Snow and Legos....Perfection?

It snowed last night and a bit stuck until this morning. Drew was thrilled. Another thrilling thing for him has been Legos. He brought some of his own and the Grahams have a big box that he has been rummaging through like a treasure chest. Then today, JC brought a big box out to the barn for him to play with while I worked.
When waiting for JC to get back with them, he looked at me with big eyes and said "Snow and Legos! I can only think of one other thing that would make this day perfect."

"What's that?"

"If the Lord would come back!"

The Equation

Not putting your shoes on all the way+ jumping over mud to get into the car+ a heavy backpack= falling backwards+ lots of laughter

Returning

On my return back to the States, my younger brother met me in Atlanta to go back to Detroit with me. My mom brought him through security...and also two of my sisters. I have no idea how she managed to bring three people without boarding passes through security, but I was grateful to be bombarded with hugs. My dad was also in the Atlanta airport at that time, but he was just getting off the plain when we had to board, so we missed him by a few minutes. I have not seen any of them since Christmas, so it was great to have a mini reunion at the gate.
Drew is pretty picky about when he gets his picture taken, but he has humored me a few times. Such a great brother.
But this is why I really love having him around....
...to haul the luggage! ;)

Ciao

I am leaving for the airport in a few minutes....
Hopefully it will not be another huge adventure on the autobahn, because, well, I have a plane to catch this time. :)
Pretty soon Germany will just be a memory....


I am flying to Atlanta. My younger brother will be meeting me there to come back to Michigan for a bit of a stay. Yup. Pretty excited.

Good Bye

So any time people say goodbye here, the either say "ciao" or "cheers". I thought it was pretty weird that they said "cheers" but I faithfully said it any time that someone said it to me.

You guessed it. The word is not cheer, but "tchuß" and apparently pronounced completely different than "cheers".

And yes, that was a pretty embarrassing discovery.

But it has brought laughter into several lives, so that makes it worth it.

You mean I am not perfect?

"He's changing me, my precious Jesus
I'm not the same person that I used to be.
Sometimes it's a slow going,
But there's a knowing,
That someday, perfect I will be...

Little by little bit everyday,
Little by little bit every way,
My Jesus is changing me..."


There are moments in my life where I am more aware that I need a whole lot of changing. Yeah. Those moments are never fun.

I live near Mo-town...

...but I went to a car show in Germany. I mean, I love my ford, but who could pass up looking at some European beauties?

There where tractors, and bugs, and Z4s, but my personal favorite was the pimped out VW van.


For those of you who took the TV class with me, I was itching to make my own addition of Auto Focus. :)


Later that afternoon, I went to a real game of football. I have discoverd that it can be a man's sport and is not just reserved for preps whose dads are doctors or lawyers. (Sorry to all you soccer players, including my brother!)

The game was a prety firery and ended up as a tie...which to any competitve person is just as bad as losing, becasue, well, you just did not win.

Spring

Happy first day of spring. My favorite time of year is when the seasons change. I guess that means I have four favorite times of year.

Cleaning, anyone?


"Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don't do it."

"Our house is clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy."

"I'm not going to vacuum until Sears makes one you can ride on."

"Housework, if it is done right, can kill you."

And my personal favorite...

"Cleanliness is next to godliness."

My thoughts: I love get a thrill out of cleaning and like the motto, "A place for everything, and everything in its place." My brother has said that if cleaning was a soiritual gift, it would be mine. But...I have learned that people last forever, things will burn. I never want to put one in the place that the other one should be. So, when it comes to choosing people or cleaning, I gadly choose people. And sometimes that means cleaning to show that I care. ;)

Yeah, I am still a neat freak, but reforming. :)

Hope you were able to spend your Saturday enjoying the sunshine and investing in people.

Travel on Trains

Friends of mine, the Andersons, who used to live in Michigan now live near Frankfurt. I went and visited them yesterday. It was my first trip on a real train, but I was sure I could do it. Well, everything was spiffy until I got to Frankfurt, where I wondered around in the general area I was supposed to be, looking about to try to figure out where to go. Eventually I found someone who spoke perfect English, and she got me on my way.

It was wonderful at the Andersons'. They live in a quaint little mountain town. And their home is simply lovely...and so were they. We spent this morning walking around town and then I left to come back here to Shannon's.

I love all the different modes of transportation here. When I started off this morning, we drove to the train station. I took a train to Frankfurt. Once in Frankfurt, I got on the main train to Stuttgart. After I got to Stuttgart, I took another smaller train to Ludwigsburg. After that I took a bus to Ossweil. From the bus stop, I walked to the house. I was so proud of myself for figuring out how to get around....and I had no problems this time. I even had several people asking me questions, but most of the time when they found out I could not speak German, they moved on.

When I was walking back, I kept thinking to myself, "I did it! I made it all by myself." It was fun.

And I can be a bit dramatic. :)

A morning at the market

Fresh flowers, juicy Clementine, people watching, and warming up at a cafe. Yum yum, good.

Not as far behind

Some of my best memories come from being on a bike. I clearly remember the day I learned to ride a two-wheeler way back in the day when we lived in Louisiana. I had many great adventures on my bike with my siblings and friends.....
Today I went back to being a girl on a bike and more adventures where had. Shannon and I biked over to the next town for some shopping and stopped for ice cream too. We raced, waved at people, sang, and just had a grand time. Latter one we took one of the little girls out with us and took some of the country paths. So pretty.

Ever seen the PBS show "The Big Comfy Couch"? If you remember it, the show had clowns on it and did all sorts of crazy things. The main girl's name was Molly. I looked like her today. To keep my pants out of the bike chain, I had to roll them up. I had nice high stripped socks on. So there I was, looking like a clown, being laughed at, and allowing myself to be that young girl again... She just might not be as far behind me as I thought.

Communicating

So I have been working on communicating by myself here in this country where I do not speak or understand the mother tongue.
I got the bus tickets all on my own.
I smile and nod at the right times.....well most of the time.
I played basketball and frisbee with a boy who speaks little English.
I understand where I need to go in the train stations and at the bus stops.
I bought things in stores on my own.
And most of the time people are nice about it. And if they can they will speak English to me.
But, when I went to get my food today, and the lady understood my order, until I asked for french fries to be added. Appearenlty, If i got the same thing as a platter, then it would be a better deal, but I did not want all that food. And she kept tring to convince me that I did...and of course I could not understand her. I pointd at the picture, repeated my order, and she punched it in and gave me a not-so-nice-look. The food was great, though. And exactly what I wanted.

Happy Paddy's Day

With green, comes the promise of spring, and that is why I like this holiday.

Note to self

When riding a train and hoping to return on the same one sometime later on, check to see if the train station closes.

I've walked where Napolian walked...

Ludwigsburg Castle. Amazing place. 450+ rooms. Beautiful gardens. Shannon and I took the girls to the gardens on Saturday. Its a 20 or 30 minute walk from where we are in a town called Oßweil. After walking around in the gardens that where open, we got a lunch of sausage sandwiches and french fries. We ate in the park, then we bought ice (ice cream) and had a fun time getting it everywhere. Afterwards, we played in the park for a bit. The play place looks like a Swiss family Robinson house and is built around tress, so as you climb in it, we actually climb around branches and go up the trees. Amazingly fun.

Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, Shannon and I went back to the castle for an English tour. Apparently, Napolian had been their on several occasions to visit his friend, who he made king of Germany. So, I have walked where he had. I know, I deserve a pat on the back for that one! We only saw 65 of the rooms. My favorite was one with all different types of mirrors in it. I was itching to steal the tour guides' keys to spend hours exploring. No worries. I refrained.


Last night, I played football the European way and boy am I feeling it today. I was horrible, but it was all just for fun and fun was had.

Arrived

I love traveling....not just the going and doing something part, but the getting their part. yesterday, my flight to Atlanta from Detroit was delayed, so I just sat and watched people.....so fascinating. All people from all different walks of life. Caused me to wonder what their story was.....how did they end up here? What do their lives look like?
Because of the delay I had to book it to my gate to leave for Stuttgart...but made it in plenty of time to sit and wait. People make me laugh...they call for boarding and people all jump up to go stand in a line for 20 minutes. I wait my turn and enjoy the madness.
The flight from Atlanta was almost 9 hours....for some reason my body did not want to sleep, so it was movies, reading, and people watching for me. Oh, and I also have a knack for asking pretty dumb questions. The flight attended gave me a couple of "What in the world are you thinking?" looks.
I landed in Stuttgart, made it through immigration without any problems, then went and waited for my bag. And waited. And waited. Yup. No bag. Still in Atlanta. Fun stuff. Luckily, I had foresaw that this might be a problem, so I had my toothbrush and other such things in my carry on. My bag should get here tomorrow, and I will have no problem surviving until then. :)
Shannon met me at the airport. After a couple *little* problems (like going the wrong way and forgetting to pay for parking) we made it out of the airport....and directly onto the autobahn. We may have gotten slightly lost, driven 200 kl/h, almost hit a guard rail, and gotten a speeding ticket all in the course of 45 minutes. But that's all a maybe.

After getting to the house....
I ate breakfast at a local bakery, went for a walk around town and then out to some fields with the town in the background, bought a bus ticket *sorta* on my own, hung laundry out to dry, met some pretty cool people, had an amazing cappuccino at a little cafe, exchanged dollars for euros, broke a serving dish of the people I am staying with, played with some adorable little kids, learned a bit of German and have had a wonderful time chatting with Shannon and trying on some outfits.

I am ready for a nice long sleep, but am throughly enjoying myself!

Excitment!

The past couple of days have been crazy. I am a planner. As soon as I found out I was going to Germany, I sat down and wrote out lists of things that needed to be done between then and when I leave. I was am SO excited, that I am shaking in my heels. By just looking at me, people knew something different was up. My day to day for this week has completely changed. I am getting more done, being careful about how I spend my time, and everything just seems right. I am going to Germany people!!
In the midst of it all, this thought came, "How much different would my life be if I was THAT excited about going to heaven?" How careful would I be about my time? Would people be able to tell a difference in my life? How many people would I be telling about it?

"...they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hat prepared for them a city. "

The Weekend

Sunshine. When I ventured out to do a couple of errands on Friday, I thought it was unusually warm. I figured it was above freezing and because it has been so cold, I find that warm. Obliviously I was shocked to find out it was in the 60s. O glory be! I quickly neglected my to-do list and spent the day studying in the sun, going for a walk, and gathering sap out in the woods....I even ended up with a bit of sun on my face and arms. It's a start!

The couple I live with make maple syrup every year, so there is always a lot going on in March. A couple of weekends ago, we tapped the trees and set everything up in the woods. This week, because it warmed up so much, the sap ran. Its fun wading through mud, tramping around the woods, and hauling around buckets. A nice, quite, step back from life. So that was Friday.

The rest of the weekend was wet and overcast. With that and the time change, I was sleeeeepy.

Down south my family had a full weekend with a regatta, basketball tournament, quiz rally, and a wedding. It almost made me glad I was not there, because then I would have to decide what to be apart of. Almost.

My younger brother will be here at the end of the month for about a week. I firmed up plans with my mom last night. I am so excited. I asked him what he wanted to do while he was here, and I said, "There are so many, I don't think I could name them." We are going to have a great time.


Then this morning, I booked a ticket to a little place in this country.....


....I leave Thursday.

Slowly but surely, this week I have been developing a nice make-you-groggy cold. It has happened so gradually that I did not realize how nasty I sounded or looked. One of the Cubbies was telling me last night that she was "a little bit sick". I told her that it was okay because I was too. She looked at me and said, "You are a lot of bit sick!"

Random Fact # 53: C-o-m-p-e-t--i-t-i-v-e

Definitions:
Competition: active demand by two or more organisms or kinds of organisms for some environmental resource in short supply
Competitive: relating to, characterized by, or based on competition.


Every single person in my family is downright competitive. And we love it. We give our all on the field and then let it go (well, most of the time) once we are off. None of us buys into the "we are all winners" humbo-jumbo. Any day to day task has the potential of becoming a competition. When I was with my family a couple of months ago, I cam downstairs to all of them, including mom, holding each others' noses, as seen to the left. The occasion? A hold-your-breath contest. They had to hold each others' noses to insure that there would be no cheating.

I love 'em.

Breakfast...

....it's what's for supper on Sunday.
On most Sunday nights growing up my mom would make some type of breakfast food for supper. Normally we would have had a big meal after morning meeting but would be hungry again around supper time, especially if we had been somewhere that evening. Sometimes it would be eggs, or baked oatmeal, or pancakes, or anything else. I liked it.
So last night I made myself an omelet and some biscuits and cut up an apple. It was not near as good as mom's cooking, but I still enjoyed it. There was a certain comfort to it....just having something the same as it used to be. I guess that would be why they call things like that "Comfort Food". Whatever it was, I enjoyed the experience, plus, it gave me leftovers for this morning.
By the way, what is the difference between lunch, supper, and dinner?