Week in Review: Updates Galore

What a week!  It feels like we had something every night this week - Monday was Open House at the high school, Tuesday was the Election and our weekly Adoration Hour, Wednesday was Declan's 1st basketball game of the season, Phil had a meeting for work on Thursday, and now here we are.  Happy Friday! 

During the last presidential election, our family only had two voters (Phil and I) but just four short years later, we now have five voters which is wild!  When Eamon (a recent 18 year old) went to vote, they asked him if it was his first time voting, he said yes, and they announced WE'VE GOT A FIRST TIME VOTER HERE and whole place cheered and clapped for him :)

I voted before work on Tuesday morning, thinking it wouldn't be busy at 7am - wrong!

A restaurant in our town had a Buy One Adult Meal and Get a Free Kids Meal on Election Day, so you know this crew showed up:

I was at swim practice (for Xander)/spin class (for me) but we got Jersey Mike's steak and cheese subs after.  If there was any night for stress-eating, it was Election Night.

My 22 year old niece, who is a senior in college, ran the New York Marathon and finished with a time of 3:50 for her first marathon ever.  I was wicked proud of her.  She was always an ice hockey player growing up and has only gotten into running pretty recently because she used races as a way to raise funds for cancer research after her mom was diagnosed.  Amazing.

Andrew has been in Rome and got to see Pope Francis and ride scooters and eat gelato.  When in Rome! 

He is currently in Assisi now, which holds a very special place in our hearts (Phil kissed me for the first time there) so I teared up when got this text:

I haven't shared this about Andrew yet because it was really rough there for awhile, but he and his girlfriend broke up right before he flew to Austria for the semester.  Without going into details, poor Andrew was heartbroken and shocked and had a really hard time adjusting to being away from home while dealing with all that.  We got him the support he needed and talked to him all the time and he was able to get through.  Time heals all wounds, and he can see that it's for the best that it happened and he is seriously doing so well now, making tons of new friends and travelling the world.  I felt like I should share in case you see photos of him with other girls and you wouldn't realize that he is single and (almost) ready to mingle.  All in God's timing!

Maggie started shadowing at a physical therapy office this week and is enjoying it, she thinks this could be her future career.  She's only a Junior in high school so she has plenty of time to decide, but speaking from experience, it's so much easier guiding a kid through the college process who knows what they want to do versus one that has no clue. We still love those no clue kids, yes we do, they get us time out of purgatory :)

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JP GOT AN OFFICIAL JOB OFFER!  To bring you up to date, he graduated in May with a Biology degree thinking he wanted to go to PA school.  He came home and the next day started managing The Ice Cream cottage for us, got a medical scribe job in June for a doctor who had to retire early in July due to a neurological disease, and then decided he wanted to go to medical school, after being so inspired by the doctor he was working for.

He went back to full time scooping while also taking a college class he now needed to get into med school, and started studying for the MCAT.  He took the MCAT in September and got a 514.  He applied to a bunch of MD and DO schools, which is the craziest multiple step application process I have ever seen.  

He then began searching for a job and was verbally offered a position at the end of September but has been waiting to get the official paperwork until this past week.  In the meantime he has been taking a BioChem class at the local college and lots of EMT recertification courses and shadowing a physician.  Basically it's been a lot of waiting and knocking requirements off his to-do list.  He's had to do a lot of scrambling to get recommendation letters and transcripts and honestly getting into med school is a long shot due to how late he applied, his good but not excellent gpa, and his lack of related work experience.  

He really should have waited another year before applying to at least have a year's worth of work/shadowing under his belt, and the time to gather the materials and write the essays but understandably he didn't want to push back the super long medical school/residency process another year if he could start in 2025.  Needless to say, we are very happy to have him start this job at the hospital as an Emergency Department Tech and will just keep on praying that what's meant to be will be as we wait for med school decisions!

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Eamon got his first college acceptance:

We're waiting to hear back from 7 more colleges.  He didn't end up applying anywhere too out of his reach, so it should be all good news.  The financial packages will be the deciding factor, as always, and since the FAFSA isn't even available to complete yet, we won't know for awhile.

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This long glorious weekend (THANK YOU VETERANS!) includes the last soccer game for Declan's fall season, a swim meet for both Xander and Brendan, piano lessons for the swimmers, a basketball practice, a Veteran's Day parade, and a mother-son date to see The Wild Robot as a treat for those who read the book.  You got two more days, Xander!  Have a wonderful weekend everybody!