Oregon State University Grad Party + a Little Education on Crohn's Disease

I've realized that I have gotten behind on some of the events that have happened this summer. One being, that my youngest brother graduated from Oregon State University! My parents met at and graduated from OSU, and I got my masters there 2 years ago, so it was a big deal for my little brother to graduate with his bachelors in Political Science (same as my dad!). We are big time BEAVER BELIEVERS!

My younger brother Sam took some really cool grad pictures of Ed. Check out his instagram account for some more amazing pictures!

 After the ceremony it was pretty chaotic outside the stadium, so we weren't able to get one photo with all of us together, but this works!

 My parents hosted a party to celebrate afterward!

  I had to share this picture because my mom is really proud of these flowers!! They are so pretty :)

   Beaver Fanatics.

Dessert Table

This is just a shot of some of the people that came. There were lots more!

My mom and I had fun decorating. A lot of the decoration we had saved from my masters graduation party. The little OSU marquee lights are from Michael's crafts. They are paper and you put them together yourself. They come with the lights and you can pick out what color paper you want. *Disclaimer* I had a pretty difficult time getting the paper to fit perfectly into the letters. Even tracing the templates I had to do a ton of trimming and adjusting to make it fit with the holes so the lights could get through.

It was a wonderful evening and I am so proud of my brother. Our "little beaver" is all grown up.

I have to share, my brother is affected with Crohn's Disease, which is an autoimmune disease. It causes inflammation of the digestive tract. It started in middle school, and took the doctors a really long time to find out what was going on with him. In the mean time, he was throwing up everything he ate. What I remember most about that time, is that despite the fact that he couldn't even keep down his lunch, Ed DID NOT want to miss school. I remember thinking he was crazy because if I had an opportunity to miss school, then I took it! Finally they were able to diagnose him, but it has been a continuing struggle for him. It seems as though there is still a lot unknown about Crohns. He has done so much, despite feeling miserable much of the time.

I'm sharing this now because as he has started his new job, and moved away from home, he is having HORRIBLE flare ups. He is training to become an assistant manager at a retail chain, and he has to work, sometimes 7 days a week, sometimes night shift, sometimes unloading trucks. Now imagine doing all of that with everything horrible happening to your digestive system.
If you pray, please pray that God will place a healing hand on him, if only to help him get through this week until he can make it to a specialist on his day off. 

For more information on Crohn's Disease visis crohnsandcolitis.com.
Please pray!!