It's Already November??

Can't believe it is already Holiday season! This is absolutely my favorite time of year! We have had one busy October people! Here is the QUICK summary of what all went down.  (We'll actually start at the end of September)

 My precious aunt Chelsa was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had surgery to remove the tumor and is now feeling well enough to start her chemo. This was a big blow to our family~ we are VERY close to her! She is so wonderful to me and my family and just loves us to death! We are so thankful that she is ours and we are geared up to fight this battle with her!

 Then, on October 21, my niece Haleigh was diagnosed with leukemia. She is 19. She was starting her freshman year at Lubbock Christian University and out of the blue is hit with the news that she has cancer. This, too, was a huge blow to our family! We are still a little bit in shock to be honest because there are just SO many things to process in such a little amount of time! She was a Cook's for about 10 days where she had several procedures and started her Chemo routine. She will have to have chemo for 2 1/2 years- she is taking it like a champ and still looks so beautiful! She is so precious to us and my kids think she hung the moon!! Parker said the other day- "we're going to BUSY praying for Haleigh and Chelsa!" He is right! We are crying out to the Lord daily for them both!
 Our church is doing a campaign right now called Greater Things. It has been so wonderful- our preacher is amazing and is challenging us to be generous and sacrificial givers of not only our money but our lives!! There are some really neat stories coming out of this! We had a church-wide garage sale this weekend and made around $30,000!! Amazing!

 Friday night I was at the varsity football game with my cheerleaders. Patton and Parker were there too playing in the adjacent field. Well anyway- lets just say a little "rough play" was happening between my boys. Parker "fell" from a tire thing out in the field and broke his arm!! Poor little guy- he is SO tough! Got his cast yesterday-he loves it- wanted red AND blue for the Texas Rangers!! Amazingly this is the first broken bone we've had! Hope it's the last!

 We are getting SOOO excited about our trip!! Only about 8 weeks till we head to Rwanda!! We've received some VERY generous help from some friends and family and the kids think it is so much fun to check the mail every day to see who else is helping us get to Africa!!My mom and sisters helped us have a garage sale at our house to help with the fund! They worked TIRELESSLY sorting, pricing, etc and we did great! Not a lot of people came but we sold a lot, got that much closer to our goal AND got rid of a ton of junk!! We had our whole "team" over last Saturday night. We spent time getting to know each other better and watching Hotel Rwanda. It was a heavy movie but sooo good. We had a really good time and most people didn't leave till 1:00 AM!! So fun! AND I didn't take ONE picture!!:(
I'm going to be better about keeping up with the blog so they are not SOO long! Have a great week!!
 
Brittany