When Austin comes to town

When Austin comes to town life changes. We watch a lot less TV, we read less, we probably talk less, and just watch him. Being the first grandkid is a demanding job. You are pressured to bring a great deal of entertainment and good thing Austin seems up for the task every time. He is such a sweet little boy. Here are lots of pictures to detail the most recent visit.

Austin adores his "Papa". If he walks out of the room it takes him less than 5 seconds to want to go find him. I kept telling dad it must be hard to be a celebrity. 

He is a huge fan of suitcases. Mom got luggage for Christmas so Austin really enjoyed that. 

He got a cowboy hat from Grant which he is adorable in.We also FaceTime'ed Great Grandma Jean so she could see all of Austin's toys...and well..Austin.

A developmental specialist said that a toy that would really be great for Austin is various containers, puff balls, and pipe cleaners. He puts the puff balls into the containers and moves them to others and it is a great problem solving activity. So mom saved containers and I helped her decorate them (still not fully convinced it would be that great). However, he loved it! I think it was the thing that held his attention longest and he was the most quiet when he was playing with it. It was so fun to watch him learn that way.

Sometimes it can be exhausting being the life of the party.

I am pretty sure I could win awards with this picture. "Did you say Santa?!"What a sweet sweet little boy. 

Grace on Grace

Grace. The concept has been such a reoccurring theme in my mind this past semester. The word overwhelms me a little but in a good way. I see grace daily but it is something I have seen in very first hand ways this semester. I feel undeserving but yet I know because of Christ I am worthy. I feel so inadequate but I know with Christ I am enough. I know full well that my actions and my sin do not set me up in a place to deserve grace. Yet still my God is relentless and loving and incredibly gracious. He gives me so many beautiful gifts that I do not deserve. I am constantly in awe. My God does not let my past define my future. That is grace. Pure grace.

Christmas in college

We take every opportunity to celebrate the season. That often means dressing up like we are crazy and singing. This happened kinda  lot this week. Nbd that it was/is always one of the most crazy weeks of the semester. Maybe thats why I slept for 12 hours last night? Anyways.

This is now a tradition. We have an all hall meeting where we sing "12 days of Check-out" to our residents and dress up in crazy christmas gear. We then take it upon ourselves to parade around campus and encourage all those with their noses in the books. We quietly walk though the library and turn heads. We paused for this solid window pic. This is college right? This is also my job? 

My E1E ladies and our brother unit decorated Christmas cookies this week. The creativity was unreal. I love those girls. 

We then celebrated in the form of Christmas morning. For confidentiality reasons I will not describe this event any further. But it was a blessing. One of my favorite moments of the year. Again. So blessed by my relationships old and new that have been formed in this hall. When else in life to moments like this happen? So blessed by this community. 

Ok, well someone said finals are this week... so I should go figure out what I can do about that. 

Now this is college

I think it happened. I think I had my favorite class of my college life...the funny thing is...I think it was exactly how college was designed to be. The class was Student Leadership Practicum. The book we read was this:

The point of the class is to have student leaders talk about leadership, specifically from a servant leadership paradigm. The class originally was just me but as I talked about it with friends other people joined. There were 5 students and our professor. Four of us were RA's. Myself and one other were returning RA's and there were 2 new RA's. One was a TA in LDR-150. Our professor developed and ran the center for life calling and leadership until this year as he has transitioned into a new role. He has a crazy amount of leadership experience and wisdom. Each week we read a chapter of the above pictured book, and turned in a weekly report (which as RA's we already have to do). He didn't want to add extra busy work. ummm awesome. So we read a chapter and came together once a week to talk about how it applied to our leadership roles. He would ask us hard questions and every week we would leave feeling challenged and healthier. We would ask each other hard questions. It was honestly kind of therapeutic  It was awesome to be able to process the leadership aspect of being an RA with other RA's. What was our final you might ask? We went out to lunch at Casa Brava and our professor paid.

Seems too good to be true right? Maybe it should be but I don't care. It was such a blessing in this season. Isn't that how college should be?