Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This week marks the beginning, end and celebration of many things! We are definitely thankful for it all!
Jessica will be the newest labor and delivery nurse in the birth suites at St. Vincent's in Birmingham! I loved my preceptorship there and it ended this week. I'm so excited to get to continue working in the birth suites! It's hard to believe that 6 weeks have gone by, but I have learned so much! I was blessed with a wonderful preceptor in Jennifer Cuevas and I am positive that I will be learning and benefitting from those experiences and our relationship for years. I'm so glad I'll be back there in about a month! When I started praying about being a nurse, the passion that God put in my heart was to help children have the best chance at life possible and now I get to do it! I am so very blessed!
Matthew so wonderfully reminded me too that people often say "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans", but we have been in prayer over this. We've allowed the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and because of that our desires are lining up with God's desires for our lives. It is such a wonderful blessing to live in the will of the Lord!
For Matthew and Best Buy this is a very busy week. He has been working extra hours setting up for Black Friday and the whole store has been much busier. Because he is working so much, his parents are coming to visit us for Thanksgiving! We're so excited to get to have them here. We'll be celebrating at Jess's apartment. It's been so long since we've seen them and we're excited celebrate together. They're so wonderful to be bringing the food as well as a table and chairs (since I don't have a table and chairs in my little apartment). I'll definitely be taking photos.
With the wedding a 101 days away, we've really been getting some wedding planning underway. We have decided on our cake baker and are finalizing hotels and deals for our family and friends. So many things are falling into place and it's amazing to look back and see what we have planned and even more exciting to look to the future both our wedding and even more so for our marriage. So we can both look our best on the wedding day we have started P90X. Please be praying for that. It is a lot of work, but we find that the instructor, the "X-man" as Jess likes to call him, is very encouraging. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a healthy lifestyle for us.
We would also like to let our family and friends know that we've decided to give back to our community through our wedding. With Jess's passion for giving children the best chance at life, her new career in labor & deliver, our thankfulness for our many blessings and with our wedding being in March, we thought it would be appropriate to make a donation to the March of Dimes. We would like to encourage our family and friends to collect their dimes (or any donation that you feel comfortable with) and bring them to our wedding. We will have a special place set up to collect the donation and we plan to match the collection up to $500. Let's make our March wedding, a March of Dimes. If you would like more information about the March of Dimes, please visit . We're trying to come up with a cute title to combine our March wedding and March of Dimes. If you've got any ideas let us know!
As for prayers, we ask that our family and friends pray for the Hickman family. Karri is one of Jessica's best friends and bridesmaids. Her father passed away this past week. They ask that we be praying for their peace and comfort, but they know that He is out of pain and with the Lord.
Also, we ask that you pray for Jessica's Uncle Danny. He was diagnosed with cancer this summer and tests this week showed that the pancreatic cancer had stopped growing but unfortunately they found 4 new lesions on his liver. They are changing his chemo schedule, but they gave him permission to return to work, which he has really wanted to do. The Mata family is having Thanksgiving at his house this week and I just thank the Lord for the wonderful support I know our family is offering him. I am blessed to have such a loving family.

We are very blessed this year. We are so thankful to the Lord for his faithfulness to us. God bless you and Happy Thanksgiving!

"Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever." Psalm 118:1