a long weekend

Jeremy and I were blessed to be able to get away for the long weekend. For Christmas I gave Jeremy a trip to the CNN Headquarters in Atlanta so we planned to do that this weekend and just stay from Friday until Monday.
We got off Friday around 11. We stopped for lunch in Newnan and after lunch we wanted to get an icee. We stopped in every gas station in Newnan and not one of them had an icee. They all had these things called Slush Puppies- gross! We decided to get on the road because we wanted to miss all the Atlanta traffic that would be starting soon. So after we checked into our hotel we walked to the gas station that was close by and lo and behold...an Icee machine! I was so excited, then as I began to fix my icee the machine stops! It was out! Sad day! I settled for a Diet Dr. Pepper and a chocolate chip cookie. We went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen Friday night. We LOVE to eat there anytime we get a chance. We got the supreme pizza but we asked for it without mushrooms since neither of us care for fungus. While we were waiting for our food we noticed that the people around us were having food issues. The man across from us was very upset about his pasta because he wanted them to make this special vodka sauce for him and he sent his food back. The woman behind us was upset about her salad being drenched in dressing when she asked for her dressing on the side and they tossed her salad in it and then gave her dressing and there was some other issue with her daughters food. The manager was making his rounds trying to appease them. When our food was delivered we instantly noticed there were mushrooms on our pizza. I wasn't going to say anything, we could just pick them off. Well we had barely gotten our food when the manager walks up and says "You asked for no mushrooms didn't you" "Well, yes." "Let me go make you another pizza" "It's no big deal we can pick them off" "No, let me go make you another one, please." "Really, we don't mind." (what I really wanted to say is There are starving people all over the world, we are not going to waste this pizza because there are mushrooms on it, it's perfectly edible) So he insists that we have a dessert on the house and sends our waiter to us with a dessert menu after our meal. We reluctantly order a dessert, I mean who I am to turn down free dessert, whatever makes this guy sleep at night :) We ordered the brownie sundae (no pecans). When the manager suggested dessert he said we have a turtle sundae that is very good but neither of us like caramel and while we were waiting we both at the same time said we hoped there was no caramel on our dessert. About 5 minutes later our waiter walks up with our dessert...not a brownie sundae, but the turtle sundae...FULL of caramel. haha! We didn't say anything we just ate around it and paid and left. As we were walking out we realized it was Friday the 13th! No wonder we had so many issues!
Saturday we woke up to rain so we slept in, ate breakfast and lounged around before heading to the NorthPoint Mall. They have an Apple store so we were super excited about going there. Saturday night we had made reservations for PF Chang's. We got there about 7:15 (our reservation was for 7:30) and it was PACKED OUT! The people in front of us obviously didn't know to make a reservation, the wait was 2 hours! Crazy! We were seating within 10 minutes and had our food within 20. Not bad! It was SO GOOD! We shared the Dan Dan noodles with a side of the Shanghi Cucumbers. If you eat there ever I highly recommend the cucumbers, they are AMAZING! We even splurged and got a mini dessert of the Great Wall of Chocolate. YUM!
Sunday by far was one of the best days of our trip. We started out the morning with worship at NorthPoint. We went the 11:00 service so I guess it was almost afternoon, but whatever. Steve Fee led an amazing worship set including "From the Inside Out" my current favorite song. But Sunday morning was nothing compared to Sunday night. Jeremy and I had heard a while back that Louie Giglio, Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman were starting a church in Atlanta but there was no set date or anything. Well, somehow we got to talking about it and looked it up online and saw that they were actually having their first meeting on Sunday at 4:45 and 7:00 p.m. so we decided to go. They met downtown at the Tabnernacle which is a 100 year old church building that is now a concert venue. It was AMAZING. The acoustics in the room were unreal and Chris did a great job in leading worship. I would say that Sunday night was probably the best worship experience I have had, second only to the Ryman Auditorium in 2006 with Chrisy Nockels and Matt Redman. I mean, at one point I thought the building was going to collapse (not really) but the floor was vibrating underneath me. There are not even words to describe how amazing it was. Louie spoke about the mission of the church and how they want to reach out to the city and I really think they can do great things. They collected an offering at the very first meeting not to have money to build a building or pay to rent the venue but to buy a car for a new Christian who is a single mom working 2 jobs and to translate 3 books of the Bible into another language of 2 unreached people groups. That really shows the heart of the church and those behind it.
Monday on our way home we went to CNN. It was really neat to see all that goes on in a newsroom like that. We even got to hear the control room and see 17 of the over 100 reuters they see at all times and hear the director giving commands. It was also neat to see the sets of the Morning Express and CNN in espanol.
We had a great time being together and hanging out. We really were blessed to get away. It is always good to spend time away together and focus on each other and even better was the spiritual renewal we both had from Sunday.