My Bachelorette Pad

So this is my dorm room :

It's a pretty sweet set up. It's the first school year since I've been in college that I have my own room. It's both really nice and little a lonely. But mostly I'm grateful to be able to go to bed and get up whenever I want and not feel bad about disturbing anybody. I also happen to love my room a whole lot. You can ask my mom, I was way stressed out when I moved in because I my room wasn't turning out to be how I wanted my space to look. But my mom really came through for me and helped me feel more situated in my room and she helped my vision come alive. I love my mom. Anyways, you'll also notice the purple orchid in the picture. No, it's not fake. I am the proud owner of a new baby orchid. This is the first flower that I've ever tried to grow on my own and I just love it! Orchids are kind of high maintenance getting them set up, but after that they're super easy, and they look beautiful! My orchid might be my favorite part of my room. That and my paintings, and my desk hutch. It's a pretty sweet place to live, you should come visit sometime :)

You'll also notice my sweet apartment-mate, Molly. That's our sink that we share and our bathroom is to her right. Paige and Cole live on the other side of the apartment, which his pretty much a mirror image of our side (except a lot warmer). And in between the two sides we have an entryway, a kitchen, and a living room. Pretty sweet huh? I bet you really want to come visit now.

Illinois: Round 3

So last weekend I went to Illinois to see my wonderful friends JR and Aly. These two have really been some good friends in my life since I was first going into high school. Aly helped me figure out a lot of things about life just by being a great example, loving me well, and giving me tons of great advice along the way. They moved to Illinois about four years ago and I have missed them terribly, but I usually try and go to see them once a year or so. It's been so exciting to see their family grow from one kid, to three kids, and then this past March to four kids (crazy!) I've gotten to see them through hard times and through good times, but through everything they are such a strong light on a hill for the Kingdom, and I love that (so much).

Anyways, so I got to spend all of last weekend hanging out with them and getting to know the kids better and to hear what's been going on with life. It was amazing...I think their kids are my favorite in the whole world of kids. Here they are:

This is Foster. Or Frostie, or frost man, or foz, or bug. Either way, I love this kid. It's funny, if you go back to July 2008 on this blog you can see my first visit to Illinois, back when it was just Foster, and he looks so young. This past weekend I could actually carry on a conversation with him, it was so strange. We had a couple of epic pillow fights and some interesting conversations. He was so amazed when I told him that I flew here in an airplane. He responded "To our yard?" I laughed so hard and explained what an airport was to him and he was like "Really?" His amazement was adorable.

This is Paisley (or peanut), she is the girl of the girl-boy twins and number two in the line up. She is way prepared for the terrible twos that are coming up in a couple months, but I think she is still so precious. I was watching the twins and Foster on Saturday morning and I needed to take a shower, so I told Foster I was leaving the door open in case they needed to get me for some reason. Well, halfway into my shower, this little face peeks around the shower curtain smiling up at me and it was little Peanut. And I didn't know what to do, so I was just like "Hi Paisley", and she stuck her little arm in the shower and offered me a teddy gram (I had given them teddy grams for snack), and I wasn't sure how to respond (because I was in the shower) so I took the teddy gram from her and said "Thanks Paisley" and she beamed at me and offered another one of her teddy grams so I took that one too. I wasn't sure what to do with them, so I ate them. In the shower. It was tasty.

This is Charlie Jude, or judderbug, or dudder, or if you're Paisley, then JuJu. He is number three and the boy of the boy-girl twins. It's so funny, I always seem to come around during potty training season. Frostie was being potty trained two visits ago and the twins were being potty trained this time around. I suppose I'll have to make a another visit when Betsy is getting potty trained... Charlie is so great. I loved playing the blow dryer game that I used to play with Foster with him. You know, the whole zap him with the blow dryer, he screams and runs away, then he cautiously sneaks back up to me and waits for me to zap him again, repeat until tired or hair is dry. It's a pretty great game for two year olds. I can't wait to play with Betsy. Anyways, as you can see, Charlie loves driving already, and he frequently took me for a spin around the block, you know, no big deal.

And the newest addition to the Dakin Clan....

Betsy Jean Harper

Oh, the many faces of Betsy, aka blues, aka blue bells, aka bitsy (if you're me). We are birthday twins (sort of) We were born less than 12 hours (and twenty years) apart. So naturally you can imagine how amazing she is. Of all the kids, Betsy is most definitely the most laid back and she's the youngest. She smiles like 85% of her life and causes her family to dream big dreams. I grew so attached to this one over the weekend and I wish I could hold her still.

We realized that I usually come visit after every round of kids, so somebody jokingly asked me when my next visit was...I don't think Aly and JR are looking to have more kids any time soon but I am WAY looking forward to get to know these guys as they grow up and turn into people. It's so exciting! It was so fun also to hang with Aly and JR and just to hear how God is blessing their lives and rocking their worlds. JR is back in school trying to get to med school. I think that that is so awesome! We got to talk about calculus and chemistry...you know, things up my alley. And I always enjoy getting to hear whatever Aly has to share with me because she is such a good older sister who cares about me and my life, and always has some awesome wisdom about life and relationships to offer me. It was such a refreshing visit and I really wish that I could have stayed for longer.

I'm brining blogger back (what)!

So, for those of you who don't know, I used to blog fairly often in high school and in the first part of college. However, life just got busy. Georgia Tech has this way making sure you always have more than enough to do so that you're never bored with life, so I stopped writing for the most part. But the other day I realized how I should use my blog now more than ever. There are a lot of you guys out there that I, unfortunately, don't get to see very often, and this space would be a great way to keep you up to date with my life through pictures, videos, stories, things that I'm learning, etc. So to motivate myself I decided to reinvent my blog (as you probably notice that it doesn't look the same anymore) and to give it a new name. I really like the idea of beauty from ashes, It comes from Isaiah 61:3 where the Lord declares he will crown his people with beauty instead of ashes. And it also correlates the idea of the phoenix, and the imagery of dieing and then being reborn from ash.

Anyways. All of that to say...I'm back. And feel free to read through older posts if you're new to my blog, because I've posted some neat stuff!

So to start out my return I would like to share a funny story that happened last night, that I look back and laugh about now, but definitely was NOT laughing about it last night.

So I have this really great boyfriend, Joshua, who turned 23 this past Wednesday:

So at our weekly meeting for Navigators I decided that at the end it would be a good idea to get Josh a cake and have everyone sing happy birthday to him and celebrate him. Well towards the end of the night I suddenly realize that I don't have any forks or plates or anything for people to eat this cake with, I only have the cake, a cake cutter, candles, and matches. So my quick-thinking friend, Haley, says she thinks that the Taco Bell in our student center is open. So I quickly run down to Taco Bell and ask them for about 25 of their sporks. After some deliberation they finally agree to part with their beloved sporks for my birthday celebration. I also grabbed a bunch of napkins and ran back upstairs where we were singing our closing songs. I was thinking to myself "whew, that was a close one, crisis averted!" Now, I had previously asked Adam how many songs we were going to sing so I could leave during the last one to get the cake for Josh. Adam told me we were going to sing three songs, however, after the second song he started to pray like he was closing us out for the night. So me and my cake buddy, Haley, are like 'oh shoot!' So we sprint to where we hid the cake and are ferociously trying to light all 23 candles quickly and run back to the room. Well, I was holding the cake and we were going so fast and we were so frazzled, that I did not think at all about tieing my hair back and my hair caught on fire. But of course I am holding the cake and cannot get the fire out, so I start panicking and Haley desperately tries to pat the fire out of my hair and comb some of the ashes out. I don't know if any of you have smelled burned hair, but man, it smells awful! Anyways, we don't have time to worry about it because we're late, remember? So we run to the room only to discover they are in fact singing the third song and we were just deceived. So all we can do is wait in the hallway for them to stop singing, meanwhile the candles are burning and getting smaller and smaller and melted wax is going all over the cake. So by the time we finally got inside there were little pools of wax with very small flames on top. So we all sang and I brought the cake to Josh and him and the guy standing next to him (Drew Martin) both cover their mouths when they see the cake and go "Ew, gross!" because there was melted wax on the cake. At this point I start crying because I am so defeated and Josh FINALLY blows out those stupid candles and makes his wish and we all eat a very delicious chocolate cake after scraping off the wax and some of the icing.

Moral of this story, I am a loving girlfriend and Josh is an ungrateful boyfriend. Haha, just kidding. Later on he told me he loved it. I really think that dysfunctional cakes have the most love and thought put into them. I hope Kate Fields is reading this because I think this cake has beaten out your 18th birthday cake for the most dysfunctional cake I've ever given.

Anyways, I hope you are laughing at me as much as I am now :)
Happy Birthday Josh!