Happy 40th Anniversary, Papa and Gigi!

During Christmas holidays, we had the privilege of celebrating David's parents and their 40th wedding anniversary!  40 years, wow!  That's such a huge accomplishment, especially in this day and time, and we were thrilled to be able to honor them.  

David's sister, Cari, made the centerpieces, and I think they turned out so well!  Shes way more crafty than me, ha!

For their wedding 40 years ago, Papa and Gigi used red and white for their colors, so we went with a red and white theme, very apropos, don't you think!  I love how their cake turned out, and it was divine!

David and Papa.  

Miss Cindy and Cari visiting with a family friend.  Or maybe relative, I cannot remember!

The happy couple.  

The original four!  This family sure has grown fast and furiously over the past few years!

David and his mom.  

Papa and Gigi with the Calhouns.  

The whole family! 

Papa and Gigi with the O'Dells.  

Papa and Gigi with all their little grandchildren - Carter, 7; Summer, 6; Tilly, 5; Lincoln, 3; Story, 3; and Emery, 21 months.  

Papa and Gigi with some sweet friends.  

Family and friends.  

Story with Aunt Karen.  I adore these pictures of them together, so much so that I could not choose between the two!

That's some good sugar!

Emery with her Mimi, Cory's mother.  

Cari with her mom and dad.  

Cousins Ashley and Derrick.  

One of my favorite parts of the celebration was seeing all of the little cousins playing together.  They had the most fun!

Sweet sisters.  

Love these precious faces!

My Story girl.  

And my Tilly girl.  She was so tired during the party, and every few minutes she would ask me how much longer!  Finally, she curled up on my shoulder and just went fast to sleep!

Papa and Gigi getting ready to cut the cake.  

I am so thankful for Miss Cindy's sake that Papa didn't try any funny stuff!

I love this look on his face!

Going in for the smooch!

Funny face!!

I love that Carter wanted to be in this picture!

Tilly and Papa.  

All the family members who were able to be at the celebration.  

We framed the invitation and had the guests to sign the matte, so that Papa and Gigi can hang it up in their home as a reminder of this special day.  I love that Carter wrote Happy New Year, ha!

Tilly and her friend, Eli!  These two always seem to have so much fun when we are together.  

Cousin Jordan with her Mini-Me!  

Happy Anniversary, Papa and Gigi!  We are so thankful that we were able to celebrate such an important milestone with both of you.  Thank you so much for being such a wonderful example to us and to our children.  We are thankful for the legacy that you are leaving in your path.  We love you!

12 years!

Four states, four little loves, two seminary degrees, three summers of Fuge, six little furry friends, five churches and 12 years ago, I said, "I do" or I'm pretty sure it was "I will" to this handsome love of mine.  

I will follow you wherever you lead our family to go.  I will laugh with you until our sides feel as though they will split.  I will cry with you when life hurts because sometimes it just does.  I will change lots and lots and lots of diapers with you.  I will go with you on long rides in the car.  I will fall in love with you 4x over as I watch you become daddy to our little ones.  I will go gray with you.  I will do lots and lots of laundry with you.  I will cover my head with the pillow when your alarm goes off for all those hunting trips.  I will watch Friends with you over and over and over.  I will call the dawgs with you every Saturday in the fall.  I will travel with you to New Orleans any day your little heart desires.  I will eat beignets there with you, too.  I will take long walks on the beach with you.  I will dream big with you.  I will pray for wisdom and direction for you.  I will be a shield for you.  I will always want to hold your hand.  I will listen.  I will hug you tight.  I will giggle with you under the covers before we go to sleep.  I will date you.  I will walk lots of laps with you.  I will talk for hours with you.  I will always want to tell you first before anyone else.  I will send you lots and lots and lots of texts.  I will hide your duck calls.  I will tease you when you want to go to bed really early.  I will listen intently as you preach and write down most every word you say with the hopes that one day our littles will read your words.  I will go on fun trips with you.  I will.   

Happy 12 years, David Michael O'Dell! I look forward to the next 12 with great anticipation.  

You will always be my favorite!

I love you to the moon and back a whole bunch of times!

Happy 11 years, my love.

Happy Anniversary to my love.  In honor of our 11 years together, I want to remember something special from each year.  I wish I had the pictures to go with the memories, but some things are just forever embedded on your heart and a picture is not even necessary.  

• First year (2002) - During our first year of marriage, David was serving as a youth pastor in Marmaduke, Arkansas.  We had the greatest kids in all the land.  They still are.  We won't talk about the fact that many of them are married and parents now, yikes!  I love that social media allows us to easily keep up with them.  
• Second year (2003) - It was this year that the Lord called us away from Marmaduke and through a series of events led us to work our first summer of FUGE as a married couple and eventually moved us to New Orleans for seminary.  
• Third year (2004) - A love/hate relationship with the city of New Orleans began.  Throughout this year, the love grew stronger and stronger, and it's definitely one of our very favorite cities today.  We worked another summer of FUGE together in Nashville for the second summer in a row and loved every minute of it.  
• Fourth year (2005) - David graduated from seminary, we worked our final summer of Fuge, moved to Atlanta, where David was on staff at First Atlanta, and I began teaching third grade at the Heiskell School and learned we were expecting our first baby.  Such a fun year with so many new things!
• Fifth year (2006) - Our big baby boy was born!  We learned we really didn't know as much about being parents as we thought, and we learned that babies don't come out knowing how to sleep all night, ha!  David also completed his one year internship at FBA and began a new position at Sandy Plains Baptist Church in Marietta.  We bought our very first home on Randall Drive.  And we found out we were having another baby! 
• Sixth year (2007) - Our big baby girl was born!  I continued to teach at Heiskell, and David began seeking senior pastorate positions.  And we found out we were having another baby! Don't worry, we figure it all out this time.  
• Seventh year (2008) - David became the senior pastor at FBC Austell.  He also began the doctoral program at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  Our Tilly girl was born.  We sold our house on Randall Drive and bought our second house on Brooks Drive.  We learned that this parenting thing was not as hard as we thought, and we might know a little bit of what we were doing.  Oh, and we gave in to the swagger waggon movement.  Don't worry this was just a phase.  
• Eighth year (2009) - We settled nicely into our lives as a party of five.  We tried our hand at being domestic and planted a garden, canned some stuff, and made our own baby food.  David continued pasturing Austell, and I continued to teach at Heiskell.  And we found out we were having another baby!  Party of six, here we come!
• Ninth year (2010) - Our sweet Story was born.  I moved to a part time position at our school, so I could spend some more time at home.  We took our family to New Orleans for the first time.  We returned a second time in December because David became Dr. David O'Dell!  
• Tenth year (2011) - What a year! I became a stay at home mom.  The children enrolled at a new school in Powder Springs.  The Lord called our family to move to Hattiesburg, MS, so David could become the senior pastor of Hardy Street Baptist Church.  David and I spent three awesome days just us in New Orleans to celebrate our anniversary.  
• Eleventh year (2012) - David has thrived in his new position here in MS, and I have loved watching him dream and grow.  He has been on television and the radio to share about the exciting things going on at our church.  We took our family to the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans.  The girls became little ballerinas, and Carter played his first season of flag football.  David was hospitalized and had major surgery.  I took pictures of several beautiful families and began having Bible study in our home with some of the sweetest college girls in all the land.  What a great year it has been!  
• Twelfth year (2013) - We have much to be thankful for and look forward to.  Thanks to some of those sweet college girls, David and I will get to celebrate with a date Sunday night!  

David, thanks for asking me to be your wife.  Thanks for putting up with me for all these years.  Thanks for making me laugh so hard my sides hurt.  Thanks for making me smile so hard my cheeks hurt.  Thanks for teaching me to love so deep my heart feels like it may burst.  You are my favorite.  I love you to the moon and back a whole bunch of times.  

10th anniversary trip to New Orleans.

I mentioned earlier about David's parents coming to keep the children, so that David and I could go away for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.  I still can't believe it's been 10 years already.  Wow!  We've acoomplished much in our 10 years, too.   Anyway, we have been talking for a while about what to do for our big trip.  I just didn't feel comfortable going out of the country or even flying, so after serveral talks and Papa and Gigi graciously offering to keep the children at our house, we went to one of our most favorite places in the whole world.  New Orleans!  We had not been back there together without children since we lived there, and it was really a treat!  Sunday after church, we hit the road.  

This was our first stop in Picayune, and it was most appropriate.  During our seminary days, we ate lots of Popeyes chicken, where two could dine for $5.99.  That is not the case anymore, ha!  We checked into our hotel, rode around for a while trying to decide where to eat, and we ended up at this place.  

Mulate's is one of our favorite eats.  Our first time to eat there was during seminary when David was interviewing with First Baptist Atlanta.  We ate crawfish corn chowder and salad.  It was delicious!  

Monday, we wanted to find a place to watch the UGA game, and our plan was to eat at Voo Doo BBQ on St. Charles, another favorite.  But. . .they were watching the Nebraska/S Carolina game, what!  So we left, and drove around like mad looking for a place.  We ended up at Serranos, which was also a favorite place of ours.  They willingly changed the channel for us, so we were most content to eat chips and cheese dip and watch the dawgs play.  Sadly, it didn't end up as we had hoped.  

Monday night we treated ourselves to a fancy dessert at Mr. B's on Royal Street.  It was so yummy!  I had bread pudding and Cafe Au Lait.  David ate the pecan pie.  

During our stay, we were able to go to the Sugar Bowl thanks to a good friend here in Hattiesburg.  We didn't really care for either team, but we sure are not about to turn down the chance to go to a college football game.  In the Superdome!  Some of our good friends from First Atlanta, Kevin and Casey, are huge Michigan fans, so we took this picture for them!  

Definitely, without a doubt, my favorite, favorite thing about being away with my love for a few days was our daily walks around the quarter.  Every morning, we got up, put on our walking clothes, and walked and walked and walked.   A couple of days, we even went twice!  It was great, the weather was perfect, and the company was oh so sweet.  David never went in the St. Louis Cathedral while we were in New Orleans for seminary, so we went inside and walked around.  Beautiful.  

The quarter does not offer the nicest bathroom facilities, so David helped me sneak into several restaurants, ha!  This was one of them.  I just loved the name!  

Each day when we walked, we had hopes of having beignets at Cafe Du Monde, but the line was always halfway down to Jackson Square, but finally we got it!  

And they did not disappoint.  I don't know if you can go the big easy and not stop here.  

There is no small amount of cheap entertainment in New Orleans either.  We see these street dancers every time we are here, but we've never stopped to watch, so we did.  It was nice to be able to be spontaneous with our time.  That's a rare treat for us!

Our last night in New Orleans, we got an upgrade from the seminary hotel, to the Renaissance Arts Hotel on Tchopatoulis (pronouced chop-a-tool-is), just blocks from the Superdome.  Thank you, Papa and Gigi, for hooking us up!  It was such a trendy place to stay.  We loved being in the middle of all the action on Sugar Bowl night.  

And here's our view during the big game.  We had a great time.  The game itself was not that great until the end.  In fact, we left at the start of the 4th quarter and walked back to our hotel.  We ended up watching the rest of the game in the restaurant at our hotel.  The Michigan band played and marched down the street right in front of our window after the game.  What a fun night!  

And here we are, 10 years ago on January 5, 2002, in Statesboro, Georgia, at Pittman Park United Methodist Church.  Right after we were married, we lived in Marmaduke, Arkansas, for two years.  Then, we lived with my mother for a few months in Elberton, Georgia, before being called to seminary in New Orleans.  After seminary, we were called to Atlanta, Georgia, where we have lived for the past 6 years before this October, when we were called to Hattiesburg, Missisippi.  During that time, we also worked MFUGE twice in Nashville, Tennessee, and once in Mobile, Alabama.  And then, there are our four little blessings, Carter, Summer, Tilly, and Story.  If you had told me 10 years ago that I would have four children in 48 months, I would have told you that you were crazy!  Now, we're the crazy ones, crazy in love!  So thankful for 10 years with David.  Thankful for our life together and the sweet family we are building along the way.  Oh, how I look forward to the next 10 with great anticipation.