Auxano Christmas

From Left: Eric, Brad, Jen's face, Shayla (lying down), Me, Steph, Katie, Jeremiah, Matt and Gussie.

I know, I know. I'm a total slacker. It's been almost a month since I wrote a blog post and I know you have been eagerly anticipating my every word. Or not. Maybe you didn't know this about me, but there are three things I'm really good at: puzzles, slacking and not getting around to things. I'm not even very good at puzzles.

The last few weeks before Christmas break have been a lot of fun. After the Annual General Meeting at Camp, Eric and I drove down the road to where a bunch of trees had been cut down and stole one. Best way to pick a Christmas tree ever. We had to cut off the bottom and a large section of the top just to make it fit in the living room, so it looked like a tree was growing through the floor and ceiling. It would have made Charlie Brown cry. We had classes with the wonderful Pam Welle on Spiritual Formation and she taught us how important being alone with God is. God and I went for walks together and may or may not have napped together. The key idea I got from that week was that you will know that your being alone with God is affecting you by how much more loving you are to people. That week was our family Christmas party at the Rentons and we had a gift exchange made up of either funny or useful unwanted house items or something under $5. There were quite a few gifts from previous years - an old Snuggie, a Darth Vader toy - as well as some joke gifts like a board game all about cats, called, if can you believe it, Cats (when I looked inside, it had first, second and third place ribbons that said things like, "You are a cat lover!" and "You know a lot about cats!" What they should have said was, "You are a freaking cat psychologist!" or "You know a lot about cats! You probably have too many of them," and for first place, "You know waaaayyy too much about cats. There is something wrong with you. Please get your cats spayed or neutered, they are probably a fire hazard.") My night was made when Rachel Zalinko bequeathed me her ugly Christmas sweater. It's pink and has reindeer on it. I don't know why she didn't want it.

My future husband.

Then we had our classes on Romans with David Banks, a fantastic man who knows a lot but is super humble about how he shares it. The last week of Auxano was practically a vacation, other than some work we did at camp. We had a fun DTG (Ditch the Girls, Ditch the Guys). The boys went out in the woods and had a manly adventure. The girls painted ceramics in Chemainus and baked cookies. We are trying really hard to break stereotypes. No actually. To break them the girls decided to have a secret wrestling match downstairs because that's what the boys always do, but it turned out to be not so secret as the boys knew what we were doing right away just by the crazy noises we were making. That actually happened. We had Christmas morning at the Auxano house on the last day. It was such fun! I woke up the girls and Jeremiah woke up the boys with a cup of hot chocolate. The hot chocolate didn't wake them up, we did. That would be bad ("Merry Christmas suckers!" - hot chocolate to the face.) We did Secret Santa and I got Matt the greatest present ever - according to his standards of the greatest present which you will probably not understand because you are not childlike. It took me a long time to figure out the difference between being childlike and being childish. You probably haven't figured that one out yourself but as I keep being reminded, I am quite old (25). I will explain it to you: being childlike means you have the faith of a child, which Jesus says to have, whereas being childish just means that you are stupid and annoying. Anyway the gift I got Matt was a "Thomas the Tank Engine" coloring book and crayons. He's British. Gussie gave me the most thoughtful gift ever: a little tack board with her favorite Scripture verses on it and a framed picture she took of me and Leilani, the Rentons little girl. We had a feast that the amazing Kelly Watt provided for us and Eric made us pancakes. It's just what he does.

Jeremiah and I thought this was supposed to be a creepy photo.

On December 6th we all had to say goodbye to each other for our month of Christmas vacation. This is how it went down:
Me: "Guys, guys, stop crying, I'm only going for a month."
Auxano students: "But Faith what will we do without you and your wise advice? Who else will advice us in our residence as our very own Resident Advisor?"
Me: "Beloveds, this is your time to rely on God, not on mortal (wo)man. Man cannot live on bread alone but on the word of God, Deuteronomy something something."
Steph and Matt: "She's so spiritual!" (waving the little spiritual flags Steph made. No really, she made those.)
Me: "I know. It's ridiculous."
Auxano students: "Will we ever see you again?"
Me: "What are you, illiterate? I'll be back here January 6th. So will you. Don't ask stupid questions."
Katie: "I'm going to miss you so much!"
Me: "I see you every Sunday at church. What's wrong with you."
Auxano students: "Our prayers are with you, oh wise one."
Me: "Save your prayers. I don't need them. I'm already too spiritual."
Pastor Tom: "Faith, are you paying attention? You look like you've been day dreaming about something ludicrous during my very important class on the Pentateuch."

Of course, this conversation is completely fabricated. For one, Mondays are my day off so I don't get to sit in on Pastor Tom's classes. But I think it paints a pretty accurate picture of how important I think I am to the program, AKA my self-delusions.

Merry Christmas!

We got Auxano versions of Jones Soda bottles for Christmas. Every detail is packed with awesome!

"Grandfather Christmas" Story

There were a couple people who wanted to read the Christmas story I wrote for my church's Christmas Eve service, which went very well by the by. I felt like I read well and got a good reaction from people who said they loved the story. So yay me! For those few people who were away at Christmas, and maybe a few others who like reading heartwarming stories, here she be:

~ Grandfather Christmas ~

Gregory only had a week to find his brother a Christmas present. His little brother Leon was missing a kidney and often sick and Gregory felt it was his job as the older brother to take care of him despite the closeness of their age — Gregory was nine and three quarters, Leon was eight and a half.


“What do you want for Christmas?” Gregory asked his brother over breakfast. The advent calendar showed seven more sleeps to go.


“I dunno. What do you want?”


Gregory frowned. He was convinced that Leon’s lack of knowing things was the sole cause of his frown crease between his eyebrows. “Well, what did you put on your Christmas list?”


“I can’t remember; Mom has it,” Leon said.


“You must know something that you want,” Gregory said. “Leon, listen to me.” He had found the best way to get Leon’s attention was to emphasize things as dramatically as possible. He waited until Leon, mid-spoonful to the mouth, looked up at him. “What do you want most in the entire world if you could have anything that you ever wanted?”

A Super Crafty Christmas

I have been busy writing a Christmas story for the Christmas Eve service at my church and I had to kill a lot of babies to get there. Wait, you know I don't mean real babies. Did you even read my last post, Girl Meets Boy Meets Awkward Meets Boy Runs Away? "Kill your babies" is an expression. Sometimes you have to delete parts of a story that you love because a) they just don't fit the story, b) you have a word limit, or c) deep down you know they suck. I'm excited because it will be my first time reading something of my own to a large-er group of people. I'm happy because it's actually a very small group of people and if I make a fool of myself I can threaten them to eternal silence. The story is about one little boy's effort to make his little brother's Christmas wish come true. I often end up writing stories about children, probably because of my immaturity level. Something about seeing things through their eyes makes me happy, and I find I usually care more about stories with children in them. Or romance. If there is not the possibility of romance in the first few chapters of a book, it is 75% more likely that you have lost me. However, I will usually persevere, I'll just be disappointed as I do it before I get so caught up in the story I forget to be disappointed.

Chompo and Olivia's Christmas Adventures

I would like to introduce to you my hamster friends, Chompo and Olivia. I gave them to my mother for Christmas and then decided to capture their fun with my Grade A camera skills. Chompo got his name from the Chompo bar in the book A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hogan. Like Frances' Chompo bar, he fits in your hand perfectly and makes you want to squish him a little and sing a song about it. These are their Christmas adventures.

Chompo and Olivia's Christmas Adventures

'Twas the night before Christmas, and Chompo and Olivia always read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on the night before Christmas. This particular version was about a mouse family. They felt they could relate to mice more than people.

Glitterfy Your Life

I love doing crafts, mostly because it makes me feel like I am talented. The trick is to never start anything that will take very long; knitting is not my forte. Needless to say my crafts are more or less coloring birthday cards. The beauty of short projects is that you get to see the finished product right before you under fifteen minutes (or fifteen seconds if it's particularly abstract). At my church the ladies have a craft night that I attend about once every five years and though it is fun doing crafts with other people it is also very dangerous. Glue GUNS? Hello?! Scissors? Scissors are just two ninja knives stuck together disguised as a helpful appliance. 

Real Christmas Vs. Fake Christmas in an Ultimate Fighting Death Match

I love Christmas!!!!!!!!! It's the best thing that ever existed. None of this "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons's Greetings" nonsense. I hope your holidays are happy too: summer holidays, Easter holidays, Halloween, even Labor Day (what is Labor Day anyway??? ... I just looked it up. It's in honor of "labor" or working people. So not for couch potatoes - that's a different holiday). And I'm glad the season is polite enough to give me its greetings but when the twinkling lights are turned on because actually they've been up all year, and bizarrely we start chopping down trees to put them in our house because I guess it's not enough that they stay outside and our house plants just aren't cutting it, I preserve the right to hear Merry Christmas or even Happy Christmas if you are British and weird. When I see or hear Happy Holidays all I see is the oppression of my freedom as a Christmasian, regardless of my beliefs. And when I hear someone say "Happy Holidays you wonderful person!" (which happens quite a lot) I want to say, "Sorry? I didn't catch that. I think you meant to say Merry Christmas but forgot what it was called?" or "Don't be afraid! You are free to speak it's name!" I refuse to acknowledge that it has anything to do with religious differences (which it does, a lot) and I doubt whether on Christmas morning the children of those politically correct parents are going to want very much to say, "It's the Season! Yay!" when all the other kids are saying, "It's Christmas! Hip-hip-hoorayray!"