nurse megan

here is a picture of megan before leaving for work yesterday...


i was looking forward to megan working as a nurse because i thought that she would have a uniform or something standardized to wear to work... not the case, she has the same freedom to wear what ever she wants at work that she has when we go out... even though she is limited to wearing scrubs, you would not believe how many different combinations you can come up with in the morning to find the right one that works with how you are feeling that day and what your hair decides to turn itself into... in the words of FORMER american idol contestant Danny Noriega it is sometimes TMTH... just kidding babe, you are very talented... and worth waiting for :)

reflection

it's amazing how God works things out... i signed up to go the resurgnce conference because i have hunger to hear words from Godly men. having conversation about spiritual things, asking questions and bouncing ideas off of people really gets me fired up!

Chandler, Piper and Driscoll

i was planning on flying over to seattle for the conference sunday night, but all of the flights appeared to be full... it can go either way flying stand-bye when the plane looks full, so i decided not to risk it and texted steve, the pastor at my church in spokane (who was also going to the conference) to see when he was leaving. turned out that he had one open seat in his car. he was going with three other guys from the church, but one of the guys got over there early and only needed a ride back... i only needed a ride there... awesome. i had a chance to get to know two other guys whos names i did not even know before hand.

the road to megan and i staying in spokane was a long one... our plan was to just stay here long enough for megan to finish up school and then head out some place we had never been for a few years while i finished up my school... and then eventually move back. well, we wound up settling on spokane. megan found a great job here, and i found a program at ewu that i wanted to do. plus it is real cheap in spokane, so we figured we could stick it out here a little longer. after we made that decision i stumbled upon moody bible institute... a long story short, it now looks like i will be starting there in the fall if everything falls into place. Gods way of getting me to this place and making that decision was a brilliant. its one of those things that you hear and say, "wow" and thats all that you need to say, because... God is wow. we dont always get the privledge to see what God is cooking up for us, but when he does, it is so encouraging.

i was encouraged last week while i was at the conference... more so affirming my decision to go to moody. the bible, and Gods people is where my heart is and has been for a long time, and i cant wait to dig in! it not only encouraged me, but it opened my eyes to the sheer power of the gospel... i have a problem with criticizing the church and how we should do ministry... i have seen us fail in so many areas and seen so many missed opportunities that my thinking becomes, "well if we would have done this different, or if i would have just tried harder or changed that one thing..." and i get distracted from the only thing that really matters, which is the message and gospel of Jesus Christ. im shaking my head at myself right now because all of those frustrations that i have do have validity, but it all starts with the gospel and then all of this other stuff comes up under that. its all in perspective for me, and mine was not clear. having the gospel at the fore front of my mind in all my thinking and decision making will hum a different tune than if i did otherwise. and it all starts with my heart. only God knows my heart. and i need to take heed to that.

Resurgence

I'm in Seattle for a few days for the Resurgence conference at Mars
Hill: Text and Context. the first session set a great tone for the
week about "what is the church?"

this is matt during a break...

megan loves moving... a lot...

actually that is far from the truth :) it is her least favorite thing
to do, especially when it is trying to snow outside. on the other
hand, we counted and I have moved eight times since I have graduated
high school. (that was almost 5 years ago)

on a side note... megan is officially a registered nurse in the state
of Washington! we dont know what her score was, only that she passed,
and that's all we care about :)

exciting news

the first thing is I just figured out that I can make posts from my
cell phone... :) (this time we will see if a I can post a photo)

the second thing is, megan and I are moving into a house! we signed
the lease last week and will be moved in by the end of the month...
this isn't the best pic but it will have to do until we get over there
in the day time...

test

this is a test to see if I can blog from my cell phone...

bungeeeee

the quality of this video isnt the best... i had to do some tweeking with it so that i could load it onto the blog. since it was not shot in the traditional landscape view (thanks hannah) i had to rotate it, thus making the video about half the size of the window... oh well, you get the idea. this is apparently the first commercial bungee site in the world. 150+ feet in about 8 or so seconds plus a little dip into the river... they put two bungee cords on me just to be on the safe side :) sweet az!

snowed in...

anything the mcdowell's do, we can do better...we can do anything better than them...HA! just kidding :) the mcdowell's reported a nor'easter a couple weeks ago, here in spokane when something like that happens...we just call it a storm :) when we got back from 95 degree weather in Fiji, there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground. since then we have accumulated well over a foot! aaron had to work when about 8 inches of that came down on saturday & sunday... to document this eventful occasion, we got bundled up for a ten minute walk out and around the park to take some pic pics... another blog update successfully made... yessss!








p.s.
megan just informed me that i forgot to update the halo score... here it is to the best of my recollection.

Team Gibbs | "a lot"
Team McD's | "not so much"

study...study...study...

my life the past couple of weeks, and for the next couple of weeks, has been taken over by NCLEX review books!

the big test is scheduled for february 9th. who ever heard of studying for 5+ hours a day AFTER you graduate from school? such a strange concept. it's been hard to get back into the study mode, but i'm looking forward to becoming a real registered nurse after passing the NCLEX and getting my license. i start general hospital orientation at holy family here in spokane on february 4th, and after passing the test, get to start orientation the following week in the ER :) 

all i can think about while studying diabetic ketoacidosis, post-op care of a tracheostomy, signs of addisonian crisis, and the thousands of side effects and nursing considerations of meds (just to name a few) is wanting to be here...along the west coast of the south island of new zealand...

new zealand part 6

we are home... we are actually in bellevue right now. i fly back to spokane tomorrow, and megan on saturday. i go back to work on friday, and megan begins studying for the nclex. stepping off the plane in seattle was just as shocking as fiji. in fiji the sweat starts dripping from your nose within minutes, and in seattle you are shivering within minutes :) here are a few pictures from the trip. there are many more from ryan that we are going to rely on with a few of ours thrown in... we will probably make a link an album within the next couple of weeks. cheers


after the wedding adam joined us for a little road trip to the north point of the south island. we camped, it rained, we got wet. it was sweet as cramming all of us and our luggage into the station wagon... here's a picture of the guys.


here is ryan doing his thing.


this was the most frightening part of the trip... sadly we dropped adam off after two days back in nelson so that he could make his return flight to auckland... (good times adam, good times) the rest of us headed down the west coast and then cut across to wanaka and queenstown then shot up the middle through christchurch. in queenstown ryan and i went bungy jumping... pics and video pending...


we had a real fiji experience when we went in to the town in nadi... this guy found us outside the grocery and told us that we needed to go and experience real fiji... "go down the road turn left, go straight and turn right, and there you will find real fiji experience..." so we found a food market and then headed to the bus when this guy shows up again... he says no you must come this way... he leads us down a couple of streets to this ally while talking to us about his shop and how its authentic fiji etc. megan and i begin to have second thoughts but this guy insisted... on the balcony there were three locals there to greet us, waving us up to their shop. it was very very sketch, but turned out alright. we had traditional drink called "kava" (blessing/chant/clapping and the whole bit), we chatted and bartered, and then hurried to our bus... the bus is a whole other story. there are many more stories we could share, too many stories to blog about, (im no steve allen), you will just have to ask about them in person or skype :)


this is at the hostel/resort that we stayed at in fiji... we all got a little burned in different places, continuous sweating was unavoidable...


the shitty weather (apparently this word is better received then 'crap' in kiwi land) on the west coast in NZ put a damper on our hopes for some sweet as sunsets... we lucked out on the last night of our holiday... this photo is mint!

oh, the guy in fji told us to make sure an tell all our friends and family that it is safe to visit fiji again... "there are no more cannibals... come have holiday here in beautiful fiji... peace, joy, love, harmony..." so there ya go.