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!

We have a YouTube channel now!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=johnaaron15&aq=f

Now you can see Levi in action :)

2 months later...

Since I haven't posted in TWO months, here is what you've missed! At the beginning of March, Levi got sick for the first time. And he got super sick. One night he started running a fever and the next morning he woke up with the flu, a double ear infection, and conjunctivitis. Thankfully our pediatrician's office is open on Saturday mornings! She gave Levi five perscriptions, and the next day he was already feeling much better. This all happened a week before we left to bring our students to Beach Reach in Panama City, FL so we were thankful for Levi's quick recovery!

At Beach Reach, we partnered up with 300 other college students from around the U.S. and gave about 3,000 free van rides between 10 P.M. and 2 A.M. and served about 8,000 students a pancake breakfast each morning. Levi loved the beach and the pancakes!

Levi has been doing alot of walking (holding our hands) in shoes! He wears a size 5 EXTRA wide (haha) so finding shoes that don't squeeze his feet has been hard.

It is finally warm here and we have loved being outside....we've been doing lots of swinging!

John Aaron and Levi got to throw out the first pitch at the opening season Tech baseball game! The team gave us Tech baseball t's and a keepsake ball for Levi...it was so fun!

Our group at Beach Reach

Loving the sand...but not so much the water :)

Lately....

Levi on his 9 month birthday! I can't believe that in 3 months Levi is going to be a year old. At his 9 month check up, he was 23 lbs and 28.5 inches long - he is so big!

Today we had our first day of warm weather (about 60 degrees) in what feels like forever. We were loving it! We were able to go on a walk and enjoy being outside....I am excited about getting outside and playing with Levi!

(He is trying to eat a leaf in this picture - yum.)

(This picture is supossed to be at the bottom on this post, but I couldn't figure out how to get it down there, so just pretend, okay?)

Check out his 2 bottom teeth!

(And this is where the post starts :))


Caving in Cookeville?







Okay, so to me, the whole idea of caving is so weird - I guess because living in Louisiana and Texas, we never really had caves (that I know of). John Aaron went on his first caving trip with some freshmen boys from the BCM. They had lots of fun and came back covered in mud!

Cool Boys...

The had to crawl through little holes to get to other parts of the cave!

Cute little bat. Don't worry, the won't bite :) John Aaron touched one (with a glove on) and it just squeked!




Now for a couple of Levi pictures...


He started crawling this week! Here he is in action - It's hard work to crawl!

Levi, the little explorer!

Levi is into everything...and I love it! He loves taking things out of boxes, bags, baskets, whatever - and making a big mess! But it sure does make him happy :) He is now 8 and half months old and weighs 22 pounds. We switched him to his big boy car seat this week, he's got his 2 bottom teeth in, and his is crawling/rolling/scooting everywhere. Here are a few sweet pictures of his new adventures....

Trying to get close to Zoe - she's ignoring him.

Ripping up all my magazines!

Exploring magnetic letters for the first time. He is starting to be able to play with all my Pre-K supplies from teaching - He's going to have fun with our garage full of manipulatives!

Hi!


Checking out a late Christmas present with Zoe.

p.s....we had a great Thanksgiving and Christmas in LA, but I did not have time to post pictures - but we had so much fun visiting our family, friends, and relaxing!