Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun!

The slight sunburn on my shoulders and nose and the crazy loud peepers from the creek outside our window remind us that spring is finally here... I haven't loved spring more than this year... All I can say to the sun is "Its about time!" I spent the entire day yesterday hanging out with different groups of girls in the sunshine... it was so fun to picnic with my what is left from last years Lambein RA staff members and my new favorite, our highschool youth group girls!!

I am chilling tonight and preparing for our student's last full week of classes and taking a break to "blog some" while Brendon and his friend Nate, from the youth group, are playing a quick game of Halo since they rented it for the "Fry Night" on Friday... (At the annual fry night the guys - fry anything and everything from turkey to twinkies- In Brendon's words... he didn't feel it the next day, it cleaned him out the next day) It probably doesn't help that he and I ran a 5K Saturday morning after he had been up all night eating grease with the guys... The 5K was fun because we won for "Fastest Non Houghton college students" haha... fun :) This spring we have taken up running together for fun in the afternoons - it has been a good to get me back in the swing of running again and quite fun to have quality time with the hubby!

Fun news from the Kirkbride household is we got free bikes today!! How awesome is that??? Funny, that all week we had been planning to buy bikes but the Lord just dropped these two rather nice bikes right in our laps. We had dinner at the Tucker's on Saturday night and as we were talking about living simply... I mentioned we wanted to ride bikes more this summer instead of paying for 4.00 a gallon gas but we just needed to buy bikes- they said, "Why don't you just take ours?" This morning after church Steve helped Brendon load up a bike rack and two bikes on the back of our falling apart Hyundi... and we cleaned them up this afternoon... good as new!

Work has been full of lessons learned for me this past semester... one of my RA's said to me the other day... "Em, you and I have learned a lot together this year... haven't we?" - "Why yes, Miss Steph, we have :)" It has been challenging but rewarding all the same. I was trying to describe it the other day but was at a loss for words. So, let me take a stab here. I love my job, mostly because I love the conversations with students, I love praying with them, I love listening and challenging, I love eating and laughing with them, and I absolutely love walking with them as they fall in love with Jesus more but sometimes students aren't quite ready for that - it was an awesome conversation as we cried together and it is hard for me (as it was when I was the RA.) It can be hard when students resist help and end up feeling like the "evil "authority" you can't trust" Still, this job is like running... I am getting addicted to it... I love the lessons learned and the challenge of learning how to love people in a small community.

Oh dear, I am just jabbering now... I should sign off - We promise to be better bloggers from here on out...