John's Visit!

We love John Gahan! If you know John, you understand our excitement: he is simply a great, great guy. He is funny, friendly, flexible, and fun. We love him...which is why we are so darn pumped that he is here this weekend. It is also the reason why we are so sad about the fact that we may not see him for two more years. He is heading to Azerbijan in less than 2 weeks to serve in the Peace Corps; we know he is going to do a FANTASTIC, admirable job, and we couldn't be more thrilled for him, but we have to confess we are sad when we think about not seeing him for that long. We will miss miss miss him.

We did have a great day with him today, though...last night we ate dinner with John and his best bud (from Louisville!) Alex Harcourt, at La Altena, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant we recently discovered and love. Fajitas=yummy. Today we were up and moving fairly early--I had to get a 65 min. run in and Clay had to meet his team to warm up for their 10 a.m. game against CCD. Talk about a nail-biter, people--this one went down to the wire. Somehow (don't ask me how), McC recovered a CCD fumble in the endzone to earn a touchdown with only 2 min. left to go. As Clay said, "We got reallllly lucky today." Same thing happened with the varsity game--we were down until the middle of the 4th quarter when McC recovered a fumble and put some crucial points up on the board. Pretty exciting stuff.

We then went over to Carol and Tony's house for some yummy snacks and time with McC folks before running back and jumping in the McC Lake. We took Camden and he wasn't quite sure what to make of the water, but he sure was adorable. In fact, he was fun and cute all day--and tons of people stopped at the two games to pet and love on him, telling us that "beagles are the best." We sure do agree :-).

Tonight we found ourselves at one of the nicest restaurants in Chattanooga--Hennen's--with Kat and Nate, two friends we have made through our young adults group at St. Paul's. Nate is a chef at Hennen's, so we were excited to dine with a chef at his own restaurant, but we had no idea what treat we were in store for when we sat down and the waiter immediately removed the menus from the table. Over the next three hours, we were treated like royalty: five courses, all of which were not on the menu; repeated visits from the head chef at Hennen's; and glasses of good wine. It was incredible. The plates just kept on coming--and we kept getting more and more full. Glorious evening!

More cute pics of Camden: