Thanksgiving...

We spent Thanksgiving in New Orleans with John Aaron's family and then drove 5 and half more hours to see my family for a day before driving 10 more hours back to Cookeville. Yes, LOTS of driving but it is worth it to see our families!

Good thing Levi is a good little traveler :) We have a DVD player so he watches alot of baby einstien (his favorite), eats lots and lots of snacks, and sleeps. See that sweet smile behind his paci?

We ran a 5k together as a family and John Aaron pushed the running stroller the whole way - that's a big deal to me! It's about 40 extra pounds for him to push!!

All bundled up for the run.....and checking out his hands :)

We finally got everything unpacked last night, John Aaron's parents are visiting this weekend, and then we leave next week to go to a wedding in Texas, Christmas with my parents, and then Passion 2012 Atlanta. Whew! Hope you're having a Happy December!

Volleyball...

John Aaron is playing on one of our BCM intramural volleyball teams, so Levi and I went out to cheer him on at his first game! Levi walked up and down every stair, hallway, and row of seats during the game :)

Doesn't he look so tall??

Halloween & Levi "reading"...

Thanks to Pinterest, I found this cute costume idea:

My mom made Levi a cute little bowtie and we had plans to dress him up as the english boy that Mary Poppins nannied, but, it didn't happen :) Our BCM party started at 8:00 (which is Levi's bedtime) so he didn't dress up this year, but he didn't know it was Halloween, so it's all good.

Before Levi was walking and getting into everything, he would love to have someone read to him. In the past few months, he hasn't been into reading as much because he has got too many things to explore! About a week ago he started doing this....

He will sit and "read" for about 20 minutes - which is a long time for an 18-month old! This makes the teacher inside me so proud :)

Weekend Getaway...

John Aaron and I decided it was time for a little family weekend so we went to Ridgecrest, NC for the weekend. We spent the weekend eating (ALOT, I am seeing several 6 mile runs in my week!), exploring Asheville, Black Mountain, and driving the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a lovely weekend!

I know everyone says their child is the cutest, but seriously. Levi is SO. cute. He is dancing here. No music. But this boy is always dancing!

A massive pumpkin!

Sweet times...

The boys...

THE family picture of the weekend :) JA & I have dreams of hiking and camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway when Levi gets bigger. It was soooo pretty!

Hope everyone is having a Happy Halloween! We are going to Mary Poppins & Dick Van Dyke it up at our BCM party tonight :)

Bits and Pieces...

An adventure of Levi and John Aaron...

Herman Cain came to speak at Tech last weekend, so JA took Levi had a little outing to go listen. And Herman & Levi became fast friends!

We have been doing some serious chalking in our backyard!

Cheering on JA at a BCM soccer game!

At the Pumpkin Patch...

We took Levi to the pumpkin patch last weekend to pick out a pumpkin, go on a hayride, and have a picnic. It was delightful!

Happy Fall!

Fall is my new favorite season :)

Welcome Week...

We just finished our big welcome week! The week was full with catching up with returning students, meeting new FUN freshmen, meeting with leadership, reaching out to our campus. Some highlights of the week...

• Having standing room only at our first Common Ground Tuesday night...we had about 250 students!
• A freshmen girl gave her life to Christ during our Freshmen event called Survival and one of our upperclassmen girls is already beginning to disciple her.
• We feed over 300 students at our first Soul Food Cafe and had a line of students down the street waiting to come in!
• We ordered Levi a BCM tshirt this year and it is ADORABLE on him!!! i love it!!!

Family Pic at Dancing on Dixie! This picture is a great snapshot of the stage Levi is in - not wanting to be still for anything :)

And....he looks like such a big boy in this picture!!!

How cute is he in his BCM shirt??

Going down the slide at the BCM Block Party!

Sunday afternoon hike at Burgess Falls!

Happy new school year!

John Aaron's favorite iphone app...

Occasionally, I get random texts from John Aaron that look like this...

or...(trying on bridesmaid dresses)

and...

and we can't forget the one of our niece, isabel...

hope these made you smile!

Our NEW YouTube Channel....

So, we updated and changed the name of our YouTube channel from johnaaron15 to thematthewfam. I hope you enjoy seeing Levi in all his sweetness and cuteness!

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMatthewFam?feature=mhee#p/u

Thursday Random Thoughts...

Levi & his friend Kallie playing while me and Kallie's mama are at her diaper shower for her new little sister who will be here in a couple of weeks named Carmen :) We can't wait to meet her! And yes, Levi looks like he is in a daze in this picture...haha.

I got a feather in my hair because i am just. that. cool.

School starts on the 29th so we are busy, busy, busy preparing for the start of a new school year! Our BCM leadership team (56 of them!) will come back next wednesday for a welcome back dinner and we will get started with lots of fun welcome week events! We're excited!!

When I came home from working out Saturday morning, this is what I saw....

We had JA's favorite, chicken pot pie, for dinner last night. I added a little too much Tony's so we like to call it cajun chicken pot pie :) Notice the cute teapot? That's my new color I am added to our kitchen. We have some awesome red dishes and other red accents but i felt like our kitchen just needed a little something. So I've added some tealish/turquoise accents and they look so cute!

two more randoms...

1.we're going to a hillsong concert tonight in nashville - yay.

2. i just finished the help, and we're going to see it tomorrow - woo.

and levi just woke up...gotta go get that sweet boy!

a bit of louisiana...

john aaron's sister, husband, and their four kids came to visit last week. they brought their boat up and we spent a day on the boat, did some shopping, and we went on an adventure to rock island!

john aaron, mathew, isabel, and alexis at rock island. they hiked and did some cliff jumping!

levi taking his nap on the boat - he looks a little squished :)

playing a game on the iphone!

we love family visits!

silly boy...

i was out and about with john aaron's sister and my 2 nieces and john aaron sent me this picture:

i thought i would share :)

summer on the road...

we have spent the first half of the summer traveling ALOT. first we went to india, then to louisiana for a fews days, then to texas to go to a wedding of students we worked with during seminary, and then, to atlanta for the fourth of july to visit my aunt and uncle. it was so fun seeing my family often and visiting with old friends, but we so happy to be home! we don't have any big road trips planned until thanksgiving so we are living it up in cookeville for the next few months!

in atlanta john aaron ran his very first 10k...go ja! every year me, my uncle, and brother run the peachtree 10K (which happens to be the largest 10k in the world). along with 60,000 other runners and super hot temperatures we finished the race in 1:02. we also took levi to the zoo and the aquarium where he kinda looked at some of the animals :)

he thought this was fun to stick his head through.

walking through the tunnel!

mr. and mrs. symank :) we love our students we worked with in texas and it was so fun to catch up with them. levi stayed in shreveport with my mom and dad because he was recovering from an ear infection (pre-tube surgery). in december we will go back for lindsay (bottom center) and brandon's (left by ja) wedding where i will be a bridesmaid! i am so honored to be a part of their wedding. caris (bottom left) is the maid of honor and these girls are sweet, lifetime friends!

for the rest of the summer we plan on doing lots of playing!

happy summer!

a glimpse of india...

here are just a few pictures of our time in india. we had hundreds of pictures so here are some highlights:

hitesh & mannali's wedding - so fun!

our other friends tiffiany, josh, and catie were also at the wedding. tiffiany & josh live in new orleans and catie works for a non-profit organization in the middle east. it was so special to be at the wedding with our friends. oh, and did i mention we were IN the wedding? it was a surprise for us, too! we danced down the aisle with the family and sat on the stage with hitesh's closest family during the ceremony. i just talked to mannali last night and she and hitesh are loving married life and she is also loving living in chicago!

our tranlator, sureika, and her little sister uma. each day we had translators go out with us and sureika and uma went with us a couple of days and we got to know them very well!

the rickshaws - our crazy and exciting way of tranportation in mumbai.

sweet children in the slums.

and i had to include a picture of our handsome levi! my mom got pictures taken of levi while we gone and they turned out soooo cute! levi got tubes in his ears yesterday morning and he is doing just fabulous! he was super cranky for about 20 minutes after the surgery but after that he was a happy boy. we have been struggling with lots of ear infections these past few months so hopefully this will help!

To do lists....

On my daily to do list, updating our blog always gets pushed to the bottom. But here I am with 30 minutes to myself (levi is with the hub and I am about to go to get my hair trimmed and highlighted-yay) so I thought I would fill you in with our excitement that came with may!

We kicked off the month with celebrating levi's birthday with 2 birthday parties! We celebrated on his birthday at chick fil a with our bcm Students who have made Levi's first year full of fun. For those of you who don't know, I work part time with john Aaron at the bcm as the associate director. I work in the mornings and levi comes with me so there is always a sweet college student to help take care of levi while I get some work done. Our students are such a blessing to our family! We celebrated with our family who came in from Louisiana and our church friends the Saturday after his birthday with an owl theme birthday party. I had so much fun making all the decorations....it brought me back to my days of teaching pre-k! We had a great week of celebrating levi!

Our next big may event was INDIA! I have been praying about this trip since the fall because we were going to be leaving levi with my mom and dad for TEN days! I knew levi would be perfectly happy with my mom and dad but I had some of that mama guilt going on....which I knew was not from god! I knew that god had a plan for us going to Indian and that he had prepared people for us to share the gospel with so I knew that I needed to trust him with everything that we have, including levi! As god always does, he took care of all my worries and fears. Levi was perfectly happy and got to have a special week with my parents.

We brought a group of 6 students with us to Mumbai, india. While we were there, we went into the slums and shared how Jesus had changed our lives and shared bibles stories with them. We went out in groups of 2 with a translator. It was so amazing to hear from the people we encountered their desire to know more about jesus when most of the people we met had never heard of Jesus. This was my first overseas mission trip and it definitely brought me out of my comfort zone and god grew and stretched me in lots of ways. I'm thankful for a husband who pushes me to be used for christ!

John Aaron turned 28 during our trip to india and we celebrated our 7 year anniversay! A super special thing we were able to do on our anniversary was to be a part of our good friend hitesh's wedding in Mumbai. We met hitesh during our senior year of college at la tech at the bcm. He came for graduate school and became a believer during his first. John Aaron got to baptize him and hitesh is still one of our closest friends today. A few of our other friends from college made the journey to india to be at the wedding, too. It was so special to meet hitesh's family and be a part of his wedding day. he and his new life will be living in Chicago.

Last, but not least, levi has officially left his baby days behind! He now walking around everywhere, taking one afternoon nap a day, using a sippy cup (no more bottle!), has eight teeth, and weighs 25 pounds! We are having so much fun with him!

I will post india pictures on my next post but check out my facebook page for all of our india pictures! Time to get my hair did :)

Levi's First Birthday Party!