Hello all! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season full of lots of R&R, family and friends to share wonderful times together, and delicious home-cooked meals! Happy New Year as well! I hope this New Year brings you all great health, success, and many blessings! It seems like its been forever since I last blogged, in fact, its been so long since I logged into the blog site that I had forgot my password and had to go through several steps to retrieve it. But not too worry, I’m back on track now!

Well since the last time I blogged quite a few things have taken place at Walsh, as well as back home. Back in December, shortly after finals were finishing up and everyone quickly packed to head home for Christmas break before the weather took a turn for the worse, there were several of us who were looking forward to an additional couple of days on the Walsh campus as we sang for the Walsh University Chamber choir. Now I know what your thinking…why would you want to stay any longer than you had to?? Schools out and its Christmas break!! Well true in some regards, but I was excited as this was my first year to sing in the Chamber Choir and I had heard from fellow choir members and friends how much fun the days ahead would be. Turns out they were exactly right!

Our choir director Dr. Cooper had several events that we were performing at throughout our local community. This spanned from a Christmas dinner performance for a true Walsh supporter and sponsor, local nursing home Christmas concerts, to a formal concert at Our Lady of Peace Parish that was open to the entire community. Our days were full of singing and fellowship with our other Chamber choir friends, as well as several occasions when Dr. Cooper treated us to lunch and even a special dinner at his home. I don’t think there are many large choirs such as our chorale that are as close as we all are. In those last couple of days on campus, when it felt like we were truly the last ones to walk on campus, we all became so close, and you could truly feel the camaraderie by the last day. Especially the night when Dr. Cooper and his wife so graciously welcomed us all into their home for dinner. We broke the “Apples to Apples” game and all had a blast!! Leaving Dr. Coopers house that evening and heading back to my quite dorm gave me some time to think just how fortunate I was to be able to share in this experience. I kicked myself for not signing up for choir years ago. However, I’m a firm believer that when the time is right it’s right and this is exactly the extracurricular I needed my senior year to allow me to take hold of just about every opportunity Walsh has made available to me! Going into this next semester (my last) I have no regrets that I will have an amazing experience.

By the last day of our performances I was excited to pack up and head home to see what all was in store for the holiday season! It had been quite some time since I had been home for longer than just a couple of days and I was ready for all the comforts that home brought. After packing just about everything I could think of into my tiny coupe (giant tropical plant and all) I headed off to find myself in a bit of a snowstorm as I neared my hometown. For some this would be a nightmare, for me—growing up in Northeast, OH all my life, it actually was something I was excited about. I know it sounds crazy, but I wasn’t too worried about the roads, as I drove 20mph down the highway, instead I thought of all the memories of past years being snowed in with my family and having the best time just being together in a house full of love. This thought, and careful driving got me home soon enough, and I was immediately greeted by my parents as they tell me how they had been waiting to set-up the tree until I got home! 42 ½ trips later of unloading the car, and I was ready to relax and see what the holiday season had in store.

To make a long story short, it was one of the best Christmas’ I’ve had! We had both sides of the family’s Christmas parties at our house. I was able to spend a great deal of time with friends who I hadn’t seen in months! And on the days we literally were snowed in (36+ inches of snow) my parents and I had some great times: from teaching mom and dad the Wii, to crash courses (Cell phone 101) on their new Smart Phones that they insisted they needed to have, there was never a dull moment. Of course we had carried on our tradition of watching the “National Lampoons Christmas Vacation” movie (my favorite movie of all time!) And what’s even better is that throughout the holidays we would point out how many instances that took place between my mom’s huge Italian family and my dad’s large family that could probably make a sequel to the hit film! Its times like these that I will always treasure and hold dear to my heart.

Well I better be going now, but I want to leave you with some photo’s that will hopefully warm you up and even cheer you up if your suffering from the winter blues. The photos below were taken by the professional photographer and one of my best friends, Miranda Burley. We decided last fall, late fall, when we had one amazingly warm day that we would take a bike ride as we wanted to take advantage of the great weather. Miranda and I wanted to capture the moment for all of you, perhaps some of you who have never stepped foot on our beautiful campus and would like to see all that it, as well as the surrounding community has to offer. Stay warm, and enjoy!

As you go into this next semester, think about all those things you truly want to accomplish and tackle them early on while you have some time to breathe. As assignments are assigned these first few weeks, take the time to do them and get them out of the way. Don’t make things harder on yourself by waiting and putting off small things that end up becoming big problems down the road when everything piles up. Just don’t want to see anyone stressed!

I wish you all the best for this next semester and look forward to what this next decade will bring!

Take care,

Chris Burr