creation.

This spring and summer I've been having a blast with creation!  I have started to learn about the gift of planting, growing and enjoying flowers and a garden.  Throughout the last year I've come to love my 5 orchids and since the weather has warmed I've moved that into the wonderful yard we've been blessed with.

From the balcony of our room, looking over part of our yard!

Italian lavender (otherwise known as sage!), a bulb from Holland that is started to bloom and a plant that's already lost all it's flowers.

Beauty. 

My first garden is growing!!!!!  What an amazing thing to watch it come to life from the seed.

Now, to tackle all those UGLY slugs we have...

We have red onion, green onion, broccoli, peppers, basil, parsley, and 4 different kinds of lettuce. 

I never want to forget the beauty of our yard. This is the corner window to our living room.  Under the roof is a beautiful red grape vine, on the left a LOT of bamboo and through the gate is Wrigley and our patio which leads to the yard.

Another new found joy, knitting. I'm working on my first sweater and it's brought some frustration but hopefully in the end the pretty yarn will turn into a cardigan that actually fits me!

saturday's with friends.

We have been so blessed the last year to share life with the Gehman's. Jeremy & Becca were the first people we met when we moved to Colorado Spring back in 2008!  When they arrived last year they diligently looked for a place to live and we all prayed it would be near to ours. It's been so wonderful having someone you know and trust just a village awy!  Our kids get along great and we try to spend time doing life together.  On Saturday we took a walk through their village and a field.  Here are some of the sites...

 Even if the German's don't have a front yard, they make the sidewalk pretty!

 Trinity and Norah, kindred spirits.

 The Gehman family with their village in the back!

S'mores in the back yard afterward... one of the kids favorite things!

Swiss Camping.

Our summer is full of family and friends visiting but before all our adventures with them, we chose to take some time as just a family of four!  We drove about five hours to this stunning "camp" site in Switzerland!  Of course, I have pictures to document some of our views and adventures of our own.

Okay, I know this is odd but this was the nicest rest area I've ever seen... and let me tell you, I've seen more than a few WC's around Europe!  The toilet seat comes down when you're on it and when you stand up (if you sit) the seat goes up and the toilet automaticly flushes.  Toward the side you wash your hands (no touching though!) and the water and soap just fall right into the bowl too.  Genius.  One more thing, no paper towels here, so there's a hand drier there too!  I just love it.  Now, why does anyone (me) get so excited about a silly toilet!?  I guess traveling a lot makes you appreciate well thought-out WC's.  I do also like the WC's here in Germany, you pay to get in and as you leave you get a ticket back toward a purchase. I'd rather pay 25 cents for a clean and safe toilet stop.

The Alps!  The mobile home we stayed in is at the bottom of the picture. Pure, luxery camping for only $60/night.

Our cutie in the ergo.

Our cutie in the ergo post face first mud fall!  Oops.

It was dark when we arrived and when we woke up, out the window was a waterfall! This rock wall was what we saw from the window. 

Swiss cheese from a Swiss cow. Moooooooo...

The majority of the day on Saturday we walked a few miles to a water fall/gorge and soaked in all the beauty. Thank you Lord!

Another common site around the farms where we live: A solar panel to give the electricity for the fence.  Again, so smart are these Europeans!

Fondue fix :)

The European Cemetaryies are mostly beautiful.  This location and the very old plots that were there really captured me.  The earliest plot I fond was around 1920.

life is grand, in small ways.

Putting the girls to bed is one of the many small joys of parenthood. Sometimes is a quick, get them in there and give me a break but most times it's a nice thing to spend some down time together reading, singing and praying.  Evelyn is usually in bed first so there's a chance for us to both be a little silly with just Norah.  She loves the attention :)

Just hanging out before bed on Norah's couch!

Our stunning tree is in bloom for about 3 weeks a year and we soak it in!!

She's a bit of a climber, did I mention that before?! I think so.

And, happy mother's day to me!  "The girls" made me breakfast in bed and were so happy to help me eat it.  I am one blessed mama to my sweet girls.  Thank you David for making me feel served and loved on Mother's day and so many days in-between!

the netherlands, women's retreat.

I had the privilege to attend the International Baptist Convention retreat!  It sounds all huge and fancy but it was small (200 women), personal and busy!  Our church teamed up with another nearby church to bus to the Netherlands (saw my first real wind meal), about a 9 hour bus ride.  We sang songs, played games and mostly just chatted on the way there.  It was such a joy to have a few of my girl friends along and then to meet some new fun ladies.

On the retreat we had Denise Glenn as a speaker and learned more about being the bride of Christ. She paralleled the Jewish traditions of marriage to what Jesus said about us being his bride, it was so neat to learn about those traditional things the Jews did/do as they married.

We were able to also do a bit of site seeing.  We visited the tulip fields and gardens at Keukenhof (world's largest flower garden) and also toured Corrie Ten Boom's home.  What a legacy she has left behind of loving others in need.

Lidia and Jessica at the begining of the flower gardens!  So Dutch :)

Me and my roommate, Natalie

Most of the ladies from our church: me, Lisa, Lidia, Jessica, Tara, Dorrie and Natalie

I was stunned by how tall many of the tulips were, higher than my waist!  So beautiful.

This is a picture of Corrie's room. It's a famous room where she did a lot of underground work to help the elderly and Jewish people during WWII.  Where the hole is the wall is her bed was, the people could access the hiding place from below the linens through a trap door. During one of the final invasions of her house there were 6 people hiding back there!  It's pretty small.

A vendor stand near Corrie Ten Boom's house with lots of nuts and dried fruits.

Many many bikes in this city. Watch out, they will run you over if you're in the bike lane!

HE is risen!

As the girls and I embraced Easter by dying eggs for the first time, reading the story of Jesus' resurrection and getting our cute dresses together for the service, the Lord moved!  I have had a hard time the last few years feeling the Lord.  During this beautiful spring God has been allowing my spirit to be moved.  It's such a gift during the season of remembering His sacrifices for our forever.  Thank you Lord Jesus!

 David was TDY while we did our first egg dying!  It was so fun, and the eggs tasted good too :)

Sweet girls on Easter in front of our house.  The eggs hanging in the tree are a traditional German decoration during the Easter season.

 Front door window.

 A cool walk through some farm land.

Through that last couple of weeks the deer have been out so much!  I finally had my camera with when we spotted a lot of deer.  I got out of the car and took a ton of pictures and finally they split and ran away. We counted 19 in this little "herd" just about 1 mile from our home.  What beauty.

brussels, belgium.

A long weekend here means a chance to visit another country and eat some new foods!  As you know, we like Belgium... for the waffles, hot chocolate, fries and beer.  During this last long weekend we had the chance to visit Brussels with the Rigsby's and check out some new sites, and foods :)

Enjoying a slow breakfast with our little fam.

Waffles! 

A peak at the EU building.  It was neat to see the area surrounding where the EU meets.  We were not able to take a tour as the offices were closed but it was still neat to check out the grounds where history is made.

 The Rigs.

Famous little peeing man, aka Manneken-Pis.  The statue is literally the size of a baby (61 cm), it's rather small. The statue has over 700 outfits so whenever you visit Brussels this lil' man will probably be wearing a new outfit (he changes several times a week and the schedule is posted in a few places around town!).  We were visiting on St. Patrick's day so he was dressed in his Irish get up.

So you have an idea of how small he really is and how cute Jess and I are :)

 David & Solomon

 Cuties.

In the town square there are many interesting statues on the top of the buildings.  There was a funny story we read about the man on the horse... it seems he's pointing to another statue across the court and then that one is looking at another... anyway, the story is about which statue passed gas and they are blaming each other for the smell.  It was funny that this story was in our tour book and when you saw the statues "blaming" each other for the smell, it gave us a laugh.