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.

Busy little Bee...

I'm trying to remember where I put November because I seem to have misplaced it.... I honestly couldn't tell you what happened to the month except that it's not here anymore. November was intensely busy for myself and the church. (On a side note: November down here stinks! Everything seems to be either green or brown with a couple flashes of dull color here and there, nothing like Michigan!)

During the month we conceptualized, visualized, theorized, planned, through together, presented, and gathered a stewardship campaign. In an effort to organize a lay driven church we tried to present allllllllll the different areas that can be served in, in our church. It was nothing short of a miracle that it actually made it to the congregation looking respectable. I'm sure that next year we will have plenty of alterations to make and amend.

Part of my mission here is to reform the youth program and I believe one of my biggest roles in doing so is to change the overall culture of the students. One of the focuses was to put them in situations of self-discovery and discussion with peers under the guidance of adult leadership, aka making a small group emphasis in the program. My other large focuses in this reformation is making the ministry driven by the youth. In the effort to help the students trade in their bibs for aprons, I have established certain areas for the students to volunteer their time and talents to the group. My whole goal in doing this is to help facilitate a change in attitude of just showing to up, to students taking ownership of the group. So this is pretty much a work in progress, but like George Gillespie said, "Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action."

I wrapped up my November with a trip to Jacksonville, Florida. Brittany and her family and extended family were celebrating Thanksgiving down there, so I decided to tag along. I have to admit that I was a little bit slow out of the gates here in Abilene. In the po-dunk little airport here I was faced with a 3 hour delay due to for in Dallas. But, just like any good delay, it only started out as a half hour delay but gradually grew and as my patience gradually shrunk... Fortunately, I had a book, so I got to know John Knox, the famous reformation leader of Scotland. My thing lately is that whenever I go on vacation, I read a biography. This was the biography of the trip. Which I'm sure you are all reading this blog to find out what I'm reading on my vacations... Anyway, long story short, I caught to the last flight to Jacksonville that day and everything turned out fine. Before we travel any further, I do have to admit it was weird not spending the holiday with my family, (it was the first I have missed), but as life changes, we have to be prepared to change too. As Brittany and I move into this next stage of our lives, I'm sure that we both are going to have a lot to learn about being flexible. Speaking of being flexible, thank you, my readers, for being flexible as I chase tangents around....

Back to the estrogen-fest that was vacation with the Sheets, hahaha! (I'm going to hear about that one later) But seriously, I was great hanging out with them all. I have to admit, I am not fully trained yet to a capacity where I can endure a routine diet of Edward Cullen, "say yes to the dress", "america's next top model" and whatever show features dancers bouncing around aimlessly in clothes that wouldn't fit a 5 year old. Maybe I will get there... Or maybe I should start praying that somewhere down the road, when Brittany decide to have kids, that we will only have boys.... I truly did have a wonderful time hanging out with all of the Sheets girls. We had good times playing on the beach, playing with kids, eating meringue cookies, telling great jokes, and giggling uncontrollably.

Well, that's all I got in me for now. I have three weeks here in Abilene, then I'm flying back north! I will see you soon and try to write again before I'm married! Love you all!

My life in pictures

This is Mark when he was little, literally the cutest boy in the entire world!!!

Anna love going to the park and playing on the swings, and I just happen to love taking her!!

Lex and I going to our "pink flamingos" soccer team game. It is an AYSO team with 7-8 year old girls, and we loooooooooooved it.

Anna on halloween, she was a fairy princess, obviously :)

Lex was home from school (yay for h1n1 closing schools), and she was holding Anna on her lap while she was studying, and Anna just fell asleep like that, haha.

This was after carving pumpkins, it was lots of fun this year.

Andddd one more of Anna and I. Remember people, I hang out with her 40+ hours a week, so we get loooooooots of pictures.

So, life has been good! I have been pretty busy, but I loooove this time at home! I have been babysitting (I like to call it nannying, because it makes me feel more important :), so I have been nannying little Anna all day Monday-Friday. I also tutor two high schoolers in math, play violin in an orchestra, am taking a class at KVCC, pre-marital counseling, co-leading a small group with RBC, coaching a litle girls soccer team with Lex, and planning the wedding (well, kinda, my mom does most of the dirty work). This is all stuff that I love. So even though it's a little busy sometimes, I seriously love it. And I love waking up and hanging out with Anna all day, and getting to see my mom and sisters everyday. I am soooo excited for the wedding, but really just want to appreciate this special time I get to spend here at home.

Wow...

I almost completely forgot about the blog in this past month, sorry! I can't believe I let it slip for so long and thank you Brittany for the great reminder.

In this past month I have been a busy boy. I had some fun visitors drop by here to say hi. It was so great having my parents make the trip and it was so great for my mental health to see them, and their little stow away! I was so surprised to see Brittany had stowed away in the car and completely surprised me.

I think this is a good time to take a step back and take a closer look at surprises. Now when someone is surprised, they basically have two responses that they can give. There is the ecstatic response, which is your standard shocked, crazy excited response that delivers immediate satisfaction to the surpriser (I'm pretty sure that isn't a real word). The second response is a the confused response. This is characterized by a general shock that is highlighted by tones of confusion. The I'm happy to see you, buy I'm soooooooo stinkin' confused right now response. Generally less satisfaction is given to the surpriser, and often confused with not being happy about the surprise. The later is the the response that I gave. Just complete shock and bewilderment.

So crazy, I had such a good time with all three of them and showed them around. I showed them St. Paul and some of the city and some of the good eats that are unique to Abilene. I just can't say enough how great it was to see them and it literally recharged my batteries so much. I love my parents and my fiancee so so sooooo much!

After the crew took off to go home, I led a group of sixth graders (3 of them) on a "confirmation trip) to Dallas. We had an amazing time visiting a jewish synague, a greek orthodox church, and an all african american, "lively" church service. I learned a ton on this trip. The goal of the trip was to expose the students to our Christian roots and other worship styles.

Also, another fun thing that has been going on is premarital counseling. So much fun. I thought that it was going to be wierd and awkward, but it really hasn't. Brittany goes over to the pastor's house and we video chat me in and that's how it works. The whole process has been extremely affirming to our reletionship. On a side note, THIS WEDDING NEEDS TO HURRY UP AND HAPPEN ALREADY!!!! I have been engaged long enough, it's time to get married.

Whelp, I have been jumping around a lot here, so thanks for playing a long. I will try harder to keep you in the loop and see you guys sooooo soon!

The Performance Continues...

I just moved into our new apartment this past week and I'm very very very excited. This was the logical next act in my epic performance of "Pretending to be an Adult!" Act one was get a full time job with benefits, Act two was to get my own place to live and Act three of this performance to to GET MARRIED!!!! I think I'm the most excited about act 3, I think that one will be the best! So the performance continues.....

My apartment complex is Chimney Square, now I don't know how square it is, but true to it's name there are quite a few chimneys, in fact, my apartment has a fireplace. I'm still trying to figure out why you would ever need a fireplace down here. I'm told it does get chilly in the winter, but they say a lot of things down here and I will confirm that when I see it! I was telling some people that moving into your first apartment yields conflicting emotions. The first is an immense feeling of pride, that this is my kingdom, this is me! Now this feeling of pride is very shortly followed by a very humbling spirit of, I don't have anything to fill my kingdom with! So with out further ado, here is my bachelor pad, which is in desperate need of a woman's touch!

This is the entrance to my place, good ole 262. It's one the second floor and tucked away in the corner of the complex, which I like. Also, included in the apartment package was a covered parking space, so I'm livin pretty large here! I'm slowly meeting my neighbors and getting to know them. Quite a few are my age, so I'm hoping to build some friendships with them. Needless today, the door isn't that interesting, so lets go inside!










Here we have the "spacious" living area, which is a livingroom/entryway/sunroom/diningroom/bar/breakfastnook/parlor/greatroom/musicstudio/garage/movietheater/den/mancave/any other room that could possible describe the living area of a one bedroom apartment. As you can see, the only thing that I'm missing to be a redneck is a Budweiser and nascar on the tv. Notice the tv on the crate. I'm keepin it real. Also, here is the famous fireplace. I will keep you update as to how many times that I actually use it. I guess it's nice to have though?


Here is another angle of "the room"(that is what I will refer to it as so I don't have to type as much.) As you can see I acquired a table, chair and end table. Those were a gift from someone in my church. Also, I had another person give my a two settings of dishes, which is better than eating off of a clipboard. Also featured in this pic is my wet bar! Another thing I'm not sure how much I need, but I guess if I'm watching tv and I'm in desperate need of a glass of water and can't make it to the kitchen 3 steps away, that will be nice. Now it's a good place to put my tools. I might move the table closer to the bar in the future, right now I'm flattening some posters that were rolled up there. I don't know though. I really don't think about it to much.


Here is a quick view of the kitchen and hallway. This makes the hallway look really long, which is nice. Actually, if you tripped in the living room, you would fall past the wet bar, kitchen, and bathroom before you hit the ground in the bedroom. For those with keen observation, will notice the candle on the counter. You might ask, "well, the Mark I know would never have a candle." I guess that isn't much a question is it, hahaha. But anyway, there is a definantly apartment smell here, you know the smell. I was trying to get rid of it. I think it's here to stay. :(


And here is the kitchen where I cook all my cakes, make bread, cook lobster tail, and make creme brulee. I know that is misspelled, but work with my here. In actuality, the main courses here are sandwiches and mac n cheese. Once again, I'm livin large.








Here is the bathroom. Neat I know, but there is a story here. The shower curtain I got from the dollar store and it's so thin I'm not sure I would feel comfortable wrapping a sandwich in it for lunch! Well, not actually the shower curtain, but a similar plastic, you get the idea! It gets the job done though.







This is where the magic happens! Well, I don't know about that, but that is what they say on MTV cribs when they show the master bedroom. As you will notice the bed, it great, like sleeping on air! Also I have a great bed stand of a wine box, classy. Also, not featured, two closets. My closet and Brittany's walk in closet. Very cool. Well, I guess it didn't take to long to tour this mansion! It's not much, but I don't think that we need anything more than this. I like it!

Rainy Wednesday

Im finally blogging again....yay.

Well, my life has been good, I miss Mark a ton, but my good friend Alyson is home from California and so that has been real fun. She is getting married over labor day weekend, and I am in her wedding and she is in mine. Yesterday we went and got her bridesmaid dress from the store in Otsego where I got my dress (yay - I finally got a dress!!). My friend Amy came in from Lansing too, and got her dress. Then (with Lex and Anna t00 of course), we all went to Applebees for lunch. Then after I was done babysitting Anna, Alyson and I went rock climbing at Climb Kalamazoo. It was suuuuper fun, even though we both were wishing we were stronger so could climb longer, our arms just got pooped out. Then we went to dinner at Qdoba, Walmart and went to a movie at M-89. Some shocking news....Plainwell's M-89 Cinema raised its movie prices to $5, from $3.50. It was very sad, although I shouldn't complain about $5, because that is pretty good compared to most places.
I only have one more week working at Origami. This is bittersweet. I am so excited to not drive back and forth as much, have time at home, and babysit Anna full time, but I have worked there for almost 2.5 years, and I will really miss a lot of the people that I work with.

Here is a wedding update...
- I cannot get married at Richland Bible anymore. I am having a heck of a time finding a place, so if anyone has ideas, let me know. We are working on it still, and I am sure something will work out, its just makign a lot more work. Bummer.
- I got my dress! Its amazing, and I bought it right off the rack. It was also %40 off, yayyy. I took a couple pictures, and for some reason they are not showing up on my memory card.
- Almost all my bridesmaids have ordered their dresses.
- I met with my photographer, and she is really great, and I am excited for the pictures.
- Its about 130 days away!!!

Anyway, I dont really have too much else to say, guess this turned into a pretty boring post! Mark is on a staff retreat now, and hopefully will have some news about an apartment soon :)

Love,
Brittany

Anna!!!

This is Anna today!! She can't help but make you smile!

The Pictures that I promised!!!

Ok, so here are the pictures that I promised earlier. The first few are from camp and the rest are from my day trip to Dallas Fort Worth (DFW).

At camp, I spent quite a bit of time hiking and exploring the canyon. There was a great waterfall that you could hike to. Around it there were some great rock formations. On afternoon I was on top of the waterfall and I looked down and saw a water snake. Now, no big deal if you like snakes. I don't. Just like Indiana Jones, hahaha. So the waterfall is about 20 feet tall. So figured my best course of action to share my dislike of snakes with the snake was to through rocks at it. I actually hit it a couple of times, but didn't kill it and it swam off across the pool with me showering it with some more rocks. Thats my waterfall story, you probably had to have been there...





This is a picture of your favorite fearless explorer. You can't see it, but he is on top of a cliff (which he just climbed, a small 15 footer) overlooking the land that he just conquered.


















Here are a couple of my fellow explorers. We blazed a trail quite a bit off of the beaten path. We crossed a marsh and fought of some large bushes and found our way to the base of this formation. Great little climb! I looooooved it!










This is my small group that was in my second week of camp. A dozen 7th grade boys! I felt so bad for my co-counseler Lauren. She was a good sport about it though. Every boy was a little bit different, they ranged from athletic to videogamers to outcasts to homesick to didn't want to go back home. It was a fun group. They were crazy!









Just another Canyon shot. Pretty, huh? All week I just wanted to see how far I could make it down the canyon system and survive like Bear Grylls, but I refrained. Maybe someday...










This is Todd Rogers. I went to DFW with him and his dad, Mr. Rogers. hahaha. These next to shots were in the Fort Worth water gardens. Really neat! Imagine a giant bowl of stairs with steps that water flows over. It was really loud too.








This was the quiet reflective part. Really peaceful and a good place to get away from the world. The trees were beautiful, the pool was really shallow. Oh yeah, the walls that you see around it, they all have water flowing down them.









Warning: Historical Content! I will keep it to a minimum. This is in Dallas and its the Grassy Nole(sp?) This is where they thought the gun men were that killed Kennedy.











This was a guy that was selling books about how it was all a government conspiracy and coverup. You could tell that he really didn't have a strong grasp of physics or how people act in a crisis situation(which I am an expert in both...). He was kinda interesting to listen to.







The book depository. Where John Wilkes Booth did his sharpshooting. The sixth floor is the one with the arched windows.










There is the where JFK was shot. X marks the spot.











This whole part of the trip was a little weird. It was just different. It had a wierd feeling being somewhere that history was changed. I saw some people taking pictures on the X, so I figured it was thing to do. I didn't really know how to take a picture at a place where someone was murdered. So this was the best I could muster. I hope it isn't offensive. My pose felt better than just standing there awkwardly.



On to the new Texas stadium, or as they call it, Jerryland. In honor of Jerry Jones the owner of the Cowboys and the mand that built this palace. It cost 1.4 billion dollars! That is a thousand millions! It was cool though. Didn't feel much like a stadium, it felt like a hotel that happened to have a football field in the middle of it. I will just highlight a couple of things. That huge screen, it's 150 feet wide and as crystal clear as any flatscreen you will see. That was my favorite part of the stadium.





This was the Cottonbowl conference room, I just thought it was cool. I also sat in the NFL replay room, where they do all the film replay for when they throw out the red challenge flags. This place was was large!







We also were in the Locker rooms. Those were really neat. They had all of the players names on them. Pretty cool. It was really popular for taking pics at Romo and Witten's cubbies. So I just took a pic at a random. It was really cool. We saw the tunnel that they cool out on to the field and where they do the post game interviews too. Pretty Cool! After this I went to a Rangers game. Nice ball park. The people I was with were pretty proud of it, but it's no Comerica, or PNC (where the pirates play)park either. It was cool, I mean hot, hahaha. I forgot my camera in the car. It was an exciting game. 4 homers and 8 stolen bases! Crazy!

Normal Day

This is a little video that I worked on with a couple of my students. We are planning to add a little more in the future, so I will update then. This is what an average, standard day looks like in my life. Enjoy!

It's been a while.....

Hello faithful blog followers!

First I would like apologize for my lack of faithfulness to the blog and ask for some grace. I would say that I have had probably the busiest month of my life and I am very happy to see it start to settle down a little bit. Right now I'm house sitting for the senior pastor of my church, he is out of town for a couple weeks visiting friends and family in mexico. So I'm enjoying some peace and quiet and shark week from the parsonage. Reminds me of the time my family lived in the parsonage at maplewood, hahaha.

Oh yeah, and sorry, I don't think I have any pictures for this blog post, I will try to add something, but no guarantees. I promise to add pics on my next post!

Lets see, where should I start? Let me rewind to to about a month ago.

As part of my job, Director of Youth Ministries, I attend two consecutive weeks at church camp, which is awesome. The camp is called Ceta Canyon, which is part of the Palo Duro canyon system that lies north of Lubbock and south of Amarillo. It's about a four or five hour drive from Abilene. Just as a side note, the citizens of Abilene don't think it's a big deal to drive a long distance to get somewhere, I guess it's normal when you live in the middle of nowhere! Back to the story. You know when you go on a trip and you just show up and hop in a van and go? That's nice, it's a little bit more stressful when you are the one planning the trip, making sure that everyone is where they are supposed to be and that everything is accounted for. I had the task of organizing volunteers to drive together in a caravan fashion and I rode up in that caravan on both sunday mornings. The kids all rode up on monday in the church van, and driven by a member of the church. When the van got up to Ceta, I switched cars with the driver so that I would drive the van home, trailer and all. Which I was pretty impressed with myself and my driving skills with a 15 passenger van full of kids and a trailer behind it. I think I'm ready for family vacations ;) Anyway, the camp of awesome. When you are driving up to it, it is flat, flat, flat and then you just stumble on this giant hole in the ground.

In the canyon, there is no cell service, which is great for students that are enslaved to their mobile devices, not great for councilors that want to stay in touch with their beautiful fiancees. So a couple of nights, all the councilors drove to the rim to call their loved ones. One such evening while I was on the rim I was able to watch a thunderstorm moving across the horizon, AMAZING!! It was so cool.

The camp was really great. It was neat to interact with students from other churches. It was fun because they are sometimes more willing to open up to councilors, because of the environment. I saw a lot of kids really have great camp experiences, along with realizing God's love for them perhaps for the first time! Very cool! Other events included usual camp experiences like swimming, hiking, games, singing, and the like.

So like I said, I did this for back to back weeks. It was kinda cool to be able to do that. The first week was high schoolers and the next was middle schoolers. It was definantly draining, but great. I can't wait to go back next year.

On the way back from the second week of camp I had the not so great experience of losing my wallet :( Which of coarse is a less than desirable event and consequently added a nice bit of stress to my life. I'm slowly piecing my life back together as you read this.

But, all that aside, the next week of my life was quite amazing. Brittany came down to visit for a short week and see what life is like as a texan. It was so great to see another northerner that had my same accent! Hahaha, but seriously, it was so nice to be able to see Brittany and hold her hand and just "be" together. Although our entire relationship has mostly been long distance of one sort or another, it genuinely sucks to be 1200 miles apart. I had the wonderful opportunity to show her around town, see my church, and meet the people that I interact with. It was really great! My host family even through a small party so that Brittany could meet some people from the church. We also got some engagement photos done, the ones that we saw were good. Some were a little awkward, but I'm a little awkward anyways, so it's all good. Brittany even borrowed some cowboy boots for the photo shoot! Very cool. I'm looking forward to trying to get her down here as soon as possible again. It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard to drive her back to the airport. That seriously sucked, no joke. But while she was here, we got new phones and are now on the same phone plan. As we pretend to be adults, this is just another way that we are trying to make people believe that we are adults. Hahaha, it's so weird trying to be an adult! Anyway, we got phones with texting and I have literally not stopped texting her since she left! So now it's back to the long distance stuff, but I feel incredibly renewed by her trip. I can't wait to see her again.

Well, after that great time with Brittany, it's back to "work" for me. I love my job! It is so rewarding and challenging. The more that I do it, I realize that most of my everyday tasks involve planning. Planning for games, talks, parties, trips and everything in between. I had a couple of short days to prep some last minute plans for our mystery trip. And we left on wednesday and just got back friday night, or yesterday. We had a great trip to the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Huge Cities! That was another fun driving adventure. Driving the van with trailer while having another van follow you through a busy city that you have never been in while not having a great navigator as your copilot was to say, "an adventure." We saw and did a lot of fun things, from a scavenger hunt in a huge mall, to a zoo, to a water park, to touring the original dr. pepper plant. Very cool. Both nights we had a devotional time with one night my intern Austin gave the message and the next it was myself. Both nights the kids had the pleasure of trying to sing worship songs with Austin and myself playing our guitars. We were not great at it, but it was good none the less, just make a joyful noise to the Lord, right? It doesn't have to be great, thank goodness.

So this upcoming week is my last week with Austin and then he goes back to school at Oklahoma University. It will be really interesting because he has basically been there the whole time that I have, so it will be weird without him. Then, towards the end of august I have an overnight staff retreat. I'm pretty excited about that because I really like the people I work with. I will try and update you on my life a little bit more timely and with more pics in the future. Can't wait to hear more from you later! Love you all. Miss you like crazy, but lovin my call here.