Sunday, January 24, 2010

Some reasons why I love Texas/Abilene/Being Married

Just thought that I would share some things that I love about being down here...

- Being married is literally the coolest thing ever. I totally feel like we are playing house, and its so great, its so fun that we get to hang out every day together. Loove itttt!

- The weather is amazing down here. 80s in January?? I'll take it!

- Chick Fil-A and Jason's Deli - 2 fine restaurants that have yet to grace the north with their presence.

- People are conservative down here.

- Fox news is on everywhere you go.

- Mexican food is amazzzzzing, and I have had more the three weeks I have been down here than I have in my entire life.

- Its sunny here! Remember sunshine Michigan?

- Things are close by, like the stores and restaurants are like 4 minutes from our apartment.

- Its fun decorating our cute little apartment.

- I love that Mark works at a church, full of people who are encouraging to us, and soooo kind, and that I can go to work with him, and be a part of his ministry.

- Playing scrabble every night with Mark.

- Learning to cook has been really fun. Mark has ate some pretty terrible meals (well one), and its fun to try new recipes. I am actually so surprised how long things take to make - we are learning patience :)

Anyway, I just wanted to share some things that I enjoy about being down here. I miss home, and seeing my family a lot, buuuut I enjoy it down here!

Love,
Brittany

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Back in Abilene.....

WE ARE MARRIED!!!!!!

These past weeks have literally flew right past us and now we find ourselves back on the footsteps of reality, bummer! We want to start off a new year of blogging by thanking everyone for all of their prayers and support for us with the wedding and our big transition of moving to Abilene. We appreciate it so much! Our "plan" here is to really really try to update the blog way more often.

We had such a wonderful wonderful time on our honeymoon! It feels like we just bopped alllll over, and finally made our way to our new home. Here is a quick run down of our first two weeks of marriage:

We spent our wedding night in Grand Rapids at the Amway Grand, which was a lot of fun ;) Then we turned around back to Plainwell for brunch with our families and then headed for Chicago! The weather was horrrrible for the drive, the roads were so bad and it was snowing pretty hard. Usually when anyone travels to chicago from Michigan, they hope for an uneventful trip trough Indiana. That was our dream too, but not the case.... In my eagerness to get to another hotel, we got pulled over. I can honestly say though that I was innocent! While we drove by the cop, another car past us and my theory is that the cop read his speed instead of mine, because he said that I was going 72, but I know for sure that I was going 60. Then, my beautiful Bride, chimes right in and starts a long story about how we just got married (which the cop didn't believe at first because he thought I wasn't wearing my ring, but much like most of the night, he just wasn't on top of his game, because I clearly was). After a long wait in our car he finally let us off with a warning.

Well, the rest of the trip to chicago went well, I fumed the whole way about how much I hate Indiana (except for the colts). We had a blast in the windy city, and it was exactly that, windy! Freezing windy! It was sooooo cold. We ventured out a couple of times to go eat and do a little shopping, but spent the bulk of our two night trip in the hotel room, which was baller! It was so nice, our room was like two rooms put together and so nice!

We lefted Chicago and continues our trip south. We stopped in Tulsa for the night, but got there supppppper late and missed our gracious host completely! Sorry Wendy! We really appreciated the free place to stay though!

The next day we finished our trip to Abilene on Thursday, unloaded the car and just relaxed for a day. We unpacked our a little bit, but just didn't feel like that was a huge priority. We did have a little set back though, Brittany got a bladder infection:( A hundred dollars later, and a wife in a considerable amount of pain we learned some valuable lessons. We got Brittany some medical care and some meds, so she was feeling better within a couple of days. Just happy that this happened while we were in abilene and not on the cruise!

We woke up before the sun (this is highly unusual for the two of us) and hit the road on Saturday. We left at 5am and drove to Galveston for our cruise! We had a five day cruise where we stopped in Progresso and Cozumel, Mexico. We had such an amazing time on the boat! Our dinner table mates were a lot of fun. There was another young couple that was on their honeymoon too! We didn't have a whole lot in common though. There was another couple our age at our table too that was really great, we had a lot in common with them and would probably be friends with them in "real life." The fourth couple at our table was a lot of fun and was our parents age. We tried to get on the newlyweds show on the cruise, but didn't get picked, bummer! We did, however, buy drugs in mexico! When in Rome, right?? hahaha! No, we just picked up some antibiotics in case Brittany's infection came back. We thought this would be a cheeper avenue to travel than going through the minor emergency clinic again. I did feel a little rebellious buys the antibiotics though! Needless to say we didn't tell customs about that little purchase... Our cruise ended on Thursday morning and we drove back to Abilene.

Total Driving time: 2,317 miles or 37 hours in the car.

And here we are. In Abilene. Ready to go. More later.