Saying Goodbye to Grandpa...

Last night my mom called me saying that my Grandpa, my dad's-dad had a stroke while on the road and got in a car accident. I guess he had not been breathing for two whole minutes before the ambulance got to him. They resusitated him just enough to get a slight heartbeat but he was basically a vegetable at that point. He had gotten blood in his brain and there was already too much damage to keep him alive. This morning I heard the news that he had passed away. It was such a short and fast thing, I'm still pretty shocked about it. I am thankful however that I get to come home this weekend for Easter, hopefully in time to make his funeral. He was such a good man. I'm pretty speechless though right now. He's in a better place and with the Lord. I can take comfort in that. That's all for now.

Birthday Week/ Spring Break

It's been a jam-packed week! Interesting story though to start it off. I had planned on driving home finally in the envoy and bringing a ton of stuff home with me that I didn't need in my house anymore....apparently God had other plans. The envoy had been doing really weird things for the past couple of months, like NOT STARTING....so it had been in the shop for a long time and finally after two months of taking the car in, getting it back again, and then having to get it towed back to the dealer again, it finally started working consistently. However, when I was on the freeway that leads you outside of Spokane, there's this big hill that you've gotta go up. Apparently being in Spokane, there aren't a whole lot of big enough hills around that the car had to go up in my daily routine, so it wasn't used to this. All details aside, my car could not make it up that hill. :( So I had to turn back and I ended up having to schedule a flight to get home that was leaving an hour and a half from that point, so I was kinda in a rush! I had to repack all my stuff and find a ride to the airport. But oh well...plans are plans and they don't always follow through. So that was the beginning of my spring break, but I was glad to be home. :)

That weekend was really nice and relaxing. My eye had been twitching from stress and a little bit of sleep-deprivation from the previous week of tests so it was nice to get to catch up on that. Haha! Sunday it was good to see my friends at church! Man, time flys... I feel sad that I've been away for four years and haven't really been able to be involved much in anyone's lives from home...it's hard to come back and know how much you've missed. But nevertheless, it was great to see everyones faces. :) After church Angela had her bridal shower which was totally fun and cute. Rebecca and Julia hosted it and they did a great job. The group had a lot of fun with the games that we played and it was really good to get to sit with Erin and Angela and catch up a little bit with their lives. Everybody moves through life sometimes so quickly, I guess I do too, but it's just weird because every time I come back home it feels this way and like I've missed out on all of these important events or decisions in their lives...:( I just have to kind of keep reminding myself I guess that God had me at Whitworth for a reason, and I know I learned a lot. :) At some point that weekend, I can't remember which day, but Angela invited me to a birthday celelbration for Danny at his (soon to be "their")house which was really good. Ange made some delicious pizza and I was surrounded by good food and good people so I was excited. :) Then after that Ange spent the night at my house. We ended up watching IronMan--great movie, so we didn't get to chat as much but it was still great to have her company.

Monday was fun, it was my first time ever going to BSF! The group of girls that I was with and kind of "shadowed" for their group time was a lot of fun! I'm so used to thinking of BSF people as all old and outdated...Some of the people there have known me since I was still a kid! But coming there and seeing that there were actually people my age attending and that were definitely not old, relieved those fears of mine. I had a really good time and I'm excited to join up with that next year!

Tuesday was a lot of fun too! That was my birthday! I can't believe I'm 22 already!?! I know 22 is really not that old, but its just weird because since I've been in school up till now so I feel like I haven't really been able to make too many "grown-up" decisions yet. I hope that when those times come though I will make wise decisions, but until then I'm just trying to not take life for granted and to enjoy the people around me. The beginning of this day my mom, me, and my Grandma Gresset went to a restaurant in downtown Seattle called "Julio's" and had breakfast which was delicious! I was glad to get to spend some time with Grandma, I gotta learn to treasure those moments with her. She's definitely got some stuff that I can learn from. After that she joined us for most of the day actually while my mom and I shopped. I got so many wonderful things that I didn't deserve that day.

Wednesday was great too! I spent the day with my life-time best friend Sarah Beilke. I love how honest she is with me. It's refreshing. :) She never sugar-coats things and I love how when she gives you a compliment, she really means it, and I so appreciate that about her. I can say things that are specific to all of my friends about the characteristics that I love about them, but since I spent the day with Sarah, I was just reminded of all of these things. She's also the first person my age that I really knew to get married, so it's been so impressive to see how hard she works and how caring she is in her relationships.

....I have so much to learn about life.....

Thursday was a lot of fun as well! :) haha, I know I keep saying this about every day, but its true! I got to sleep in till like nine....ahhh! Then I just kinda meandered around the house, went shopping for my brother -in-law's birthday presents as well as my sister Lisa's. I'm excited to give them their presents! Then Peter called to play soccer with a whole bunch of wonderful people. :) It was a lot of fun although I was EXTREMELY nervous at first. I was just glad that I made myself useful at least once in the game. One of the girls on the other team scored within the first couple of seconds of the game so I told her she had a great shot. We got to talking and apparently that was her last game cuz she was gonna have surgery the next week. :( That stinks! She was glad to have scored something at her last game though. I was happy for her but at the same time I had to defend her from shooting any more goals in, and she was pretty good so I hope I did a decent-enough job. I also met another girl on the other team who had really cute short hair so I complimented her on it haha! I'm so excited to go to beauty school! Woo woo!!!! :) But anyway, back to soccer. All in all, it was so much fun and I hope I get to play again some time this summer or something. Maybe I'll improve a little. :) It was also really nice to get to hang out with my friend Peter, he's a great guy and it's always good to chat and catch up with him. He's always knowledgeable of or at the epi-center of all the "fun-activities" around here haha so I'm very appreciative of his inviting personality and letting me come along. It was great to see everybody that I hadn't seen for a while! I gave Angela a BIG hug, (I simply love that girl), saw Becca, gave her a big hug, saw Becky, gave her a big hug, saw Nicki, gave her a big hug! I saw a few guys from home at the game and if it were socially appropriate I probably would've given them a big hug too, but I figured a smile or a handshake would do the trick. I was just excited to be around familiar people, as well as new ones. :) People are great.

So today I woke up at ten which was lovely! :) We are going to have a family meal and celebrate the birthdays of Joe, myself, Rob, and Lisa! I'm so excited to see everyone! I am thankful for family. I'm even more excited to hear what's going on in everybody's lives and for our conversation! Woo woo! :) After the party I plan to do homework for the first time this week, or at least see what I can do so that it's not too shocking when I get back. Hopefully I can get something done. Then tomorrow is Saturday and I'm not quite sure what exactly I'm doing but I think I might spend the evening with Ange or something...not sure yet about details, but we'll see. :) I'm excited. It's been a great week and I'm thankful for everything in it.

PS-a shout-out prayer request for Kyle who's grandfather is struggling to survive would be greatly appreciated as well as for my brother Rob who is looking for God's will about staying at the specific church that he is at right now, thanks!

Until later, folks!

For all the females.... :)

Haha, ok, so I just gotta say this, MOM's are GREAT. They just are. They know you better than you know yourself. :) Ok, so this just made me laugh hardcore at my rediculousness last night so I thought I'd tell all of you haha! So for the past couple of days or so I've been just kinda moping around....I started getting all self-conscious and what-not, I was kinda depressed and just didn't want to involve myself in anything. I couldn't figure out what was going on and I couldn't sort anything out in my head. Then I started to stress out about random things. SO in my loneliness I gave my mom a call. I just wanted someone to talk to right? So I ask her how she's doing and almost immediately she's like, "Brittany, are you alright?" I'm like, eh, I'm ok...- and from then flows all of my emotional baggage. haha! Mom was awesome though. She listened and then was like, "Brittany, you need to stop basing everything off of your feelings. Your being very fearful right now and that is not of God. If you went through life by the seat of your pants your just going to be blown from one thing to another. You need to have faith." Then I responded (I was pretty emotional at this point ha!) and was like, "then WHAT's the point of having emotions if you can never USE them!" hahaha! I'm very laughable at times like these. So at that key indicator phrase of rediculousness my mom chuckled and asked me three crucial questions that are KEY to understanding the emotional roller-coaster that is Brittany Gresset. haha!
1) Brittany, is this about a boy? (my answer: no.)
2) Brittany, is this about school? (....kinda?)
3) Brittany, are you on your period right now? (......maybe. ;) haha) She laughed and said, well, THAT explains a LOT. :) haha!
.....and with those three answers she knew exactly what to prescribe to me. This was her response.
1) "You need to go to bed." (SO true.) (Late nights thinking by myself for extended periods of time is not always a good thing for me.)
2) "Have you had some chocolate yet?" (This made me smile.)
3)"God is still active in your life. Don't act as if he's stopped. He never stops investing in people so neither should you."

I liked the logical answer first. (That's probably my dad's influence. :) He's all about efficiency and logic.). It was an immediate solution that I could look forward to. Then the second answer was something that I could physically act upon, and then the third answer was a word of solidity and affirmation that I could take with me and remember. I thought it was so cool how she handled me. It totally calmed me down in all of the areas that I needed it. God mightily used her last night. :) I was a happy camper today, so the solutions, although very simple, worked! :) hehe.

Haha, so I'm not quite sure as to why I wrote this blog, but think of it in terms of a tribute to mom's everywhere and their intimate knowledge of their children which I am so thankful for.... :)

Senioritis!!!

......I've got it REAL bad. I just don't care anymore. :( It's not that I don't like my classes or anything, I find them very interesting actually, but I just can't seem to find the motivation to do any of the work for them in my normal fashion. Instead of doing the homework a day or two ahead, I find myself writing up papers the day of, waiting until the last second to turn things in...I never used to do this! Without swimming helping me prioritize my time I'm finding that I am able to find PLENTY of other extra-curricular activities to do outside of my homework...unfortunately I've been letting those activities take precedence over my school work. I hope this goes away. It's weird too, because I'm doing really actually quite well on my tests even with the last minute studying, late nights, movie-watching, exercising, etc. Where's the justice in this?!? I'm getting away with good grades and yet I'm not being punished for my lack of discipline...this is not helpful to me when I'm trying to find reasons to study and do homework early. Is this what it was like for "normal" college students?? I feel like a freshman again and having to re-learn how to prioritize my time again. It's weird. I don't know. Either way, I've gotta get my act together here soon because Spring Break is coming up (HALLELUIAH!) and I've got some major tests coming up that I know will be a lot harder than the tests/quizzes/papers I've been writing recently. It's time to jump on the ball and get rolling. Only two weeks and then I get to go home for a week and it'll be my birthday!! So stoked. Just gotta hold on for two weeks...that's all for now.

Moving on to ordinary things...and some LESS ordinary.

Well, my swimming career is now officially over. I would write more about it, but I'm doing pretty good right now keeping busy so it's hard to even notice that I'm not doing it anymore...it's just wonderful that I have more time and energy to do things!

This weekend we had a three day weekend which was awesome cuz our professors had a faculty development day on Friday! It was awesome! I milked it for all it was worth. I cut a few people's hair, dyed one guys' hair, and listened to our Whitworth basketball team on the internet FINALLY crush the UPS team, who had the top seed. Now our guys are going to the NCAA tournament!! yay! Thankfully they have their first tournament game at our home court so I'll definitely be cheering them on on Thursday night, soooo excited.

My cell phone, which had been lost previously for about two weeks, was finally brought back to the info desk this weekend (thank you Whitworth Christian kids who for the most part feel bad if they don't return lost items :)...haha!). Thankfully I got to talk to my mom who I hadn't really gotten to have a conversation with for a while due to the time limits from using other people's phones. My parents are spending the next week or two I think in Palm Springs again...pretty jealous that she gets to see sun. Oh well. I also got my car back from the shop for the weekend to be able to get around. It died on Saturday and then I finally got it to start up randomly today, so I returned it to the dealers. blah.

Tonight I have to write a CORE paper and then do an assignment for Organizational Theory....my excitement for this is overwhelming....I think my case of Senioritis is starting to kick in. :( Not Good.

So this past weekend was very interesting. Friday night, one of the boys on the swim team came back from a basketball game not feeling well. It started at dinner where he had a headache, then his speech started to slur, then parts of his body started to go numb and he started shaking. It was really scary. The dorm medic took him to the hospital and Justin and I followed and stayed with him till midnight that night. The nurses had to get people to restrain Matt because he was shaking so much and wouldn't lie down. It was the craziest thing. Then, while me and Justin were sitting in the Emergency room, the stupid monitors in the waiting room kept flashing the symptoms of a stroke over and over again so we were scared out of our minds that Matt was having a stroke. Thankfully this was not the case. In fact, the doctors couldn't even figure out WHAT it was. He got a spinal tap to see if it was meningitis, but that tested negative, and then they tried a whole bunch of other virus tests, blood tests, etc. Everything came up negative. So The rest of the team visited the hospital all of the next day. As the day went on Matt became more coherent and started drinking more water and sleeping and then got better. It was so weird; but it definitely brought the team back together to support Matt when for a while now, conference has been over with so some people kinda go their seperate ways. But yea, that was quite the crazy event. Also, that same day, a whole bunch of swimmers went skiing and snowboarding for Kath's birthday. Justin ended up breaking his pinky finger....(this unfortunately is a pretty typical thing to happen to him..he's kinda brittle. haha.) So he ended up joining Matt at the hospital so we were all just one big happy swimming clan at the hospital this weekend haha!

Last night I had a nightmare, which I tend to have a lot less often now that I am older, but that was scary. I gotta take a little bit of the blame for this however because me and a whole bunch of people were going through a season of 24 over the weekend, and it's I guess not a very good idea for me to watch that show right before bed. I always get similarly themed nightmares about robbers coming in and hurting or killing my family. It's so not cool and unfortunately feels very real when I get them. This dream was slightly different though because I wasn't just sitting or hiding anywhere while this was happening, like I normally am in previous nightmares. This time I had a gun, it was very strange. I was also VERY ANGRY for anyone even laying a finger on my family members. I remember waking up in a sweat and thinking, "wow, I didn't think I could feel so much anger in myself!" But yeah, it was weird and scared me, so I'm not going to expand much further on that.

This week I've got lots of papers and assignments due on wednesday. So I'm gonna go charge ahead and work on those now. To everyone out there, goodnight!

Conference '09

Wow, words cannot express how awesome this past weekend was. I went to the Federal Way pool and swam the best races of my life! God was SO wonderful to me and blessed me a lot this weekend. I thought I'd just give you a glimpse of how miraculous God's work was in my swims this week by showing you some stats...
Entered time in the 50 free:
24.08
Time after finals in the 50 free:
23.94
Entered time in the 100 back:
1.01
Time after finals in the 100 back:
58.53
Entered time in the 100 free:
53.31
Time after finals in the 100 free:
52.20

I dropped time in every single event! Wow, what a way to go out, I couldn't be any happier honestly. The team had an amazing performance and despite the girls' team was short 3 people and got second to the UPS girls, we still held 11 out of the 13 top highest scores in the meet. The guys won their seventh straight winning streak too. It was incredible and the atmosphere was like nothing I've ever experienced at a conference meet. AMAZING.

So, that was my swimming update, right now I'm training for Nationals so the coaches have boosted the yardage up again to break us down again so they can build us up with some strength later. So far, so good. :) Hopefully I make it, but I'm not gonna make any assumptions at this point, its all fair game for anyone to cut me off the list, so I'm just praying that that doesn't happen. If I do get booted, I'll know it was for a reason though, so I will be content no matter what the outcome is.

I realized I haven't written in this thing in FOREVER, so I thought I'd write a little about what is going on with me.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. God has shown me some things. I am realizing that soon I won't be able to hide behind the veil of schooling from going out into the work force....that scares me a little bit. I am realizing that when I go home after graduation, I'm going to have to start over again with a lot of things. I am realizing how dependent I am on my parents and how scared stiff I really am of going out on my own. (I know I need to do it, to be an actual independent adult, but it just doesn't help when your parents actually want you to be home with them and you don't mind them either.) So I'm trying to motivate myself towards such goals of independence. I've also been praying/stressing out about my future career as a hair stylist/possible owner of a salon. Am I really cut out for managing a business? Will I be able to step up and be responsible when it comes to legal tasks and financial tasks, (both of which I have found that I am very weak at skill-wise), and if I will be able to persevere through those times when my business may not be looking very good. I want to be ethically solid and want to have a faith integration with my business but will I be strong enough to actually carry that out in a world that doesn't exactly embrace that worldview? I've been asking myself these questions a lot, along with random questions about my relationship status. Am I ready for one? Will I avoid it through work? Will I be able to handle work and a relationship if I happen to be in one when that time comes? Sooooo many random questions scrambling around in my head lately and I don't quite know what to do with them. I do notice however that all of these questions are futuristic in nature and there's no way that I can even answer any of them because I don't know the future. I know that God doesn't want me to waste my time worrying because it is fruitless, but sometimes thats easier said than done. I guess I just have to take it one step at a time. It just feels like my steps are very slow right now and far-between. I'm praying to be content with where I am at right now. God know's what will happen, I just sometimes have too negative expectations of what God can do in my life. Seeing my swimming results from Conference this past weekend you would think would show me the capability that God has to perform total miracles in my life....I seem to compartmentalize His miraculous works towards pertaining to only specific areas of my life, and think that they are not possible in other areas of my life. Why is that? God is still the same God isn't He? There should be no reason for me to think that he only performs miracles in some aspects of my life and not others. Anyways, I'm rambling now so I'll let ya'll go now, but I guess it just felt good for me to just write out my thoughts and concerns, I mean, they are only human concerns, ya know. :) -In fact, I think that now that I've written this down, it all seems less foreboding and scary now and so I don't have to stress about it. Thank you for letting me vent to you and I apologize. :) I hope everyone is doing well. Have a good night, I'm off to bed.

Busy Weekend!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Friday after class I got to sit around for a while and watch a movie at home, then I went to our swim meet against Willamette, we won. :) Then straight from there I went to the basketball game against UPS which are our srch-rivals, but unfortunately we lost....It was still fun though, basketball games are my favorite sport to watch live, so it was still good. Then I went home and watched another movie till I fell asleep with my housemates! Saturday I basically woke up and did a repeat. Swim meet against Lewis and Clarke, Basketball game straight after, then movie at night! It was a lot of fun. Then sunday got even better because after church, I checked my email and it said that on tuesday, my only class obligation for that day was to watch the presidential inauguration! So of course I did that today, it was good! Obama is a really good speaker. But anyway, back to sunday. There had been a swim team party planned for this night to do a white elephant gift excheange at one of the coaches houses...my car stalled on the way to their house unfortunately so that caused a lot of problems throughout this week, but I just got my car back and all fixed today, so that's nice. To make a long story short, apparently someone on the team put in as their white elephant gift, "a date with Brittany Gresset" without my knowledge. I was unable to go to the party because of the car problems, but at least I found out that I now get to go on a date with Ms. Christina Hinkel. :) hehe! It shall be fun. Yesterday, I went to practice then got my homework done, then headed to practice again later on that day. Me, Brenda, Nita, Sarah, and Jenn ended up going to Azteca for dinner afterward and then to the movie, "Bride Wars" which was Hilarious. Although I balled for some odd reason towards the end of it. I must've been emotional that night or something cuz it didn't seem like that big of a deal what was going on in the movie, but I still did anyway, and it felt good. :) Sometimes it feels nice to cry, I don't do it very often, so when I do cry, it's nice to let it out. So on the way to the car that night after the movie, me and Brenda found a Kanye West song, "heartless" which is one of our favorites so we started dancing all over the place in her car, and apparently this lady and her husband were walking out to their car behind us and Brenda saw the lady whisper, "they're CRAZY" to her husband....awesome. Glad to know I look like I'm insane when I dance in a car haha! Then once we were out of the parking lot, we were still dancing and this car full of guys saw us dancing and started cracking up haha! Oh the many ways that I can make a fool of myself... :) But all in all, it was an AWESOME weekend full of fun adventures. :) Next weekend should be good too, my parents are gonna come up and visit me! They are gonna come watch my last home swim meet against Whitman at our pool. :( I'm really sad that this is my last chance to swim at our pool in a meet for the rest of my life. :( I don't want it to end. Swimming has been such a big part of my college life, I don't know what to expect when it won't be there next year. But anyway, I'm gonna try to do my very best for when they come. Hopefully I can go out with a bang. We'll see.