FREEDOM!!!!

I'm back! I had my exam on Friday and while I won't find out the results for a couple of months, I feel pretty good about it. I feel like I passed, which is a good thing, however, if I didn't, I have no idea where I went wrong.

The test was in Louisville, which is about an hour or so from here. We had to be there around 7:15, so rather than wake up super early and make the drive, I decided to stay in Louisville on Thursday night. The test was downtown and there is a hotel that is attached to the convention center, which was the testing site. The only problem was, when I went to book my hotel room a little over a month ago, the hotel was full! I tried a few other hotels close by and they were all full too! Every hotel in downtown was full. Now there were several hundred people taking the exam, but not enough to fill up even one hotel, let alone every single one of them! This ended up being a blessing in disguise however, because Corrin, a girl that I went to college with, who took the review course with me, had already booked a room at the Marriott right next to the test site, and she offered to let me stay with her. She is such a sweetheart and I was so appreciative.

So I arrived around 6:00 Thursday night in Louisville and we had a delicious dinner together and headed back to the room to relax for the rest of the evening. We talked and laughed alot and had so much fun just hanging out. It felt like we were teenagers having a sleepover and was exactly what we needed the night before the test.

She was planning on staying the night after the test (she had some friends coming to stay with her) and dress up for Halloween and go out on Friday night, and then get a massage at the Spa on Saturday morning. So on Thursday night she called the concierge to book the massage. The concierge tried to call us back, but the phone in our room was on forward. So the concierge came up to our room to book Corrin's massage and Corrin had never had a massage before and was so excited and sweet that the concierge sent up a complimentary bottle of wine to our room for the night! We felt so fancy. Also, the housekeeping staff dropped chocolates off for us during the evening too. People kept knocking on our door and just kept bringing us stuff. It was awesome. We seriously had so much fun. We ordered room service breakfast to be delivered in the morning and feasted on eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, orange juice and hot chocolate before our test. Although neither of us slept well, I was tossing and turning all night and heard her doing the same thing, the night before the test and the morning of really made an 8 hour exam as enjoyable of an experience as it could have been.

I finished the exam around 5:30 and headed back to Lexington. I met Derek and our YL team members for a celebratory dinner at Cheddars. I got home around 9:00 on Friday night to a sparkly clean house and some chocolate covered strawberries! My friend Sarah sent me chocolate covered strawberries before my test which was so sweet, and my wonderful husband and his parents cleaned our house while I was taking the test. Derek has been having some health issues, so his parents came down to stay with him while I was gone, and on Friday they spent all day fixing things around the house and giving it a thorough cleaning. I mentioned a little bit ago that my goal has been to keep the house sanitary, not necessarily clean because I just didn't have time. I thought I would spend Saturday morning cleaning, but instead was able to sleep in and not worry about it. I was so happy. And because Derek's mom helped, it's probably the cleanest our house has been since we moved in.

Ok, so this post is getting long. Basically the rest of the weekend was pretty wonderful too. My parents and my grandma came down to visit and we spent all weekend with them. I haven't seen my parents since my birthday back in August, and I have missed them so much. We ate a lot, did some shopping, went to church, celebrated my dads birthday and just hung out all weekend. It was wonderful.

Sunday night as Derek and I were sitting watching football I realized that I didn't have to study and it was such a great feeling. There is lots going on this week and I feel like there are so many things I need to catch up on, but I'm so happy to be done studying and have my life back. Thank you to everyone who prayed. God definitely answered. There were times when I was taking the test that I would come to a problem that I didn't know how to solve, and I would look it up in a book and find exactly what I needed to do and throughout the test there were times when I knew it was God showing me what I needed to know. So thank you so much, I really appreciate it.