I love:

Instrumental Christmas music.

Christmas lights.

Professors who care about me as a person.

My cohort all laughing together (even when it's at me...wow what a new group dynamic for me.)

The fact that I have a cuddly cohort. Thank God.

Text from Mere: "Happy Friendaversary!"- it was the annual Rez volunteer breakfast, where last year we sat and talked for two hours.

Email from Josh: "Hi friend! Just wanted to send some encouragement your way this morning..."

Watching movies with my roommate in her bed at night.

Bugging Chet on gchat.

Night runs under starry Oregon skies (I take a buddy when it's afte dark, Mom, don't worry).

My assigned upper-class mentor- she's the best.

Text from Christine Will: "I had a dream that the three of us met at a Panera somewhere in the middle of the US. There happened to be a chalkboard, so we drew friendship maps and talked about how different people have blessed and influenced our lives this year."

Telling a professor who just had her first baby, "He's so beautiful!", and her excited reply, "I know, isn't he?!"

Brilliant sunrise sky shining over a low layer of fog over the vineyards.

Little girls running to hug me when I walk in the coffee shop.

Raspberry syrup in my coffee.

Psalm 139.

Girls' night with cohort friends, and an afternoon with all of us lying talking on my bed.

Cuddling and reading Christmas stories with children.

Newberg Friends Church.

And the kids being adorable in the Christmas pageant last weekend.

Coffee dates with wise older-than-me women in my small group.

The strong women in Wendell Berry's fiction.

Justin McRoberts's version of O Little Town of Bethlehem.

An email from Lindsay ending in, "Okay, time to go feed the baby!"

Baking Christmas cookies with an almost 3 year old.

Lessons learned from baking cookies with an almost 3 year old... if you tell a toddler that eating raw cookie dough is bad for her as you sneak a bite, it does not have the effect you hoped for. And no matter how stern she's being, it is still funny when you hear your cousin-in-law scold her child for throwing a piece of the nativity scene, "You need a time out! That was NOT nice to the baby Jesus!!"

Twenty-two hour whirlwind Seattle trips.

The familiarity of beloved faces I've been looking at for years.

Two-minute mid-work-day phone calls from across the country asking for prayer.

Feeling known and so happy here... and realizing I'm not leaving anytime soon.

Feeling sad after finals because it means the semester is ending.