Women's Retreat

The first weekend in March I was able to go to a Women's Retreat at Burg Lichtenberg. We stayed in a youth hostel at a castle not too far from Kaiserslautern, Germany. It was a really nice youth hostel. The rooms were really like what I usually think of a youth hostel being- dirty, huge and just not that nice. The room we had was meant for about 6-7 people sleep in but we only had 5 in our room and it had it's own bathroom and shower. It was really nice. They also had a cafeteria with good food. The fellowship of course was really great. I got to meet a lot of new people and got to see friends I have known for awhile.


Lichtenberg Castle where we stayed.


Oberstein Felsenkirche (Rock Church)


Playing Phase 10


Stopping for ice cream


Having fun


The Chemnitz Ladies :) Doreen, me and Karen

Heidelberg and ABSS (Advanced Bible Study Series)

In February Clint, Heidi and I went on a trip to Heidelberg with a friend of ours, Steve Allison, from Abilene. He is a professor at ACU and came to speak at a seminar in Gemünden (near Frankfurt). We picked him up at the Frankfurt airport on a Sunday and drove to Heidelberg and enjoyed the rest of the day there and some of Monday looking around Heidelberg. We had a good time visiting with Steve.



In Heidelberg there is a famous monkey on a bridge there. He is holding a mirror in his left hand. There is a sign next to it that says: "Why are you looking at me? Haven't you seen the monkey in Heidelberg? Look around and you will probably see, more monkeys like me." Perhaps in the mirror??? Ha ha. I don't know really what it's about, but it's funny.



Heidi all bundled up to check out Heidelberg! We woke up Monday morning to snow!



This was the view from our hotel room on Monday morning. We were right by the bridge where the monkey was (at the bottom of that big tower is the monkey).



Checking out Heidelberg with Steve. Heidi was sleeping in her stroller. :)



We took a tour of the Heidelberg Castle. It is partly in ruins but there are still some areas that are intact and you can go inside. It was really interesting.



World's largest wine barrel at the Heidelberg Castle. It holds 55,100 gallons of wine.



We took a family picture outside of the castle.

At ABSS Heidi made LOTS of new friends! We saw old friends and made some new ones as well!



Heidi just loved Bill Wilson from Cologne, Germany and he loved her too!



Philippe, Dolores and Nathan Dauner from Marseille, France were there. Nathan is just a couple of months older than Heidi. They had a good time together. I guess it wiped Nathan out!



Roman from Bratislava, Slovakia, Jackie Halstead from Abilene, Texas and Peter from Kosice, Slovakia.



Heidi and Jesse Brazle from Antwerp, Belgium had a lot of fun playing!



Arlin and Pamela Hendrix from Lyon, France.



Roman from Bratislava, Slovakia- we are all supported by Champions Church of Christ in Houston!

I'll Fly Away

Our brother in Christ from Chemnitz, Rudolf (Rudi) Löffler, went to be with our Lord on March 14, 2009. We will be attending his memorial tomorrow afternoon. Please pray for his family and those whose lives he touched. He will be missed here on earth, but we know that he has joined our Father and is in much better hands.

"Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away;
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.

I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.

When the shadows of this life have gone,
I'll fly away;
Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away.

I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.

Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away;
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away.

I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away."


Rudi Löffler (1928-2009)

Heidi's 1 year photos

Heidi's birthday

On Heidi's birthday, Heidi and I were both sick. It was a shame. She had never been sick before, but thankfully it was only a mild cold with a little bit of a cough. Clint took her to the dr. that week and she got some cough medicine and some nose drops for her poor little stopped up nose. I didn't end up going to the dr. although I had really considered it. I felt really puny for a few days, but with sleeping and getting me rest I was back on my feet. Heidi's birthday was on a Tuesday so we decided not to do a party or celebrate a lot on that day. Instead, we planned on having a small party at home on Friday. Thankfully by then we were both feeling a lot better. On her actual birthday Clint and I gave her one present... bubbles! She loved them!



On Friday was the big party day! I made her a teddy bear birthday cake and her own special cupcake just for her! The cake turned out a lot cuter than I thought it was going to. I really don't have a lot of experience with cake decorating so I was a little nervous about it. I have to say that it tasted great too! Heidi loved her cupcake!





I can't believe our girl is 1 year old!

November

In November we did a lot of traveling. Heidi made her first trip to the States to see grandparents, uncles, aunts and lots of new friends! We were glad to be there for a little while so that we could see loved ones. We were in Oklahoma, Texas and Ohio.

Murder Mystery Dinner

Sophia invited us to take part in a Murder Mystery Dinner called "Krimi Total: Der Mythos der Familie" (Myths of the family). The game is actually something you can buy and it comes with a written storyline and characters. She assigned us our characters and we were given information about who our character was and how we should act, dress, etc. Our story was about a mafia family in the 1930s in Chicago. Throughout the evening we received new information and then we all began questioning each other about where we were, what we were doing and slowly revealing interesting facts about each other. It was a lot of fun and we did figure out who the killer was by the end of the night. Here is a collage that Sophia made of the evening.

Heidi is getting big!

Today Heidi pulled herself up to a standing position by herself for the first time! We have been wondering when it would happen. She has taken her time as far as that goes, but we knew that she would do it when she was ready. Just in the past couple of weeks we have seen her start breaking out of her shell. She is definitely not a risk taker and is pretty cautious as far as moving around and trying to do things on her own goes. Just until recently she would not even try to walk holding on to anything except our hands. Even if we let go of only one hand she was too scared to go further. Like I said, in the past couple of weeks she has slowly built her confidence up and will now walk a little bit more just holding on to one of our hands. But usually she still feels more confident when she is holding on to a couch with one hand and hold one of our fingers with the other hand. She is getting there though! This evening she did a little bit of cruising even without holding on to our hands. She is still very cautious about it though. Here is a video of the second time she pulled up today. I missed getting the first time on camera, but this is only a few minutes later. She was very proud of herself!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Catching up... October

Heidi is 1 year old!

Snow!

Ok, I'm skipping a few things to do a more up-to-date post. But, I will try to go back and cover other things later.

Last week(?) it snowed quite a bit and it all came at once. It snowed for a couple of days straight without stopping, or so it seemed. I will share some beautiful photos of it.

The day we woke up to the snow was a Sunday so we had to get out in it to go to church.

We took a quick family picture outside church before we went into the warmth.

Velony and the other kids had a great time after church playing in the snow.

Later, Heidi and I watched the snow from the warmth inside.

Monday morning was not so much fun... it had continued to snow throughout the night and Karen had to go to school in the morning so that is what happened... Clint pushed her out of the driveway.

Here in Germany it is required that you shovel a path on your property, especially on the sidewalk where others walk by. If you do not shovel and someone were to fall you could get fined or maybe worse(?).

A few weeks ago one of the men from church sent out a schedule of the men who would be on duty to shovel snow at the church building. They have a rotation where one man is responsible for one week at a time. On the schedule, Clint and I found probably one of the longest German words we have ever seen before. In German you can get some very long words because you can put many words together to make one word. Here is the word that we saw:

Gemeindehausschneeundeisberäumungsverantwortungsplanungsliste

Pretty amazing, huh? It basically just means: Church building snow and ice cleaning responsibility plan list or something to that effect. Just thought I would share that one! :)

Oh, one more thing... Heidi has now a total of 4 teeth! She got 3 new teeth all at the same time, in the last couple of days! I couldn't believe it when I saw them all at the same time! She turns 1 on Tuesday! Where has the time gone???

Trip to Vienna

Back in October Clint and I made a trip to Vienna right after the Ladies' Retreat in Filzmoos. We got to stay with our friends Jake, Amanda, Abby, (and baby #2) Haskew--ha ha, that rhymed. :) We had a great time visiting with them and seeing what life was like in Vienna for them. We also got to meet up with some of their other team members... mainly the Rushers and Lockwoods. We only got to see Josh Hensal on Sunday morning because Kim was at home with a sick child. :( Here are some photos from our trip.


Heidi and Jake having fun


Jake and the girls


All of us in front of the Pestsäule (Plague colum)


Jake and Clint looking like they are up to something and Heidi playing with an empty Dr. Pepper bottle.

Abby and Amanda

Brian and Alisha Rusher and me

In front of a pretty fall tree

The girls hanging out

So much has happened...

Yes, I know... I haven't blogged in a very long time. I also haven't posted any pictures or videos in a long time. I'm sorry. That's all I can say. I got really behind and never got caught up. I'm not sure how to make up for it either. But I will try. Please don't be too mad. :)

I don't know why this video looks so blurry... hmmm...

I just love the look on her face when she eats the green beans. :) The video is from September.

Here are a few photos from the Ladies' Retreat at the end of September- beginning of October. Heidi went with me and it was lot of fun! Every year it is in a little village called Filzmoos, in the Austrian Alps. It is so beautiful!

Heidi and I with the "Bischofsmüze" ("Bishop's hat") in the background. Maybe you can see the shape of the mountain.... that is where it got it's name.

Group picture of all the ladies there

Bri and I enjoyed some Apfel Strudel at coffee time!

Just a little artistic attempt I made... ;)

Fun times... from awhile ago

(I started this post a long time ago and unfortunately never got the chance to finish it... so here it is. Hopefully I will do some more catching up soon.)

To try to catch up on all the things we have been up to, I will just quickly highlight some of the things that we have done the past couple of months.


At the end of August we went with some friends to the Chemnitz Stadtfest. (City Festival) Karen Neel, Sven, Kai and Sophia went to a concert by "Die Prinzen". The rest of us (Mark and Karen and me, Heidi and Clint) walked around and found all the good food and looked around at the different booths. It's (kind of) comparable to the State Fair back in OK. You usually go there to get the really good food. :)


At the beginning of September we had a Baseball game in the park and invited all of our LST contacts to it. We had a good turnout and had a lot of fun playing. It always amazes me to see people stopping as they are walking by and watching us like they have never seen this sport played in real life before (many haven't).


Our friends Alex and Barbara had their baby boy, Ruben. Here is a picture of the guys and Heidi.



Here are the girls and Ruben.