I went back to work last week after a week long vacation.  I played catch up most of the week when I wasn’t helping my supes with their presentation.  Julie and April (both Associate Directors) are presenting at ACUHO-I this upcoming week.  They created their presentation, and I helped tape Rebecca (the Director of the Honor’s College) to insert her part into the presentation.  I am not technologically savvy, but we did okay!   At the end of the week I taped Lt. Col. Helms for the same presentation.  Poor guy was so nervous about the final product, but he did just fine.  Which brings me to some exciting news!  Probably not exciting to anyone not involved with University Student Affairs, but I’ll tell you anyway.

In the Residence Life world, we have things called Living Learning Communities.  These are communities of people studying in the same discipline or same type of academic focus.  We at ASU opened the Honors Living Learning Community last fall—a new complex of three buildings built and designed specifically for Honors students.  We collaborated with the Honors College to develop programming and have had a fabulous partnership.

This coming fall we are opening two more Living Learning Communities!  The first will be the STEM Den—housing focused specifically for students studying Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  We are working closely with the Dean of the Science and Math department and with many of the faculty members for this program.

The second we are opening is the ROTC Living Learning Community.  I’m excited about all of our LLCs (I am the coordinator for all of our LLCs), but I am super excited for the ROTC LLC.  We’ve done quite a bit of research and as far as we can tell, we will have the only ROTC LLC of this kind in the country (and probably the world!).  We will have ROTC Cadets living together and programming together in this complex.  We have been working very closely with the Military Science Department—and a whole lot of ranks!  LT. Col. Helms, Master Seargent Hayden, and a bunch of others whose ranks confuse me to pieces.  I don’t understand military lingo—luckily they don’t mind my ignorance and allow me to call them by their first names.  Side note—at the end of my meeting with them on Friday, we all walked out together.  I felt SO Important surrounded by men in uniform!  Silly, I know—but SO TRUE!

It is just so exciting to be involved with something this big and groundbreaking.  It is equally exciting to be working with professionals who are as enthusiastic about these programs as we in Residence Life are!

Okay.  So back to last week.  I played catch up and help the bosses.  Thursday, Heath and I took Kaci to her neuroligist appointment.  To make a long morning very short—everything went very well.  Kaci did great and the results were great—nothing seems to be wrong.  It is probably that one of Kaci’s medications is giving her the seizure-like episodes.  She is NOT having seizures though.  We are very happy about that!

We took kids to the doctor’s office a couple times last week.  Kalyn, Kaci, and Kynan all have ear infections—Keali is the only healthy one!

Friday and Saturday were Kalyn and Keali’s t-ball tournement.  They lost both games (I was secretly happy since this meant we didn’t have to be out in the extreme heat anymore), but both girls played SO WELL!  I was super proud of both!  Kalyn tagged a girl out, and Keali was the only person to score a run in one of the innings!  They improved so much this season, and they really enjoyed it.  They both got medals for playing.  Keali said, “Mommy!  I always wanted a gold medal…and NOW I have one!” 

We still have two more make up games, then both girls get a trophy and a pizza party.  I think this it what they were waiting for all season!

Kaci has started rolling over!  She also got her very first tooth Thursday and enjoys sticking her tongue out so she can feel it.  Kynan is so close to crawling.  Just a few more weeks I think.  Both babies are super adorable as always.

This week I will work Mon-Wednesday, then I’m off the rest of the week.  We also have our Welch Family Reunion Friday-Sunday.  I’m looking forward to it!