one year!

It was a year ago at the beginning of this month that our family moved into the UT student housing apartments, Brackenridge. You've probably noticed in the pictures that these apartments are not super fancy. They are, in fact, pretty ghetto. I have a darling neighbor who told me the other day that her first night in her new apartment here she sat on the kitchen floor and cried. It is difficult to move into an apartment with window units for heating and cooling, elementary-school-hallway-style tile instead of carpet, and only a couple hundred square feet.
However, since making the tough decision to move here, Joseph and I have not looked back. The neighborhood is fantastic. Emily and I can go outside at any time of the day and find at least three other kids and their moms out there. There are several different playgrounds just a couple minute's walk away. We are just a mile from a beautiful trail along Lady Bird Lake. We have been receiving meals at least every other day since Caleb was born and all of the volunteers have been fellow students here in the family housing. Right now as I type Emily is on a "play date" in another student's home (they used the play date thing as an excuse to cover for the fact that they really just wanted to help me out by taking Emily off my hands for a couple of hours).
The housing is humble, but the price is right and the community is all we could ever ask for. We are loving our time here.