July - Nationals, Celebrations, and Outside Remodel

Shew, just looking at that post title sounds exhausting!  Let's start with Bible Bowl Nationals.  They were in Orlando this year at Marriott World Center Resort - talk about NICE!  The pools there were unbelievable...

...and that wasn't even the biggest one.  We flew with all 30 or so of us down to Florida, get to the Marriott, go to check in, and the clerk says "You reservations aren't until tomorrow."  *gasp*  There was a third party we went through when booking through Nationals and they had the dates of Nationals a day off!  Luckily, the rooms were already available...otherwise we might have been finding lounge chairs by the pool to sleep on!!

The kids put in so much work that year and they were disappointed not to come home with any trophies (don't get me started on all the crazy/unfair things that happened that contributed to this!), but we still had a blast!  Went for a celebration dinner the last night to Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney, which was great because the kids got to walk around Downtown Disney and also go to Disney Quest arcade (although I wouldn't recommend Disney Quest - overpriced for what you get because it's super outdated, there are better gaming systems at home now - Disney fail!).

We made it home in one piece and closed out a successful Bible Bowl year with a banquet.



July is always full of fun because it's Ben's birthday and also our anniversary.  My parents had us over for Ben's birthday:

Ben's parents took us out to eat at Vincenzo's downtown to celebrate:

Emma and Shanon (Ben's sis and bro-in-law) were in town and went to dinner too, but I don't have a pic of them. :(

We celebrated our 7-year anniversary...hard to believe how time flies!  The funny thing is, I can't even remember what we did to celebrate, and neither can Ben, and I can't seem to find any pictures...must have been really memorable, haha.

For a joint birthday/anniversary present, I got Ben hockey tickets to a Nashville Predators game and planned a weekend in Nashville to go with it - in November.  Looking forward to that - I'll be sure to post after that trip.

Finally, yet another project on the house - but this time we paid someone to do it!  The wood trim on the outside of our house was rotting in places, so we had it covered in vinyl, and also had the shutters and door repainted.  I never liked the bluish/periwinkle color that was there before:

After: 

 Ahhh...much better :)