Anna's Extreme Room Makeover :)

Most of last week was spent turning Anna's Extremely Orange room into a much more serene and calm beautifully blue room. :) So I thought I'd post the transformation in pictures...

This was how things looked before we began to tear apart the room.

Jack did a lot of the hard prep work - scraping the pink magnetic paint strip off the walls, mudding that, and then LOTS of sanding. After that it was a thick layer of KILZ to 'kill' that orange paint!!

Last summer, Anna helped Natalie paint her room, so it was only fitting that she got to come over and help Anna with her room. :)

With the walls all done, it was time to reconfigure the shelves so that Anna's bed would fit up against the wall.

The last part of the room makeover got some help from Emma, Amber, and Jenna. Anna wanted to write scriptures all over her new sheets so that she could sleep "all wrapped up in Jesus" - so the girls came over last Sunday afternoon and helped decorate her sheets with their favorite verses. :)

And here is the (almost) finished room - pretty blue walls, new comforter and of course, her old pals Timmy and Tammy the turtles. There are still some pictures to hang and a few other touches to add, so I'll update later. But she loves her new room.

One thing that's been funny. Without exception, everyone who has heard that we were painting her room has said the same thing.... "Didn't you JUST paint it orange?!?!?" Well, it was 2 summers ago when I was last in there going crazy on about the 5th coat of orange paint. I remember it all too well... but it has been 2 years, so I guess it's ok for another change. (I do hope this one lasts for a while though!! ha)

Mighty to Save

In my daily Bible reading, I like to underline verses that speak to me... so I was reading back over ones from a couple of days ago and I'm going to share them here, but little out of order - I don't know why, but it all just made sense to me this way. Not so strange, I guess, considering how out of order I can be...


"I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me;
I was found by those who did not seek me.
To a nation that did not call on my name,
I said, 'Here am I, here am I.'
All day long I have held out my hands
to an obstinate people,
who walk in ways not good,
pursuing their own imaginations-

How then can we be saved?

Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look upon us, we pray,
for we are all your people.

Who is this coming from Edom,
from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson?
Who is this, robed in splendor,
striding forward in the greatness of his strength?
"It is I, speaking in righteousness,
mighty to save."

I delight greatly in the LORD;
my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

(Is 65:1-2, 64:5,8-9, 63:1, 61:10)

At the Corner of Mountain Loft Road and Quail Lane...

... is a lovely house that Jack's mom generously rented for all of us to stay in last week on vacation in Townsend, TN, which is just outside of all the hustle and bustle of Gatlinburg. We had a fun week of hiking, wild-life spotting, tubing, zip-lining, shopping, and eating. :) Oh my goodness, the food! But what's a vacation without good food and the need to lose a few pounds when you get back home? ;-)

As we were leaving, I thought I'd get everyone to help me figure out our 'best moments' from the trip so that I could share those here. So here are some winners from the week:

Best Adventure:

Smokey Mountain Zip-Lines! It's hard to express just how much fun this was - worth every penny it cost! I'll put a link to their web-site in here in case any of you reading are looking for fun in Gatlinburg... http://www.smokeymountainziplines.com/ They have created a series of ziplines that start way up on the side of a mountain and take you zipping from platform to platform through the trees to the bottom of the mountain. They start easy and get a little harder/faster/higher as you go along. The last couple of lines are their 'super-lines,' one of which runs down the side of a mountain for 850 feet! It's quite a ride. :) The video below is of Mackenzie and Zip-Line Instructor Joe racing down the super-zip line.

Best Surprise:

All of Jack's family are big soccer fans, and both World Cup Semi-Final matches were being played during the week that we were in Gatlinburg. We pretty quickly realized that our cable in the house did not have ESPN, so we needed to find somewhere else to watch the game on Tuesday. So we decided to make that our day of shopping in Gatlinburg and then hope that we could find a place to watch the game in town. Well, let me tell you, we couldn't have ended up in a more perfect situation. As we drove into town, we noticed a place called the Hellbender Grill. Actually, I noticed it because the name caught my attention - ha. But then Katie saw that they were showing all the World Cup Games. We made our way back there at lunch time, and because there were 10 of us, they actually seated us in a room where we were all alone and had 3 50-inch flat panel TV screens up on the walls broadcasting in all their high-definition glory! ;-) The food was fantastic, the service was even better -- it was a great afternoon. :) I guess the 'surprise' in it all was that it happened on a Carter family vacation! Our stories, more often than not, tend to be about what goes wrong not what goes so right!! :)

Oh, and by the way, the Hellbender Salamander (where the grill gets its name from) is the largest salamander in the national park and has been known to grow up to 3 feet long!! :)

Here are a few other nice 'surprises' from the rest of the gang:

* Mackenzie - having such an adorable Zip-Line instructor (Joe) made that whole adventure even more fun for her! haha

* Anna - surviving an 11.5 mile hike to the top of Gregory Bald Mountain!

* Jack - passing (and getting to stop at) a parking lot full of beautiful muscle cars on the way in to Townsend. I think there were 4 '69 Camaros in that one lot! He was in heaven... ha.

* Kay - I was very happy that I was able to keep up with my daily bible reading all week - something that I tend to fall off on when I'm on vacation - and I really enjoyed it! :)
And the other neat surprise was seeing a mama bear and her two cubs in the woods at Cades Cove. That was really cool. (If you look closely, you'll see mama bear in the center and one of the cubs not far behind.) :)

Best Meal:

The meal plan for the week, thought of by my sister-in-law, Deb, was that each adult would be paired with one child and everyone would get their own night to cook a meal and to clean up. This would keep the 'moms' from being in the kitchen every night of the week and doing all the cooking! Good plan. :) So each adult/child pair planned and prepared their meals and it was a lot of fun (and good eating) to see what we had for dinner each night. We had shish-kabobs on Sun, Pizza night on Mon, Chicken Pot Pie on Tues, Stuffed Green Peppers and Mexican Rice on Wed, and a Potato Bar on Thurs -- YUM. Now, I have to be a little careful here about saying any one meal was the 'best' - don't want to hurt anyone's feelings! And to be fair, as I polled the family, everyone picked something different as their favorite. Here's how I decided my favorite - on Thurs. we had leftovers for lunch - and we had stuff left from EVERY meal. We referred to it as the "Pot-Pie Pepper Pizza-roni Kabob" lunch. :) Since the leftovers I went for were from the shish-kabob meal, I decided that was my favorite!

Best Hiking:

1) For our family, we ALL made it up to Chimney Tops and back - and got to enjoy some breathtaking views!





(I think this doubles as the best picture of the trip.)

2) All 10 of us got to hike the Middle Prong Trail and see some beautiful water falls and cascades.

3) Most strenuous hiking award goes to Jack, Anna and Carter for hiking the 11.5 mile Gregory Bald Trail - makes me tired just thinking about it. :)

4) Most ridiculous hike would be me, Louise, Deb, Taylor, Katie and Mackenzie ending up on a 6 mile hike (not our original plan!) to Abrams Falls with no water, no food, and no bandaids! (Louise fell and scraped her knee and we managed to wash it off in a stream and bum a bandaide off some nearby hikers!) But everyone we passed said the view of the waterfall was worth it, and it was beautiful!

Well that about wraps up the 'bests' of the week. We also had a list of 'most stupid things we packed' -- like Mackenzie bringing Wuthering Heights (her summer required reading) with her to read... she didn't touch it all week - haha. Also, the new swimsuit I ran out to buy the day before we left never made it out of the suitcase. :) I could go on... but it's taken me almost all day to get this done... time to stop. ;-)

Things I Missed

I'm just getting back in town from vacation with the family this past week up in Gatlinburg. We were there with Jack's family and had a lot of fun... and I'm headed out after while with the girls to go to Rainbow Omega for a couple of days with the teens. The good news here is that all I had to do last night was pull my dirty clothes out of my suitcase and throw the clean ones in a smaller suitcase and my packing was done! ;-) The bad news? I really wanted to be home for more than 12 hours before leaving again! ha...

I don't have time at all to start posting pictures or recapping the trip just yet, but I will get to that over the next week. On the way home, I had the whole gang in the car helping me put together some of their 'best moments' from the week, so you'll see them soon.

But I thought I'd share this because it was on my mind this morning - "Things I missed most while I was gone..."

1) My bed. I can't tell you how nice it was to come home and sleep in my own bed last night. I will never take it for granted again. :)

2) ESPN. Yes, I know it's sad, but we're big soccer fans over here and we so wanted to watch the World Cup semi-final matches this last week - AND, the Tour de France started this week and you know that if the cable didn't have ESPN, they didn't have VERSUS either, so no cycling either. :(

3) Internet. OK, yes, I now admit I am addicted. I really didn't do well without computer access to the internet this week. I have access on my phone, but you can't blog from a phone (well, maybe you iphone people can, but not on my phone!) and I couldn't get my email - facebook was my lifeline to the world. Sad, isn't it? But seriously, it made me realize how much I rely on this means of communication to keep up with the world....

4) Sleep. I don't think it was entirely the bed's fault, but I didn't sleep very well this week. And I like to sleep. Especially on vacation. :)

5) My dog. I wish we could have taken Mandy with us - she would have loved the mountains - and maybe even have gotten to chase a bear or two!

I think that's about it... so in one of those nights I was lying awake an idea for a peom materialized in my brain and this is what came of it:

Playing with Proverbs

A look in the mirror

Friend, what do you see?

Loves face staring back at me

At once, beyond reason

All to Jesus I surrender

Times given to remember

I have to post one picture because when I saw it, it was just so beautiful and is a great representation of all the beauty we saw up in the mountains this week. God did some great work when he created the Great Smokey Mountains! This is from our hike up to 'Chimney Tops.'

I'm Convinced

Just wanted to share a really neat "God-moment" that happened at our Life Talk last night. We had finished a great time of singing and sharing that was very personal and encouraging. Then we took some time to go around the room and pray about needs in our lives. When it came to me, I had this recent trip to Impact on my heart and thoughts about God being our greatest treasure in life were on my mind. So I was praying about that and just thanking God that He has been so willing to intervene in my life and convince me, certainly more times than should ever be necessary, that He truly is the greatest treasure of all.

The prayers went on from me and continued around the room. At some point while Adam was praying, he said something that made me think of the song "Light the Fire." We sung that song a lot with the teens during devotional times at Impact and I love the words... anyways, this thought came to mind that I REALLY wanted to sing that song when we all finished praying - to the point that I was contemplating just starting the song myself when the last AMEN was said. (But I was feeling pretty insecure about doing that! ha) Well, the prayer circle continued and Lisa was the last to pray. She finished up and just as she said amen, Ed immediately started singing Light the Fire!!! He was across the room from me and I just sat there dumbfounded for a moment before I could find my voice. I couldn't believe that he just started singing the song that was on MY heart! We finished singing and I just looked at everyone and told them what I had been thinking about that song - there were goosebumps all around. :)

As I thought about all of that later, I was reminded of what I had prayed earlier about God being so willing to convince me time and again of the treasure that He is in my life. And once again, there was God 'showing up' in such a real way to me - convincing me yet again of how He loves to answer prayers and surprise me in special ways. :)

Light the Fire

I stand to praise You,
But I fall on my knees.
My spirit is willing,
But my flesh is so weak.

I feel Your arms around me,
As the power of Your healing begins.
Your Spirit moves through me,
Like a mighty rushing wind.

Light the fire
In my soul,
(in my weary soul)
Fan the flame,
Make me whole.
(make my spirit whole)
Lord, You know
Where I've been,
(where I've been)
So light the fire in my heart again.

Well, almost another month has flown by... I think it really is true that the older you get, the faster life passes you by. You know, summer really isn't like it was when I was a kid - for one thing, its about 4 weeks shorter than it used to be!! But I remember having time to be BORED. I don't really think my kids have had any time like that this summer - or will have. I know *I* haven't had that yet! But I guess I'm enjoying the "different kind of busy" that the summer brings. The schedule is more loose, there's no homework or school projects (woohoo!!), and the daylight lasts longer... :)

So, to recap June... we started out with a trip with the teens to Six Flags and an Atlanta Braves game - fun times. I think I had the most fun talking Belle into riding roller coasters and seeing the look of dread on her face just before she got on - and then the joy that was there when it was all over! ha (It looked just like Mackenzie's face below before her first ride on Goliath!!)

The day after we got back from that trip, Anna went with her friend Natalie and their family up to North Carolina for a little vacation. She had her first experience with white water rafting and zip lines and loved it all.


As Anna was returning from her vacation, Mackenzie left for New Orleans with the teens to continue their efforts to help with Katrina Relief. She had a great week and was excited to get to do some 'demolition' again on this trip. Something about taking a baseball bat to sheetrock that just gets kids excited! But this poor woman's house that they were working on had been waiting since 2005 for help to get her house gutted and rebuilt!! Crazy...
This last weekend, Anna and I headed up to Lipscomb University for IMPACT! That's always a highlight of the year and this year was no different. The theme was "Buried. Alive" and was all about what 'treasure' we are seeking in life. Great lessons, entertainment, activities and most of all (at least for me) great times of singing and worship. I hope that's just a little glimpse of what heaven will be like - it was awesome. :) Now Mackenzie is there this week and having a great time... when Anna and I got back, my sister was here visiting with her kids. So I've had fun with her this week.


Speaking of Impact and singing and worship, I have to share this thought that I came across today as I was reading the blog journal on Tenth Avenue North's website...

"And on a night like tonight this chorus seems easy. “I give you all of me, for all you are, here I am, take me apart. Take me apart.” But it’s only easy, because the most glorious thing happened tonight. I forgot about myself. I know, totally crazy. But I did. I think it might have just been for a few minutes or seconds or so, but it really did happen. For one brief shining moment, God took up my thoughts and affections and freed me from the prison of myself.

And that’s kind of what makes this prayer work. So many of us try so hard to get better, do more, change the world, and all we ever seem to do is fall flat on our back. And its sad because I feel like no one ever told us that we’ll never make it that way. It’s just not possible. The only true path to freedom is adoration. The forgetting of oneself in the awe of another is the only place we can be changed, for to change into something that we are not, we must see what it is to what we must aspire."

That's what the singing and worship times were like for me - a moment to forget myself and focus on God - on all that He is and all there is to adore in Him. I just love those times...

So that's been the month of June and summer's well on its way to halfway over! Well, not quite yet, thankfully. :) Next week Mackenzie's wisdom teeth come out (any of you reading, say a prayer for her on Monday morning!) and then it's July. Whew.....

The Light Meets The Dark

I've been wanting to write something about Tenth Avenue North's latest CD ever since it came out, but there are so many good things that it's just been hard to get my thoughts narrowed down and onto paper, so to speak.... so beware, this may be a long post. ;-)

In their own words, the purpose of their first CD was to simply get out the message of the gospel - that "No matter how pure we are, we need [God] still, and no matter how far we've fallen, we're not too far gone." (thank you, God!) This second CD, The Light Meets the Dark, has this purpose: "It's a call not only to believe the gospel but to let it so saturate our minds and hearts that we actually begin to live like we believe it... It's a cry for honesty, for truth, and for an encounter with the One who is truth, and having that encounter change the way we see the world."

I definitely get that message as I listen over and over to the words of these songs - they are all so good and have touched my heart in so many different ways. I don't really know that I have a 'favorite' -- that seems to change for me from day to day. But there are lines in each of the songs that speak to me and I wrote various ones down the other day that I really liked and thought I'd just put those in here. So here you go:

---So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do so we think that you’re good

---So you hide but you find that the shame won’t disappear

---You fought but you were just too weak
So you lost all the things you tried to keep

---The One the wind and waves obey
Is strong enough to save you

---You are more than the choices that you’ve made
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create
You’ve been remade

---Cause this is not about what you’ve done
But what’s been done for you
This is not about where you’ve been
But where your brokenness brings you to

---You came to touch the hardness of our hearts
You gave us truth that truth is who you are

---And we’re looking for love but finding we’re still in need

---It’s not enough just to say that we’re ok
I need your hurt, I need your pain
It’s not love any other way

---So reach in and touch my scars
And know the price I paid for your heart

---Broken I was for you
Broken I’m still for you
My broken heart breaks for you
Broken I’m over you

---So what happened to your eyes?
I saw them wander just like mine

---It’s yourself you can’t see past
And Lord isn’t that just like me?
If only we could see
That He’s already set us free

---Will I find that letting go lets me come alive?
So empty my hands
Fill up my heart
Capture my mind with You

---You slowly lifted your head from your hands
You said, “I just don’t think that you’ll understand
You’ll never look at me that way again if you knew what I did…
But I never loved you more even though now I knew what you did

Now, if you want to know which songs go with which lyrics, you're just going to have to go out and get the CD and find out! :) I really love the grace that is spoken through the words "You are more than the sum of your past mistakes..." That's definitely a truth that I struggle to believe. And the plea to "capture my mind with You" was one of the lines that really 'caught' my attention as I listened to the CD for the first time. I also have to admit that I'm a sucker for a really good ballad, and I don't know if that's what they'd call the last song on the CD, "Oh My Dear," but that's how I see it. It tells the story of a woman with a secret she's been living with and the fear that goes with sharing that and putting it out in the open. After listening to that song, (and you're all going to think this is pretty silly, I imagine) I just sat there and thought how much I wish I could just sit down with this really nice guy Mike who is singing this song and pour out my heart to him -- he just had me convinced that nothing I would say would condemn me in his eyes.... such a nice thought. Now I doubt seriously that I would ever get the chance to do that (haha) but thankfully, God reassures me that "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:1) I can always picture Jesus singing that song to me and know that I am completely safe with Him. :)