Bringing Up Bates "Tough Decisions & Large Ambitions"
- Chad, Erin, and Carson join Zach, Whitney, and Bradley for dinner. They enjoy talking about their little boys and their soon-to-arrive baby girls. Bradley loves giving cousin Carson hugs and kisses.
- Back at the Bates house, a somber Nathan knocks on his parents’ bedroom door for some “large talk.”
- “Ashley, she’s one of the best girls that I’ve ever met,” says Nathan. “Neither one of us have anything about the other one that we look at and don’t like, but we’ve come to the decision that we’re going to separate.” He and Ashley will still be friends and talk as much as they can, but they will no longer be a couple.
- Gil asks if their relationship is “on hold.” Nathan clarifies: He and Ashley broke up, but the decision was mutual and was on good terms.
- “Our main goal has been to try to pray about it and find out what God’s will is for us,” says Nathan.
- Nathan tears up as his parents give him a big hug. “It’s life,” he says, smiling through the tears.
- In Nashville, Tennessee, Lawson meets with an agent name Charles Dorris to discuss his budding music career and the tour he is planning for fall.
- “I think the future for Lawson is pretty bright,” says Charles. “Though there’s a lot of steps between where he is now and major stardom as a music artist, I think he’s on the right path.”
- The Bates heat their home with a wood stove, and their water comes from a spring. Since Gil is in the tree business, firewood is free. Three weeks after his surgery, he joins the boys outside to split some wood. “Hey, Dad, the ‘70s is calling; they lookin’ for their glasses,” jokes Jackson when he sees his father’s old school protective glasses.
- In the midst of the chaos of nearly a dozen guys chopping firewood, Gil accidentally runs over the front tire of Judson’s new bike with his truck. “Judson was probably as crushed as his bike was,” says Lawson. Thankfully, Gil is able to fix it.