Michigan!

I thought that I would update with what is going on with me in Michigan! I am still working at Origami Brain Injury Rehab, as a reabilitation aide, which I loveeeee. I work Friday - Monday, and then come home Monday night. Tuesday and Thursday I babysit Anna Pierce, which is amazing, and I absolutly love. She is 6 months and the cutest nugget ever. Here we are...

And here we are with her sister, Shengnan, who I give violin lessons to once a week....

I am also taking Eukaryotic Cell Biology at MSU, which is awful. It's only 6 weeks and therefore very fast paced, but I am actaully doing well keeping up so far. Its Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and so Wednesday I have to drive up to East Lansing for the 2 hour class. Don't worry, I always have a good book on cd so I love my drives.

And wedding planning....sheeeeeeesh there is a lot to do! My mom is being very helpful, and so is Mark's family, and so I'm sure everything will come together. It is just a lot of decisions! And of course my sisters have loved helping out...well mostly just giving their opinions :) Anyway here is a pic of Mark and I before he left! I really like it!

----B-----

Fishing for Cows??

I spent my last birthday today as a single man, and I got to tell ya, it wasn't really how I imagined it would be. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time, but I never would have guessed that I would spend it feeding cows, fishin', and going to the zoo! Hahaha, but such is life. And don't worry, I talked to my beautiful fiancee and she said that she would cook me all my birthday dinners from now on. Then after a small pause pause she changed her mind and told me that she would take me out for my future birthdays!!! ;) Thanks B, you are so precious. Anyway, this picture is me feeding the Young's cows. For those of you who don't know, the Youngs are my host family. That's Craig in the back of the pickup(the state car of Texas). They have a couple dozen cows and their family owns a thousand acres of land. I was trying to call the cows over to feed them out of my hand, you have to call them over like this, "Soot, cow, soot!" I didn't get it, but that is just what you say. I got one to eat the pellet out of my hand, the tongue was huge and fury. Cows are huge! Just in case you were wondering, kinda intimidating, but they are gentle giants, more scared of you then anything.

They actually followed us around all over the ranch, it was kinda fun. I sorta felt like a cowboy! I know I'm a huge dork, but I thought that was fun. It's so peaceful out there in the middle of nowhere. All the trees in the background are mesquite trees. They are terrible! Really more like huge bushes then everything. Everyone down here hates them and they have huge thorns that wreck tires and are a huge pain. The only thing that they are good for is to burn and grill meat over.

They had quite a few baby cows too. I don't really have much to say about them other then they were around too.

Lesson in how to speak Texan:

Tank=Pond

So if you are going to the tank, that is really just a pond. So we were fishing in their tank. And the cows come in there to drink and cool off. Some of the cows would get into the water and muck deep enough so the water touched their bellies. They were a fun backdrop to the morning. They would lie down and relax in the mesquite trees too. You can see a cow hiding in the background of this picture.

This is me with one of the bass that I caught. We were using minnows for bait. That was a new one for me. They had a lot of turtles in the pond that likes to sneak off with your bait. Sneaky turtles.... But after catching a couple of fish, I got bored and wanted to catch something a little bigger......

That's when I started fishing for cows!


I just wanted to thank everyone for making my birthday special! I really appreciated all of the calls, facebook posts, and a special thanks to the Youngs for everything. You are all great and I love you all!

I also forgot to mention that I had an outing with youth group at the zoo. It was a pretty nice zoo for a smaller city. It was really cool. I had a great time with the kids, we did a fun photo scavenger hunt. I really like the kids and they are starting to open up to me more and more. So that is really exciting!

Oh yeah, the Young's made some a great Texas dinner for me with steak and potatoes and strawberry shortcake for dessert! I was great. I really like meals like that. And I didn't tell them this, but the dinner reminded me a lot of home.

PS- I just saw a Pure Michigan commercial on tv!! Hahaha! Is that Tim Allen that narrates those?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK!!
Yay it's Mark's 23rd birthday today so that is pretty exciting! I sooo wish I could be hanging out with him, but he did get to go fishing today, which he loves (and I am sure will post about), so that is wonderful. Praise God!

- B

My home away from home

Well, I thought it was fine time to fill you in with where I'm living. It's this great little brick house in the suburbs. It sticks out in the nieghborhood because every house is a one story brick house. Hzhaha! I'm still having some problems finding my way around the nieghborhood because everything looks exactly the same! There are a lot of birds around too, but no robins. Lots of blackbirds, doves and blue jays. And lots of others that I have no idea what they are. They have cool little ones with really long tails, but I have no idea what they are. Something to research I guess. Back to the house, it has AC, which is all you need to know, because it's hotttttttttttttt down here.This is my room, nothing special, just a room. I choose to picture the ceiling fan because it's my bestfriend. I love love love it, and don't know what I would do without it. Also, I just noticed the huge stack of pillows in back there. When I got here, there were six pillows on the bed, and I brought two of my own. When those got on the bed, there was no room left for me, so I had to move the pillows. I know, rivoting story, but that's just a part of my life down here. The sheets are a nice pink too. Nothing sucks the testosterone out of your body quicker than pink sheets!

Oh yeah, one last thing, my church keys! I can get anywhere in the church with these bad boys. Pretty cool, I know. So I'm really looking forward to exploring the church with some more detail. I will make a post someday about the church building, so get pumped.

Last thing, I promise. I got to interview and hire an intern today! That was fun. I've never hired anyone before, or interviewed them for that matter. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with him yet, I was just told that I could have one. So this should be interesting. He is a cool guy, his name is Austin. And I found out today that I get to plan a mystery trip! Exciting day at work! I will post later about the youth group too. Thanks for reading, I really appreciate y'all ;)

Engagement party pics :)

I wanted to join in the blogging fun, so here are some pics from the engagement party/going away party that we had last week in Plainwell....

Amy, me, Mark, and Ashley
Looking at my new picture book with Mark's mom

Myself and the Imminks :)

First days in Texas

Here are my photos of Texas!! I promise that more will come. The first is just a random sculpture that I found in Abilene, I thought it was pretty cool. It's a giant skull of a bull if you couldn't tell, but y'all ;) are pretty smart, so I'm sure you knew that already. The next is the office that I walked into! The kids decorated it all nice for me to feel welcome and I sure did. I'm a little overwhelmed with everything job-wise, so I'm sure that later I will fill you in about that.

This next picture is of me with the Texas sign at the welcome center. I had to run across the street to get this one, but I thought that you would appreciate it Mom! And the last picture is of me and the famous Red River. It was actually Red! I thought it was just a name, but it's a description too. I'm trying my best to acclimate myself to the local geography, but struggling a little bit. It's kinda like that first day of vacation where everything is new and if you blink to long you might forget where you actually are, hahaha! But I'm managing. Thanks for following my journey so far and I will do my best to keep you guys updated. I love all of you and miss you sooooooooo much already! -Mark