Twentyfour

I'm writing this blog post with a center alignment due to fact that my intellegence level is prohibiting me from figuring out how to align it to the left, like a normal post.  So, I hope that you readers out there, where ever you are, enjoy the center alignment.  Also, pray for my itelligence level, it needs all the help it can get.....  Also, on an unrelated note, I would like to formally recognize that my blog posts are wordy and in need of a little more spice, so I will sprinkle some pictures of yours truly through out this post for your enjoyment!!

Anyway, I just got done celebrating my 24th birthday, so now everyone living in my apartment is 24!  Finally caught up to Brittany :)  We had a great time!  Highlights include checking out a new church.  We are "church shopping" right now, trying to find a solid, biblical church that has a mission that we can be apart of.  We checked out a nice church, and enjoyed it.  We really enjoyed the preaching, the singing, and the diversity of the church body.  We are going to continue to "shop" a little more and see what else we can find :)

We went to the Logan's for lunch and ate all of those great rolls!  We also enjoyed the shelled peanuts and threw the shells on the floor, my favorite part.  When I do that at the apartment, Brittany doesn't share in the same joy that I do.  Our waitress was just a ray of sunshine...  Not really, she treated us like the inconvenience that we were, and really when out of her way to make sure that we knew it, hahaha.  For some crazy reason, I feel like when she looks for her tips, the customers aren't so inconvenient...  So here is where I ask for your advice, because I'm at a crossroads.  My question isn't about percents or anything like that, my question pertains to when.  A big part of me thinks that tips are conditional to the service received.  Therefore, the better the service, the better the tips and vice versa.  However, as Christians, are we held to a different meter?  Should we extend grace(unmerited favor) to our waitstaff by tipping well no matter what?  I have heard that some of the people that waiters hate most are christians, the sunday afternoon crowd.  I guess my question is, are we doing a greater service to Christ by holding people accountable or giving them what they don't deserve?  Which is greater, grace or truth?  Anyone with thoughts?

On the evening of my birthday I left my wife at home so that she could study in peace, and I went to East Lansing, the home of Sparty!  My good friend Brad is finishing up his internship with University Reformed Church, Kevin Deyoung's church.  Brad had his last preaching engagement with the church on Sunday.  He did great!  I was so impressed with him, and glowed with a little bit of pride(I know, I know it's a sin), because he was one of the guys that I built into so much.  He will do great in seminary.  After seeing him preach, I went out with more friends from college to my favorite college bar, Crunchy's!  It's a dirty little hole in the wall that is so great!  Met some of my favorite people there, Zach, Mark, Brad, Nate, and Sanjay.  Great conversations, great beer.  It was such a good time!

Oh yeah, this was the cake that I made for my birthday!  I call it, "Basket Cake," I will leave you to guess why.  I whipped up this fun little number the night before, and it goes great with moosetracks and mint chocolate chip :)

On the road again!

Well, I just got done driving myself across the country.  For those of you curious how far it is from Abilene, tx to Warren, MI, it's 1350 miles.  I have to be honest, I'm pretty proud of the fact that I did it in about 23 hours!  I stopped for a couple hours of sleep, curled up in the fetal position in the front seats of the chariot of doom(for those of you who don't know, that is what I named my ford focus wagon).  Not the most comfortable because of:

a) seat belt poking me in the side

b) it's a tiny space

c) car's are not made for sleeping

d) when I fell asleep my ear was folded over

e) all of the above

The correct answer is e!  Thanks for all who played!  The ear thing was more of a when-I-woke-up type thing, but I'm counting it!  Have you ever fallen asleep when your ear is folded???  It's the worst!!  I hurts so bad, you wake up thinking that the dream you had of Van Gogh cutting your ear off was actually true...  Any way, I survived.  It was in a nice little travel plaza just outside of senic Vinita, OK.  The bonus was that when I woke up and tumbled out of my car in the morning, there was a McDonald's right there waiting to give me a breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee!  Ba-da-da-da-daaaaaaaa, I'm lovin' it!!! 

Time for another quiz question.  Which animal crossed the road in front of me?


a) Coyote
b) Wild Pig
c) Huge Racoon
d) Deer
e) all of the above

Answer: e!  The coyote and wild pig were kinda cool to see, I'm sure anyone who follows are blog has already heard enough about deer crossing the road in front of cars, but the racoon really impressed me!  This thing was massive!  To give you an idea, it's was roughly the size of a horse, no exageration!  Luckily, I was an alert driver and swerved just in time to drive under it's massive frame and in between it's legs!  I have a little car, remember??  That's why I had to give it a sweet, manly name!

It was foggy the whole time I was in texas and oklahoma.  And it rained the whole trip, until I got into the friendly mitten!  Something you should know about me, hate using my windshield wipers.  I don't hate windshield wipers, in fact, I think they are great and do a great job at what they do, however, for some reason, I just don't like to use them!  But there were times on this trip that it rained so hard, that when I had my wipers turned as fast as they could go, I found myself wishing they could go faster! 

Things I learned on this trip:
1) In oklahoma, you aren't supposed to drive through smoke, but fog is alright.
2) During the course of a long night of driving by myself, I enjoy talking to the toll booth attendents.  (Just to be clear, I do not enjoy paying tolls)
3) 5 hour energy drink does not replace sleep, which makes me wonder if it really has a purpose then....
4) Get directions from google, yahoo, ask, and mapquest.  They will all give you different directions.  For me, ask.com gave the fastest this time, however, some times their directions aren't very clear.


That's all I can think of right now...  So, let me leave you with this unrealated thought: When you have a huge box of business cards with information that is no longer correct, please do something fun with them.  For me, it's was randomly covering a coworkers office with them as a goodbye present.  This was me and my intern Will covering his office in my old business cards....

The past few weeks....

.....have been crazy.
Yes, the past few weeks have been nuts, but they have been so great. I have gotten to spend tons of time with my sisters and mom, and while I miss Mark tonnnnnnnnnns, it has been wonderful to get to spend quality time with the fam before the craziness of school starts. I will try to recap the past couple weeks:

- April 28th - heard we did not get the apartment, and needed more work history documentation submitted. Ugh. (We were planning on moving in May 1). Had a mini break down/panic attack.

- Decided to leave Texas a day early

- My amazing sister Wendy let me stay with her in Tulsa (on a few hours notice)

- Drove (by myself) from Tulsa, OK to Plainwell, MI in one day. (Thank goodness for Harry Potter on CD, diet coke, and junk food)

- Babysat baby toddler Anna (for four days - and loved every second of it) :)

- Found out we got the apartment (Mark worked really hard getting everything turned in and faxed quickly)

- Met Mark's parents in Warren, and moved most of our stuff (including our king sized bed, couch, tv,  and entertainment unit) into our apartment. It was verrrrrrry heavy and tiring.

- Celebrated my mom's, Jenna, and Lex's birthday at Mongolian BBQ. It was tasty and we took lots of birthday celebration pictures.

- Watched tons of Gilmore girls with my Mom and Lex

- Got to see my little baby girls soccer team (well now I guess they aren't really "mine") play a game. Cold + rain + wind + 8 AM + 8 year old girls  = looooots of whining and not much fun. But it was great to see them!

- Went to Chicago. My mom had a work thing there, and we tagged along. We had so much fun, and Jenna, Lex and I shopped all day Tuesday. And miraculously got along practically the entire time. Shopping literally zaps my energy and I am done in 2.4 seconds, but other than that minor detail it was amazing.

- Hit a deer on the way home (somewhere in Indiana), and pretty much totaled the car. Police came. We had to sit on the top of a tow truck (the car literally strapped to the top of the tow truck, and we were sitting in it) while he flew (literally 85mph) down the highway. Had to stay in another hotel. This one wasn't as fun. Mom was pretty stressed out (go figure), but everything still managed to get along pretty well, and thanks to my hilarious sister Jenna, we had a pretty good time.

- Jenna and I came to Detroit to get my ID card for school, name changed, and to unpack some of my apartment. She was soooooooo helpful. She totally organized my bathroom, sorted and folded clothes, was comic relief, and we chatted the whole way there and home. It was great. Oh yeah and hauled a 8492000 pound desk up and into my room.

- My mom bought us tonnnnnnns of groceries to get me started off in my apartment, and it is such a blessing.

And now here I am in Detroit, sitting at Panera (because we don't have Internet at our apartment), with day 1 of PA school behind me, which I will talk about later. But one word to sum it up is : Yay! God is so good, and I cannot stop thinking about how much he has blessed me. Mark and I have a verse lately - Psalm 55:22 - "Cast your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall". Mmmmmmmmmmm love it.

Here are some pictures of the events discussed above:

Love,

Brittany