Well, it seems like we have a good party assembled already!
I have absolutely no problems with Beginners, Kvothe. As a matter of fact, I only started playing around february this year and this will be the second time I start to DM Mines of Phandelver already - I believe you will get the hang of it very quickly! 
And hi to you too, Tersidian!
Concerning character creation for this campaign: Should I bring a few generated choices or will you rather be creating your own characters? Maybe we could even get the old character foundry running again…