Out of the hospital and recoverying at home!!!

Sorry for the delay in relaying the news, life has been mildly crazy!  Here are the basic details: the doctor dominated the surgery and completed it ahead of time.  He took out Brittany's entire thyroid and a couple of lymph nodes.  Originally we thought that there was only one cancerous mass on her thyroid, but after the doctor got in there, he found another.  So we are really excited that the thyroid is out.  Brittany is recovering now, so hopefully she will continue to heal and get better.  (right now she is watching gilmore girls, half asleep...)

We had to be at the hospital by 5:30am do get Brittany all prepped for surgery.  So here is a pic of us waiting for doctors.  We had a lot of time, so we passed most of it by playing our gameboys.

This is us after the surgery, just hanging out.  Brittany has been such a trooper.  We were in the hospital for a day and a half, so we had lots of down time for reading, videogames, and chit chat.  Everything went really smooth, except Jenna and Alexa always trying to steal my comfy chair :)  Our nurses were awesome too! 

Alexa read us some Harry Potter too. 

Done with the hospital!!

And here is the cancer cake that I made for Brittany.  It turned out alright.  I was trying to do some sunflowers, because those are her fav, but we settled for yellow blobs, hahaha!  At least it was tasty!!!

Thank you for all of your prayers and love that you sent our way.  We surely could feel them and appreciate them all!  Last night after we got home Brittany's tummy was really hurting, and she could not keep anything down. So we are only doing tylonal, and no more heavy duty pain meds. Also, throwing up really hurts Brittany's throat, so pray for that, and her tummy. We are still recovering, so your continued prayers would surely be appreciated!  Love you all :)

Answered Prayer

(This is Brittany) God IS good and knows just what we need. Today I met with the director of my PA program at Wayne, and it literally could not have gone better. I was really nervous (sometimes I forget that my professors are human - they do a really good job of being professional and no-nonsense, which is very intimidating), but she was awesome. She was so reassuring that they would work with me, and that my health was top priority. She was just so kind, and talked about if for some reason I was unable to come back this year, that I would have a spot in next years class (without having to reapply). It was SO reassuring, and I just felt a huge peace and weight lifted after our meeting. I am going to try my hardest to keep up in school, and it would be such a bummer to have to wait another year, but I am going to get healthy, and beat this darn cancer! That was one thing we needed prayer for, so it was awesome to see how that prayer was answered so quickly and perfectly.

Here are some pictures from today:

Amazing flowers that some girls in my class got me! They are awesome, and beautiful, and smell wonderful. Recognize the colors? They are our exact wedding colors!

Here are some flower stickers we got from Meijer that we have stuck on our wall. I understand that putting huge stickers on your wall is kind of tacky, but I think they are really pretty, and it was a super cheap way to brighten things up. There is one more on the other wall too.  Borcherts - thats your table and chair :) thanks again!

Here is Mark baking a cake. Yayyy. He keeps coming over and "making" me taste things, and its tasting pretty fabulous! We decided that cake baking was not a good hobby after we lived in Texas and started baking cakes all the time, and then being "forced" to eat them all by our selves, and it was making us fat. So we made an executive decision to only bake cakes for special occasions. Guess cancer counts!

So, just thought I would thank everyone for your prayers. We are heading back to the West side of the state tomorrow after class, and going to have dinner with Mark's parents in Holland. Then I have to be at the hospital at 5:30am on Friday! Eeeek!

Weekend update!

So here is an update on cancer watch 2010.  We went to Plainwell this weekend to meet with our surgeon and for a CT scan of Brittany's abdomen and pelvis.  The CT scan had a little bit of excitement when she had some contrast injected in her arm through an IV.  First off, the technician couldn't find her vein, so she dug around in in both arms for a while.  After she finally stumbled on a vein, the vein burst, spilling chemicals into her arm, causing it to swell up to the size of a football and almost burst!!(according to Brittany...)  But for real it was scary. After bopping around Kzoo for a while after the CT scan (Olga's for lunch, hangout at the library, drove and walked all over the place), we went to meet our surgeon.  Dr. Stewart is our surgeon and we are very impressed with him.  He was a great teacher, and taught us what was going on and how he was going to fix every thing. 

The cancer that she has is called papillary carcinoma on her thyroid.  I'm not going to try to explain the procedure, because I don't want mislead anyone out there that is looking for step by step instructions for performing their own thyroidectomy.  Here is the jist, they are going to cut out Brittany's entire thyroid.  The incision is going to be horizontal in one of her neck creases, so that after it heals, it should be pretty invisible.  After the surgery, Brittany won't take any thyroid pills, in order to allow any pieces of thyroid left in her body to grow.  That way, in six weeks, when she is given her radiation treatment, it can kill the rest of the thyroid better. 

Brittany's Surgery is on Friday, July 23rd at 7am.  They will keep her over night too. 

Our Prayer list:  Wise Doctors with steady hands.  Money to start raining from the sky.  But seriously, for insurance and things like that to go smoothly. Because just an ultrasound of the thyroid (not the biopsy or anything), which took 10 whole minutes cost $629 (we just got the bill). Yikes. When Brittany graduates school, it will be nice to be on the other side of that :). Ok back to prayers:  a speedy recovery, and for school to work with us so that Brittany can continue being a student.

We did have the chance to have some fun this weekend too, amidst our trial.  I got the chance to powerwash a deck, and Brittany studied lots...  Hahaha!  But seriously, the highlight of the weekend was picking up our sister Alexa from the airport.  She just got back from two weeks on a mission trip to Romania.  We picked her up from Grand Rapids at midnight, and of course her luggage got lost.  Finally got her home and we left for Detroit at two am.  It was a monsoon, and was probably dumb to leave like this, but we wanted to get Brittany back to school so that she could make as many classes as possible before we have to start missing them.  We finally got home at about 5am, just in time for Brittany to leaver for school at 7am. 

Other Highlights of the weekend:

Pictionary with Jenna and Martelle(we are still undefeated, and looking for more challengers)

Playing New Super Mario Bros. on DS all weekend with Jenna

I made a couple bucks conducting surveys for Richland Bible Church

I got stung by a bee

Brittany Baby sat Anna

Funniest Story of the Weekend:

We took Anna to go swimming while Brittany was babysitting her.  After swimming, we packed up the car, and left.  We pulled out onto the road, got the car up to about 50 mph, and heard this loud banging on the roof.  I look in my mirrors in time to see Brittany's phone bouncing down the road behind us.  (in a retelling of this story, Brittany exclaimed, "And the wind just blew my phone of the car."  Like it was the wind's fault and she was the victim....hahaha)  We pull over, and I hop out of the car and search, and find the phone!  All the pieces!  The main component, the back panel and the battery.  I reassembled them and POOF!  The phone worked!  Perfectly!  The screen didn't even scratch!  Brittany's plan to get an iphone = fail.

Love,

Mark and Brittany :)

 

Our news

Hello family and friends,

For those of you who have not heard our news, we just received news that Brittany was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  This came as quite a surprise to us and turned our world upside down again.  What we have learned so far is that thyroid cancer is actually pretty rare. Treatment success is good if caught early (90% survival past 5 years I think). We do not know yet if it has spread beyond the thyroid. First step will be to remove the thyroid (no date yet) and then I suppose depending on what they find will decided on a course of treatment. Right now Brittany is still planning on sticking with PA school at Wayne but will get treatments in Kzoo.  We have a consult appointment scheduled for 4pm on Monday the 19th.

In the midst of this whirl wind, we made a conscience decision to trust God through this trial in our lives.  It seems that the first question that always comes to mind when bad news is delivered is, "Why is this happening to us?"  Although we can't be positive about exactly why this is happening, we can be positive that God is sovereign over everything, including this cancer. We aren't sure what is going to happen, we aren't sure how deeply this will effect the rest of our lives, and we aren't sure about the timeline concerning the cancer and treatment, but we are sure about placing our lives completely in the hands of God.  When I think about it, it's a balance of Brittany and my favorite Bible verses.  Brittany's favorite verse is Psalm 55:22, "Cast your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you.  He will never let the righteous fall."  And my favorite is 1 Corinthians 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink or what ever you do, do all to the glory of God."  We trust God and want to glorify Him through this situation. 

Here are some of our prayer requests:
          1.  That the Cancer is just in the thyroid
          2.  For doctors to be wise and skillful in all their decisions and procedures
          3.  For our insurance not to be a hassle
          4.  That we are able to glorify God through this trial



On some lighter notes, here is Brittany with some flowers her husband got her. 

Just in case you were wondering, this is what I look like when I run off to an interview.  Most recently, I interviewed with Big Beaver UMC for a part-time Youth Director position.  The church is about 7 miles from our place, which is pretty close.  And guess what???  I was just offered the position!  We are working out the details of a start date right now, so I will keep you posted on the the happenings!

Here is what Brittany looks like when she is running off to a site visit for school!  Part of her school programming has her going to area hospitals and taking complete histories and physicals of patients!  She always turns into a Nervous Nelly before each one, but comes back loving the experience and her interactions.  However, the honey moon is short, because she has to hand write a million page paper afterward.

This is me being patient.  That is no typo.  (I'm Brittany's practice patient)

I'm learning to cook more and more.  I'm getting the hang of some things, others not as much.  A couple of weeks ago I attempted to make chicken tacos.  Largely, I succeeded.  That however, was also the problem.  That I succeeded soooo largely!  I accidentally made enough for a small army!  We ended up freezing a lot of it ;)  (notice the coffee pot in the background as an indicator of the size of the batch)

Ok, this one is going to sound a little weird at first, but I promise it's awesome!  Recently, I have been obsessed with making my own yogurt!  It's pretty easy, and saves a lot of money.  Which is good, because Brittany and I consider ourselves to be quite the frugglistas!  Each batch makes about half a gallon of plain yogurt.  It's a little soupy, but once you get used to that, it's awesome!  It's perfect for making smoothies or mixing fruit in it. 

Thank you all for your prayers and concerns and for letting us share our lives with you!

Brittany's June Update :)

Its meeeeeeeeeeeeee! And blogging is literally the last thing I should be doing, but I thought it would be a nice little break from studying. I have 3 huge exams Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next week, so have been studying like crazy. The exams include a performance exam with vital signs, skin, eyes, ears, mouth, neck, and lymph nodes. We have to say approximatly 348,429,990 things in 21 minutes. Yes 21. At a testing center, with an actor, and our teachers are sitting in another room watching  us on video camera. And its pass or fail. Eeeeeeeeeek. We had a little taste of one, and it was on taking vital signs, and it was 5 minutes, and I almost failed that one (I was too slow, and like so nervous my heart was going to pop out of my chest). Anyway, then Tuesday I have a test in clinical medicine, over pulmonary. I feel alright about that. And a site visit at Detroit Recieving. Then Wednesday we have anatomy. Over heart, lungs, digestion, urinary, and reproductive. Seems like a lot? Oh yes it is. And the sad thing is, I felt pretty good before we started this section, like oh the chest and abdomen is going to be easy, I mean heart, lung, kidney, liver, oh yeah, I could totally identify those in a cadiver. Didnt realize there were so many arteries, and other structures involved. BUT, this class (well all of them really) blow my mind with how crazy awesome God is. Like each structure is so perfectly designed, and its just crazy. I dont know how you can learn about the body, or health, or anything really, and not believe in God. Big bang, really?

Anyway, besides being super busy with school, life is really great. Mark and I have been getting along very well. With the stress of school, and his job hunt still going on (and consequently the zero dollars a month income), and the new area, and how stressful it could be, it really is great. We laugh and joke and get the giggles. Mark cleans (I have not done dishes in weeks), and does laundry, and vacuums, and cooks dinner most of the time (only twice has the fire alarm been set off - haha). So pretty much I have a stud of a husband. Oh yeah, and he rubs my feet almost every night while I study on the couch. Such a blessing. I feel like this is kinda like our life, I remembered it from the movie Benjamin Button, which I didnt really watch, but remember this scene, and if you add me studying all the time, waking up at 6:30am, and add some more furniture (thanks to Mark's fam), this is totally us (click the link) Benjamin Button Scene. Just watched it again, and with our moms being our primary blog readers, this might be a little inapprop, but I am leaving it, this is a history of our life :)

Mark is in Holland this weekend for a wedding, which is tonight. I so wish I could have gone, but I just could not afford to miss the study time. And it was a Friday wedding too, so with class, it makes it really hard. (on a side note - we have been invited to like 6 weddings this summer, and 5 of them have been on Fridays, how crazy is that?) Oh yes, best news ever - I dont have class next Friday! So I get to come home Thursday! For a 4 day weekend. I literally cannot wait. I want to lay in my mom's bed watching the Gilmore girls getting my back rubbed (yes, I am 24, and this is still one of my favorite things in the world), and see my sisters. And Anna. I had to throw it in. Literally cannot wait to see that little nug.

Our apartment is getting really cute. Actaully it is really cute, probably not going to get any cuter in the future, due to all our money going to school. I love it. The only bummer thing is it is a sweat box. It is so hot. And we can't justify turning on the air. We did one night when I had a test the next day and was so hot I could not sleep, and when our guests were here (they should feel honored). Today I walked in from school, and was like oh wow it feels cool, and realized it was 84 degrees. Ha! Oh well! We get free heat in the winter, so we are going to milk that for all its worth!!! (Mark will hate that!)

Here is a picture...

Anyway, that about sums up our life. God is so good, and has blessed us so much.

Tigers!!!!

Had a great time at a Tigers game this past weekend :)  Brittany had our first guests at our apartment here in Warren, so we got to practice our hospitality!  Jenna, Martelle, Alexa and Ben all came over for the game and spent the night. 

So much fun!  The game was ultra hot and muggy, but the Tigers won, so it doesn't matter :)  I sat next to this nice young couple with an infant.  I thought this was an interesting place to take an infant, but it was father's day and I guess this was how he wanted to spend his time with his family, hahaha.  I had a front row seat to things that I never thought I would see at a ball game.  He made formula, quieted the baby when it cried(wasn't a huge fan of the baby when it cried), and to top it off, changed a diaper in his seat(I was especially not a fan of the baby when it decided to do that).  However, this guy completely redemed himself for the whole evening when he showed me the weather radar on his iphone.  Which helped me rally the troops back to our car.  Which, we literally shut the doors to the car and the wind picked up and storms came in. 

I drove Alexa's van back to our place in the monsoon, with only one headlight and I'm not sure that her wipers had blades on them, because they weren't moving much water off the windshield.  Well, we made it home and played apples to apples and watched Evan Almighty.  So much fun.  I made snacks and we goofed around all night.  The girls got to sleep in the bed and us guys spread out in the living room.  And in the morning I made waffles!!! 

This is Alexa's new boy friend that she is hiding from her Mom.... 

Memorial Day :)

Well, in my ever present struggle to keep this blog current, I thought that I would give you updates on Memorial day weekend.... Hahaha, maybe someday I will stay on top of things moreeeee.

We had a great weekend and had the opportunity to travel the small distance to the west side of the mitten.  It's funny how short 3 hours feels in comparison to 20+ hours of travel.  What an incredible blessing it is to be able to see family and friends over the weekend.  I can't tell you how great it was to see everyone and be back "home."  There is just something comfortable about the little things.  The climate, the humidity, the trees, the cool breeze, the bottle returns, the microbrews, and the mosquitos that just just make you feel like home!!! 

On that friday of Memorial weekend we sped(without exceeding the speed limit, Mom) to Plainwell to attend a friends wedding.  The guy Peter, played guitar in our wedding and is super awesome!  We actually missed the wedding but made it in time for the reception.  That was just the way it worked out with Brittany's school schedule and the time of the wedding.  Oh well.  The reception was cool.  Oh yeah, my wife and I, being the classy people we are, changed into our "wedding clothes" in the parking lot.  I probably shouldn't be telling people that, but it's who we are.  Now you know...  The reception was awesome, we had a great time and saw a lot of friends and there were lots of jokes and people watching.  It was just good times.

On Saturday I actually spent most of my day out with my mother-in-law.  I am very blessed with a great mother-in-law.  She took me to the mall to exchange a hat and then we went to my favorite store ever, Samssss Club.  So many treatsss.  After that we rented a carpet cleaner and I cleaned the carpet in her house.

That night we had the pleasure of babysitting Miss Anna, Brittany's favorite person in the world, barr none! 

On sunday, we out to one of my favorite places in the world, Sandy Pines!  I love it and hadn't been there in such a long time.  The atmosphere out there is so relaxing and super chill.  It's just so summer.  My favorite part would probably be just cruising around on golf carts.  We mostly just hung out with my parents and chatted all day.  My dad and I did play a little round of disc golf, which was cool.  Actually it was hot.  To much sun.  The sun pretty much forced us to go out for ice cream after that:)  The ice cream place is crazy there, it's every chubby kids dream.  The portion size is probably equal to what you would see on Man vs. Food!  After that I went out and dug in the woods for worms that I could go drown.  And in the process of drowning the worms(that's code for fishing, because I don't catch very many fish...), I did manage to catch a bush and a tree, twice.  So, all in all, it was a good day of fishing, two maples and a shrub.  After that we settled in for some cake.  Good stuff!  So great to see my parents!

After that we went back to Brittany's Mom's for the night. I had a good sleep in and then started doing my handy man routine.  Don't worry, it's not all work.  We actually had a monsoon hit that day, and you know the rule, when a monsoon hits, go out and play in it.  So we went and played in the rain, soooooo fun.  After that, we pretty much dried off and headed back home(back to Warren).  Such a terrible driveeeeeee.  Remember that monsoon that I mentioned previously???  Yeah, pretty much drove home in that.  Good thing Pearl(Brittany's Honda Fit) is roughly the size of a large rodent, and therefore not effected by someone sneezing or even shifting their weight in it....  Any way, we made it home and had a great great weekend.  We certainly hope that you had a great one too!

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