The Bates!

Lawson Bates had a free concert in Mt. Airy Tuesday night and it worked out for us to go along with our friends, Matt and Makia! We had a great time! We got there really early because it was first come, first serve. The advantage of that though was being able to see the family and talk with them before the concert. If you're not familiar with the Bates family they are from eastern Tennessee and have 19 children. They have a TV show on the UP channel called Bringing Up Bates. We had the privilege of meeting them last year. While we were on vacation we attended their church and then got to go to Cracker Barrel with them afterwards. They are a great family! They obviously love the Lord and love people. They are extremely close and they truly care about each other. They have fun! They are real! Who you see on camera is who they are in person. We love watching their show, it's our favorite! We love learning from their example and getting ideas on raising a family.

The film crew was also there filming for the upcoming season. That was fun to watch behind the scenes. We got to talk to Gil, Kelly Jo, Nathan, Tori and Lawson. The concert was great! Lawson did an outstanding job! The gospel was presented and Gil Bates was available if anyone wanted to be saved.

With Nathan Bates

With Mama Jane and Tori Bates

With Kelly Jo Bates

Kelly Jo and Makia had to squat so we could see Matt! ;-)

With my man!

Lawson Bates

With Lawson Bates and Emily Ann Roberts

The cameras made me a little nervous! LOL! But with this last picture I couldn't avoid them! Nathan Bates took the picture for us and as we got ready the camera came up and filmed him taking our picture and then the camera man told us to take the picture again while he was filming it all! We'll have to wait for the episode to air to see if we made it on TV! LOL! It was a really fun night!