Visitors and Life

Tonight, we had some visitors stop by our home. Jeff's host dad and brother from his exchange year - 20 years ago- were passing through on their way to Basel Switzerland. Benjamin, the son, will be moving there soon to start a new job. They stopped by our home tonight to store a few of his belongings until he finds an apartment. Basel is only 25 minutes from us so we are hoping to be able to connect with Benjamin often. This was the first time that they have ever been to our home.

We are having a gofer problem. Actually since we arrived back from the states in August, we have been dealing with it. Since we are renters, we must let our landlords take care of it at their own pace. He has now dug up many holes where the children play and it is really starting to look bad. But our landlord is aware of it and so we must just be patient. We keep saying to ourselves that we only have five more months before we head back, so let the gopher have at it!

Now to end this blog entry, I thought I would post some random photos of the kids. Nothing special just them enjoying life which I guess is special enough.

Home Basketball Games

We are in that time of year again where we have home basketball games. This is a very exciting time in our community, especially with the weather being so bad. There is food to eat, and people to visit with not to mention being able to watch a good game of basketball. Last week our school hosted Vilseck a DoDDS school located close to the Check border. This week we are hosting Wiesbaden another DoDDS school. Jeff has had the responsibility to serve as the administrator supervisor during these games and acts as crowd control. The students are always well behaved so it is a pretty relaxing time for him.

Here is Jeff sitting courtside keeping a keen eye on the activities of the students.

Sarah's Big day

Today, Sarah turned three! She was very excited all day to celebrate. She helped me make her special birthday cupcakes in the morning and waited paitently for her party until everyone got home from work and school.

Jeff stopped on his way home and bought Sarah some flowers. She felt very special to get something so pretty from daddy. I thought that was very sweet of him.

Before we started dinner, we made Sarah wear her special birthday hat with her favorite cartoon person on it- Dora. She was very happy to see her!

We let Sarah open her gifts while the grandparents got to view and chat with her via SKYPE. She received many special gifts just what she wanted.

Then came cake time. She insisted to wear her new Dora nightgown the rest of the night. She did really well with blowing out her candles this year.

Joshy sure liked his cupcake and downed it in record time.

So ends a special day for our now three year old. Next year there will be a new celebration in a new country!

Update

I guess it is time to update my blog and let you all know how we have been spending our three week Christmas break. For starters, it has been very cold. We are in the middle of a big cold snap here in Europe. Today it is only 19 degrees outside. That may not sound so bad, but for us with little indoor resources to keep us busy, it is cold! We have done one day outing to a town two hours away. Other than that, we have stayed mostly home. We have had many projects to keep us busy and moving. We have cleaned out our attic, our storage room, and under our stairs. We were surprised by the junk we have collected. We realized that everything from our original move to this house three years ago were still in rubber made containers. So that is all currently sitting in our garage which will all get thrown out between now and most likely by the end of March in the regular trash. We have begun preparing for our year furlough by purging of our junk. It is so nice to only have the essentials around us to use for the next six months.

Other activities to keep us busy has included playing our new Wii that we got for Christmas. Jeff is now at the pro level with bowling. We have also enjoyed playing many card games and watching family movies at night. We feel rested and ready for the next push of the school year as we prepare for the next step for us that the Lord has! WELCOME 2009!