Brent Preaching

For those of you who want to listen to Brent's sermon from this morning... click here... It should be on there in the next day or two...

Clarification... and some other stuff

Kara's initial reaction to her purse was that I was disappointed in... but she did get way excited about it after we were done with presents on such...

I also got the best deck of cards ever... they have a picture of Jenny and David on them :)

We made it back last night around midnight... when we were going to bed, we realized that our bed was falling apart. Not really sure how it happened, but we got it back together best we could last night and will have to take it apart today to really fix it.

We had a great time visiting with the people we saw. Sorry it couldn't have been longer...

Anyways.. I should probably finish getting ready for church and such. Have a wonderful New Years week!

Merry Christmas

We made it to Michigan.. the drive was long and boring and uneventful. We got some rain in the eastern part of PA... but other than that, we had no bad weather....

Christmas morning with the Mom, Mike, and Kara was good this morning. I was pretty disappointed by Kara's reaction to her pretty much amazing gift from us... But her present for me made up for her lame reaction. Kara got me a cabbage patch doll that is named Keyla! And it eats ice cream :) I also got a TomTom and a huge picture frame. Brent got some more noomas and Guitar Hero for Wii. We got some games and movies too.. and of course more stuff for our house :)

Then we had the Franks family Christmas... we were only there for a little while, but it was nice to see Mike's family. I got some scrubs and Brent got some puzzles.

We headed to Battle Creek and saw Aunt Judy, Uncle Randy, Tiffany, Tommy, and Allie before they left for Florida. Then went to Brent's parents' house... where Jenny was! She was excited to see us:) Ashley and Jason and David and Alyssa and Shane were also there. David is pretty cute and way cuddly :) I got some more scrubs and a picture frame set and a game and some other stuff. Brent got some new pants, some shirts, shoes, another Guitar Hero game. We also got some more movies. We got to go see Grandma and Grandpa Cary too. :)

It was a good Christmas... with lots of family and some snow (that came just stay in Michigan)...

For those of you in Michigan...

.... I just thought I would let y'all know we don't have ANY snow on the ground!

I'm thinking I'm never going to miss the FEET of snow that Michigan gets :)

Christmas Plans and an update

If you haven't heard, we are going to be in Michigan for Christmas! But it is going to be a very quick trip. As of right now here's the plan....

Christmas Eve - work until 1:30 or so then head out to Michigan to my mom and Mike's house (we should be there about mid-night)

Christmas Day - morning with my mom, Mike, and Kara, then Mike's family is coming over around noon for Christmas, we plan to leave Williamston about 1:30 or so to head to Battle Creek to do Christmas with Brent's parents, Ashley, Jason, Jenny, David, Alyssa and Shane. We'll spend the night in Battle Creek.

Friday - we plan to hang out with some different family member and friends and will probably spend the night back in Williamston.

Saturday - Christmas with my mom's family around lunch time, then heading home hopefully by 2:00pm.

Sunday - Brent's preaching :)

Hopefully we will get to see a lot of people while we are home, but please keep in mind that our time is very limited while we are there. If we don't get to see you, hopefully we'll be able to be home for longer in July when we go to Michigan for Tommy and Allie's wedding.


As for an update... life has been pretty uneventful for the week or so.

Saturday we were in the Claymont Christmas Parade with church. It was actually kind of fun. We went to Qdoba on Saturday night for dinner. It was snowing (not much at all) and people were struggling. It's crazy how chaotic it gets around here with such a little amount of snow. We also did most of our Christmas shopping on Saturday.

My health seems to be improving. It's been over a week since my last kidney stone! My migraines are occurring more often but don't seem to be as bad (I'm no longer taking one of the meds to prevent my migraines because it was causing all of the kidney stones.) So that's all good :)

Friday night I'm hosting "Girls Night" for the girls in youth group and there friends. One of my friends from church, Modesty, is coming to be another adult here and Brent is spending the night at Ryan's (Modesty's fiance) house. It sounds like there will be ten or so girls here!

That's about it... like I said, not much is happening. :)

Thanksgiving Update

I'm still really enjoying my job... specially the short drive and the not having to dress up everyday.
My mom and Mike and Kara came over Thanksgiving. Kara road out with my dad on Tuesday, then he brought her here on Wednedsay afternoon, so we got to see my dad, Mariann, Trevor, and Katie for a little bit to. Thanksgiving was good... I've decided cooking a turkey is a nasty as cutting up chicken, but all of the food was yummy and I ate WAY too much. Thursday evening we went and saw the movie Four Christmases. It was okay... On Friday, my mom and Mike and Kara got up early and went shopping all morning. I had to work, so they came and visited me at work, then they came home and played Wii with Brent all afternoon. On Saturday we went into Philly. We saw the liberty bell and a bunch of parks and some different areas in Philly. It was fun. Then Sunday after church they all left to go back to Michigan.
This week/weekend we don't have much going on. Its good to have some time to relax and just chill.

My First Day...

Yesterday went really well. The people that I will be working with are all really nice. The work is enjoyable (everything is on the computer) and I really like being about to interact with the patients. And the drive.... it's pretty much short and amazing!

Tomorrow my mom and Mike and Kara are coming!!! They will be here in the afternoon/evening and will stay through the weekend. I'm very excited to see them and show them our new house!

New Job!!

So... Friday was an interesting day...
It started out with a little bit of snow on the ground (less than a half an inch)... so I left for work knowing it was going to be a longer drive than normal.. People out here do not know how to drive in the snow...
Almost four hours later I finally made it to work, which is 27 miles from our house... I was VERY fustrated. Then I got a phone call from a doctor's office.... and they offically offered me a job!
So... Friday was my last day at CHI and my last day with the long drive...
Tomorrow I start my new job. It's at a doctor's office doing a little bit of everything. It's only 20 minutes away at most, and better benifits and all that jazz....
Another perk of the new job is that I will have the day after Christmas off, so we will be coming home to Michigan for Christmas! We're still working on the details of it, but hopefully we'll be able to see lots family while we are there!

For those of you complaining....

Here are pictures of the outside of our house....

The front....

The back...

The side...

The other side...

Half of the back yard....

The other side of the back yard...

An update..

Aside from the normal exhaustion, I'm feeling better for the most part. I think the antibiotics have taken care of the infections, which was the constant pain. Now I'm just dealing with the pain from the stones moving around inside me. Hopefully they will come out soon and I'll feel all better!

It will be four weeks tomorrow that we have owned our house!

It's been a while...

Sorry it's been so long... we've been busy!

Last weekend we had a Missions Conference at church. Saturday night we got to meet with three different missionaries in small groups and here about what they do. One of the couples was from a ministry called Transport for Christ. They have chapels at truck stops... they do some pretty cool things! Shortly after we got home, Mel Walker (president of Vision for Youth) got here, as he was the special speaker for the teens in Sunday School. The kids (and us) really enjoyed having Mel in Sunday School and spending time with him. We had youth group early on Sunday because we had an international banquet at church and them another speaker at night. It was a long day, but a good day!

Monday we had one of our teens over for dinner and Mario Cart.

Tuesday, after we got home from voting (yes, Brent did vote!), we got a nice gift from a member at our church. He had won a big screen TV at a benefit and decided to give us his old (but really not old) 36 inch TV. Consider we are used to our 24 inch TV's, it's HUGE! But it is pretty amazing how God works... one of our TV's was starting to go... so we were going to think about having to buy a new one soon, but instead God provided us with a HUGE one for free!

Also on Tuesday my kidneys started to hurt and by the time I woke up on Wednesday morning I was in a lot of pain. I went to work (even though I probably shouldn't have), but left around noon to go to Urgent Care. Once again, I have a bladder infection, a kidney infection, and some more stones. I'm not in as much pain now. They put me on antibiotics, so by Thursday afternoon the pain from the infections was pretty much gone and now it's just dealing with the wonderful stones moving around inside me. In a month and a half or so I'll have health insurance...so my body doesn't have to wait much longer for some help!

Last night Brent took my to Qdoba for my Birthday dinner. It was delicious! We don't have a Qdoba close to us, so it's a special thing to go there now.

Tonight my friend Modesty came over and we made cookies to send to some of the troops overseas while Brent went to Men's Game Night at church. We all had a good time.

Thank you to everyone who sent Birthday cards and e-mails! I really do appreciate them.

And now...it is bed time...tomorrow will be filled with getting my car's oil changed, starting to plan Girls' Night, and a concert at night!

Sorry It Took SOOO Long...

We've been busy.... Monday we didn't have internet... Tuesday we went and bought a washer and dryer... and Wednesday we were at church....

The tour starts upstairs...

Here is the hallway/landing at the top of the stairs...

The Office...

The bathroom...

What will eventually be a guest bedroom (like next weekend when Mel Walker is staying with us)...

Our bedroom.... no cool paint job yet....

Now we go downstairs...

The stairs...

The living room...

The dining room..

The kitchen...

Now to the basement....

The stairs....

The French drain.... (this is for those of you who didn't know what one was)....

Our new heater....

A wall in the basement...

Where our washer and dryer will go when they get here....

Hope you enjoyed the tour.... if you want a real one, you're welcome to visit anytime :)

We're All Moved!

We have all of our stuff in our new house! Some of it is put away, but we have a long way to go before everything will all be put away and such. Hopefully by next weekend we will have most stuff where we want it.

Our internet is being hooked up today, so sometime tonight I will try to put up some pictures.

The Community BBQ went well. There were longs of non-BBC people there and several of them came back for church on Sunday! It was a lot of fun! My dad and Mari and the kids even came :)

A Busy Weekend Coming Up

We are waiting for one peice of paper to be signed by the apprasial reviewer to be signed, and then our mortgage will be officially approved. That should be in sometime tomorrow and shouldn't be an issue. The plan is to close on Friday aftertoon, and then move as much as possible on Friday evening.

Saturday is the Community BBQ at church. It's basically a day long party at church for the community to come and see what our church is all about. It should be a good time.

After the Community BBQ, we hope to finish moving the rest of our stuff to our new house.

Then Sunday... is Sunday, and those are always busy day, but in a good way!

Once we moved and it's all offical, I'll send out e-mails and such with our new address...

Some News!

We are tentatively closing on Friday, October 17th!

Still no news...

We're waiting and waiting...
The latest news is that we have to be out of the house we are renting by Nov 16... and the soonest I will be hired by CHI is Nov 17...
So... now we wait to see what happens...
We still haven't heard back from the seller on our new offer with a later settlement date...

An Update...

We have put in a new offer on the house... with a later settlement date.
We didn't get approved for a mortgage because my job is a temp-to-perm job and my company won't say in writting that they are hiring me. I will be hired in mid November, so at that point we will be able to be approved for a mortgage. Hopefully the sellers will be willing to wait!

We're Not Closing Tomorrow :(

So... because we have a CRAZY economy right now, our motgage was not able to be approved today. There is hope that it will be able to be approved still sometime this week, so maybe by Friday we'll own a house; we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

David Jason Pichea is FINALLY here!

Davey was born this morning at 9:27am. Both Davey and Ashley are doing great!

For those of you who don't know...

Our mortgage approval is still up in the air. We were hoping that it would be finalized today, but it wasn't. We now have to wait until Monday (we are supposed to close on Tuesday).... with the crazy economy at the moment and a couple other factors, it's a little scarey, but our mortgage officer is very optimistic that it will get approved on Monday...
Please keep this in your prayers... that God's Will will be done and that Brent and I will be content with whatever that may be.

More pictures....

Because people are complaining...

The kitchen




The Bathroom

One of the bedrooms (this will be our bedroom)

The Dining Room
I will post more pictures once we move in and it's not just an empty house :)

Our House

Our settlement is officaly schedule for 1:00 pm on September 30!

And...

They countered.. and we countered.. and then they accepted...

...and it's all going to be done and over with and we're going to own a house by the end of the month!


For those of you anticipating baby pictures, Davey is still in Ashley belly...

Guess What!?!?!?!

We made an offer!

Church, A House, and No Nephew

This week we have SIX teens at church on Wednesday (we normally have two or three), so that was exciting! This morning we only have three for Sunday school, but then had SEVEN tonight for T.I.M.E (Teens In MinistrE). So last week was a high, but we are GROWING!!!!!

Our church as a whole is also GROWING! We will soon have two services. There was a meeting with the minstry leaders on Saturday morning to try to figure out what a second service would like like for us and how everything would work and what the timing would be and all that fun stuff. They took a servey this morning at church, so we'll see what that shows.

There's a house...we really like it..it's a cute house...it's yellow...has three bedrooms...a dining room...a living room...a bathroom...a kitchen...a garage...a basement...a yard...we really like it... and we're going to make an offer on it. But, not until Tuesday. We are thinking about what our offer should be and praying about it and seeking advice and wisdom of others. But, we really like the house.

Davey is still in Ashley's belly; so we don't have a nephew yet. From the sounds of thinks, Ashley would like him to come out sooner rather than later.... and I think we would all like that too! Even though we probably won't get to actually meet him until Christmas :( ... but we can see lots of cute pictures! :)

Grandma and Davey

Grandma Cary was discharged from the hospital yesterday and her and Grandpa made the trip home to Battle Creek yesterday! :)

Davey is still in Ashley's belly... but Ashley is no longer on bedrest or the meds to stop the contractions, so any day now....

Lots of Teens!

This morning in Sunday School we had TEN teens!!! And then tonight for our first time meeting at church instead of our house we had TEN teens again!!!!! Being at church for Sunday nights provides the use of power point and the audio equipment for music and such... it all went very well and the teens all seemed to enjoy it! :)

Still not Davey... but it does sound like he is going to make his appearance sooner rather than later.

Grandma Cary is doing better. It looks like they are going to get to go home tomorrow (she's in a hospital in Indy).

Meeting with the realtor went well. We looked at lots of listings online and Brent has found the house that he thinks is "the one." We went and drove around today and looked at the neighborhoods and looked at the outside of some of the houses that we liked the pictures of and such... and I got more excited about "the one." Then at church tonight we talked to some people that live down the road from "the one" and have been inside of it and said that it's nice on the inside and such. Hopefully we'll get a chance to go inside of it this week - Brent's going to call our realtor tomorrow about scheduling a viewing for "the one" and a couple others that we have an interest in. It definitely is something exciting... and scary... and there are so many questions.... But in the end it will all work out and be all good :)

Hope everyone has a good week!

Something new....

This morning Brent and I are going to meet with a realtor to start the whole process of buying a house! I have a feeling it might be a long process....

Still no Davey :)

Grandma Cary is still in the hospital, but she does have the drain thing out of her stomach and was allowed to drink water yesterday. It sounded like they were going to start letting her try to do more liquids today :)

Still No Davey or Ins....But The Weekend Was Fun

Davey is still in Ashley's belly! She goes back to the doctor tomorrow.

Grandma Cary is still in the hospital. When they took the tumor out, they also took out a small part of her digestive track and hooked it all back together. This caused her stomach to "go to sleep" and they are waiting for it to "wake up" before she can go home from the hospital. It sounds like Grandma and Grandpa are both ready to go home...but are trying to be patient.

We still don't have health insurance out here. My amazing kidneys are to thank for the denial. We're not sure what the next step is going to be...but in the meanwhile, I have Priority Health, which is pretty much useless out here (they won't cover anything), but is good for the whole no laps in coverage clause.

Other than me not feeling good all weekend... we had a great time with Brent's family.
They got here just in time for bed (11:30 or so) on Friday night.
Saturday we just kind of hung out around the house most of the day. We did go shopping and Alyssa discovered how small our mall is... and she tried to strip a mannequin to jeans for Jenny (which she didn't end up getting). Saturday night we played the game Last Word, where Shane and I didn't do so hot... and we found another game that Dad is great at.
Sunday we did the church thing, and then went to a pool party with some people from church. I had fun playing with Emma (our senior pastors 17 month old)....and I think everyone else had fun :) Sunday night we just hung around and played more games....including three rounds of CatchPhrase (and I never lost...if you have ever played with me you know how amazing that is). Monday morning Mom, Dad, Alyssa, and Shane left and Brent and I headed to Lancaster to meet my Dad, Marianne, Katie and Trevor. We ate a HUGE Amish lunch...it was YUMMY and then played in a park for a little while.

Brent is starting new stuff at church this week on Sunday nights. He's really excited about it.

That about sums up life at the moment...

Still no Davey... and some other updates

Davey hasn't decided to grace us with us presence yet, which is a very good thing :)

Grandma Cray is going well and it sounds like she is going to get to go home tomorrow. The pathology reports have come back an the tumor was not cancer!!!! :)

Uncle Bill is home and last I heard he was doing well.

If you are in a store that has magazines, check out page 55 of the Sept issue of Muscle Car Review - there is a picture of my mom and Mike and their cutlass from Power Tour.

I'm feeling better today, but yesterday was a rough day for my kidneys. The weird rapid heartbeat thing is probably being caused by too much Excedrin on an empty belly, so I am just supposed to make sure I have a full belly when I take it.

Brent's parents and Alyssa and Shane are going to be here on Friday night and and stayging through the weekend! :) :) We're excited!!

Ashley and Davey

Ashley (Brent's sister) is having problems keeping Davey (her unborn baby) inside of her! He's so excited to come out and see the world or something and doesn't realize that he's no supposed to for another five weeks or so! Ashley is on bedrest for a while trying to keep Davey calm, so please keep her and Davey (really David) in your prayers.

The Party...

The party turned out great!

There were 20 or so teens here and a couple adults and everyone seemed to have a great time! :) Some of the kids said they wanted to come back to youth group tonight, so hopefully they'll show up!

It's Friday!!

It's been a long week getting use to going to work every day again. Brent is now seeing the flip side of things... I leave before he does and get home after he does (it was the opposite in Michigan most days) and he's not so sure that he likes that.

Tomorrow is the teen party at our house for church! Brent is excepting thirty to fourty teens - that would be amazing! We are both excited about that!

Uncle Bill's (Keyla's unlce) knee replace was on Monday and went well. His recovery is already coming along quickly it sounds like.

Grandma Cary's (Brent's gramda) surgery was yesterday and it went very well and the doctors don't think the tumor is cancer, so that's great!!!

Have a good weekend everyone! I'll try to remember to take some pictures on Saturday to post.. but no promises :)

It's Wednesday!

Work is less boring now... we're actually doing stuff and really learning things :)

Tonight is church! :)

Saturday is the teen party!! :)

My First Day...

So there are six of us that started today and we have three weeks of training.... so for the first three weeks we are in a training room and it's more like class instead of work. Today we listened to presentations all day... it was really wasn't all that fun, but tomorrow it sounded like we will get to start doing stuff, so hopefully it will be better.

As for the BBQ on Sunday, we had a decent turn out and I think everyone had fun. The guys all played Hillbilly Golf and the girls sat around and talked. Ethan and Wesley (our senior pastor's kids) were obsessed with going in our house and our two living rooms - it was pretty funny.

Now Brent has to finish planning and getting ready for the teen party that is here on Saturday night. Our teens are pretty excited about it and it sounds like they are all planning on bring a bunch of friends. Plus Brent invited the teens from the church next to us and it sounds like several of them are also coming - So it should be a good time! :)

Happy Birthday Brent!

Today's Brent's Birthday (if you didn't know)!

I was going to suprised him by taking him to play golf... but he didn't like that idea (he says it costs too much) :(

So we went and saw The Dark Knight again for his suprise :) It was just as good the second time as it was the first!

I also made him pot roast for dinner :) We haven't eaten it yet, but it smells yummy!

Not Too Much Going On

Not too much has happened in the last couple days.

Last night we had a whole one teen show up for Wednesday night church.

We've had some mix ups and confusions with our insurance. Hopefully that will get all straightened out in the next day or so...

I went to the doctor today and got one of my meds changed. She said this might help reduce the amount of migraines... thus reducing the need for the meds that may be causing my kidney stones. Once we get insurance stuff figured out for sure, then I will go see a urologist and neurologist to try to get the rest of the stuff figured out.

Brent surprised me and took me out to dinner tonight for his birthday (yeah, I know, the logic is messed up there). We went to Olive Garden for the first time since we have moved to Delaware! It was yummy!

Tomorrow I have to get food for Sunday - we are having a parent/teen BBQ are our house after church. Hopefully people will show up!

Other than that, we have been just hanging out and watching the Olympics. I learned today they have cheerleaders at the Olympics - who knew! But someone cared enough that they talked about it for like 15 minutes on the news!

We're Back

We're back in Delaware and starting to get back to normal life.

It was good to see everyone we saw when we were in Michigan, despite the circumstances we were there for.

Michigan

Just so everyone knows... we made it back to Michigan safely :)

YAY!

I got offered a job today!!!!!!!!!

I also accepted the job today!!!!!!!

It's at a place that does billing for hospitals.

From the sounds of things I'm going to start on the 18th.

Visit Cut Short

My parents and Kara were supposed to stay a couple more days, but they left yesterday afternoon... please pray for my family...

My grandma (Michael's mom) has alzheimer's and has not being doing well for a while. On Sunday Micheal's brother called and said she wasn't going to make it much longer. My parents and Kara left on Tuesday afternoon and got home a little after 11 pm on Tuesday night and they were able to spend some time with Dollie (my grandma), along with Michael's siblings. Sometime this morning Dollie went home.

Also, pray for our church as Brent and I will be going back to Michigan so people will have to fill in for Brent in a car wash that teens are doing this weekend and teaching Sunday school on Sunday morning.

New York City

We went to New York City yesterday! It was a long day, but a lot of fun!

We took the train in from Trenton... Kara had never been on a train before.


Still waiting... our train was late!

Finally on the train :)

They are doing construction at the WTC site to make the memorials - they are supposed to be done in 2012.

In St. Paul's Church (across the street from the WTC) they had all sorts of stuff in memory of those who died serving and those who severed. We found the badge for LPD (Lansing) and the MSP one too.
The Statue of Liberty is in the background of this picture. We didn't visit it because it's not actually in New York City! (That's not the real reason - but it really isn't in New York, its in New Jersey.)

Kara wanted a banana, so Mom, Kara, and I all got bananas :) They were yummy!

Kara didn't think the New York hot dogs were yummy though :(
But the rest of us enjoyed them :)

We road the subway back uptown to give our feet a break... Kara was a little scared!
But after she got on, she realized it wasn't that bad :)
We had our picture taken with Geoffrey in the Toys'R'Us store in Times Square :)

If we would have crossed with Michael, we probably would have been hit... but he did get a cool picture of us cross because he didn't follow the signs!

Kara, Mom, and Michael made us take this picture....

So Brent and I made Mom and Michael take this picture...

And Mom and Michael made Kara take this picture :)

It's where the late show is taped :)

There were chairs like five feet from us, but we wanted to sit on the floor. Just as we were about to leave (after sitting there for like 8 minutes) the police officer or security guard (whatever she was) came over and told us we weren't allowed to sit on the floor.

We all got matching shirts... but instead of looking stupid in New York City, we all put them on and match in Brent's office to take a picture :)

We took 450 or so pictures.... so this is a select few :) But I hope you enjoyed them!