didn't forget to get dressed that day. My next investment will be in leggings to wear under my clothes.

Well I found some pictures that I had taken from when Jason and I had gone out househunting one weekend. It was a gorgeous fall day and we fell in love with some of the houses in East Nashville. So I've added some of the different ones here for you all to see what exactly we're hoping for in terms of buying next year. As small as some of these homes are, because of the nice location and how well they've been restored, they are more expensive than your typical homes outside of Nashville, which is where you find some of the better deals. I would say these homes start in the 300K-400K range.

I also added a couple pictures of the East Nashville Fire Station that Jason was trying to show his parents while they were in town. I guess they couldn't locate it, but we found it by accident and I snapped a couple pics. It's very old and beautiful.

This is a bed and breakfast also in East Nashville. Its smack in the middle of where all these other beautiful homes are that I've shown you. Aren't they great?

Other news, today we're throwing a baby shower for a friend of mine at work. Her name is Leslie and she had a beautiful baby girl Copeland when she was only 5 months along! If you all remember, my cousins were born pretty tiny too, so I remember how small these premie babies can get. Copeland was born at 2 lbs 2 oz. Smaller than even my cousins Kathrine and Kolleen. She's gained a few more ounces and I finally got a picture of her total cuteness to add to the blog - in this picture she's 2 lbs 6 ounces, but isn't she beautiful? She's now 4 weeks old. I honestly have no idea how someone can look at baby like this, that would normally still be in the womb and call it a fetus or tissue. God is amazing isn't He? Leslie is also doing really well - she is the sweetest lady and we've all been praying for her here at the office. I'm looking forward to seeing how blessed she will be when she sees how much everyone gave - a ton of attorneys and staff gave close to a $1,000 in gifts.

We've decided on a home church for sure now. On Sunday Jason and I attended the 101 class for Harpeth Community Church and there wasn't one thing that raised a red flag. Everyone was really nice and I learned quite a lot about who they are and what they believe. Our senior pastor Dr. Bobby Harrington is actually from Calgary, Alberta and received his Bachelor's degree in Theology and his Masters in Christian Counseling from Harding University and then also a Master of Divinity Degree from Regent College, the University of Calgary, Princeton Theological Seminary and Asbury Seminary. That's quite a list! And even as well learned as he is, he sticks to the Bible in everything. We love his teaching style. It's weird to think that we'll be going through the Identification process in front of everyone - I remember seeing other people do that, but I haven't done that since I was in elementary school back at Northgate. Eventually, as we get settled into the church, I would like to get involved with the youth program. The church has about 450 members and close to 60 youth. They also have bands for the high school and juinor high, so they can be trained for the worship teams. I loved it when Pastor Stone did that for CCK. While we were at the church service, I also ran into my friend Kacie from work. It was so fun to see someone I knew there. Then through her and her boyfriend Dan, they introduced us to some of their friends and we all ended up having lunch together. In between the church service in the morning, lunch with Kacie & Dan and the 101 class in the afternoon, Jason and I squeezed in a movie and saw Deck The Halls - which we laughed our butt off. It was seriously so funny and we were expecting it to be quite corny.

In the world of reading, I recently finished Summer Breeze by Catherine Anderson, which I loved and will be reading more of her stuff in the future.

I'm currently reading The Most Important Year in a Man's Life/Woman's Life, which is a Christian book on the first year of marriage. It's aimed at showing newlyweds how to cultivate good habits in preparartion for the challenges in the future. I'm really enjoying it - half of it is written for women and the other half for men - so of course, I'm always flipping it over to read Jasons side after reading mine :-) Jason is also reading this at the same time.

AND finally I'm also reading Seasons by Bonnie Hopkins which is also been great and I've been enjoying quite a bit. But I'm trying to hurry so I can read Dear John, the latest novel of Nicholas Sparks'!

How's everyone doing on Christmas shopping?? I'm almost done! Yeah! Which is good, cause I have to mail a lot of mine over to Seattle and that's going to take close to 6 days for shipping, unless we want to pay an arm and a leg.

And before I wrap all this up, I have to give huge props to Jay & Tina for celebrating their SEVENTH Anniversary last Sunday! Congratulations you guys!! I love you two so much and I am so proud of you both. You never settle for mediocre in your marriage and you continually push for more of God. We hope to see you both soon!

I had to add this one last picture. Your probably wondering why I'm attaching a picture of our bed. Well if you look closely or click on the picture to zoom in, that little black speck next to the button is Bank's tail peeking out from inside the duvet cover. She crawled inside the duvet cover and I almost didn't see her, I thought it was just a lump in our bedspread. After she heard the click of the camera she poked just her head out - I so wish I could have taken a picture of that in time. Its her new thing of playing hide and go seek. It was pretty stinkin funny - she has quite the personality.

That's all I have for now. I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season and we miss and love you all. 19 days till Christmas!!