catch a glimpse

State fair, sad goodbyes and back to school

2010-09-26T18:00:00.005+02:00

The Minnesota State Fair was happening a few weeks ago and I was able to go twice.

It was fun. Lots of things to see and rides to ride (although I didn't go on any. :) ).

There were thousands of things to eat and drink and try out. I loved the deep fried Oreos! :) Watched a couple of animal shows and other shows.

One of the not so nice things that happened this last month, was what was going on with a friend of mine. She had been feeling sick for a while and was getting worse. I spend one night at the hospital (ER) with her, after she had to be picked up from an ambulance. They couldn't find anything, but after the same thing happened again some days later and she was in the hospital for a week, they decided, that it would be best to send her home to Sweden to get better there. So we had to say goodbye way to soon, which was sad.

The summer is over and my kids started school again.

Gracie is in 3rd grade now, which she seems to enjoy! :)

Ike is in kindergarden and already made a bunch of new friends!! He likes going on the bus with the other kids now.

Matty started preschool and is gone most mornings now. He likes getting a lot of playtime with new friends!

I had to say another good bye to another friend of mine. Klara left for Sweden last week after her year came to an end. We went for one last coffee (on this side of the world) and it was nice to be able to hang out one more time!

A happy thing that happened was a great surprise this week!

My friend Maja, who used to be our neighbors AuPair, came to visit her family and I didn't know she was coming. So it was a great surprise to see her!!!

I am down to my last 51 days, which seams so unreal...

new friends, adoption and a vacation

2010-08-26T04:18:00.006+02:00

This last month has been full of meeting awesome people!

I am super blessed with all those new friendships that are forming!

I met my friend Sherry at Caribou Coffee about a month ago and got to hang out with her a couple of times! And just this week I got to meet a bunch of other great people, that I really enjoyed spending time with and hope I will get to hang out with them a lot more!

I also got to hang out with some more fun kids last week, doing VBS (vacation bible school) at my host family's church. I had my own group of 9-12 mostly 5 year olds from 8.45am - 11.40am. We had a fun week at Hero Headquarters! Learning about joining forces with God and some heros of the bible.

I go to spend some more time out and about with the kids this past month too. The weather was nice and warm, so we got to do all sorts of fun water stuff, like going to the pool or the splash pad, or hanging out at a wading pool with my friend Sarah and her kids. I love being outside with the boys, it's so nice for them to get their energy out! :)

The most amazing day this past month, was for sure the day we got to go to court to officially adopt Matty!!! We were a bunch of people that went to witness the legal part at the court and then even more people at the amazing dance party we had in the evening for Matty. :) He loved it, but was so overwhelmed by the attention he got and everything that was going on. :)

We had good fun with the hired DJ and a guy who showed dances and moves for everyone to repeat. :)

I have been on vacation for the last days and I'm really having a good time.

Friday I went to the outlet mall and bought a few new clothes and in the evening I got to take my friend Martina out to the Casino for a birthday dinner and some mystic bingo. :)

Saturday I relaxed a bit and then went for a coffee with my other new au pair friend Sarah, who just got here a few weeks ago. Then Martina and I met my nanny friend Sarah at her friends house, where we met some other friends of hers, one that is a missionary in Ethiopia and works with women there that have HIV and they make a living making jewelry with coffee beans. Very pretty!

Sunday I went to church in the morning and then to the Renaissance fair, where the had highland days with highland games and a scottish village. It was fun and I even ate some Haggis! :) I stayed all day even though it was super hot, but I just had a lot of fun walking around and especially watching the comedians there. :) Great shows!

Monday I spend most of the day at home and then was invited to a dinner at someones house from someone I met at VBS. That was where I met a lot of great people and also was invited to a birthday party the next day, where I met even more people and just had a great time!!

Today has been slow and relaxing. Had lunch with Sherry and just hung out here and there and finally went on a run after a very long time! It wasn't a long one, but felt really good. :) Hope I can get back into it more, once the weather starts to cool down a bit.

Take care everyone!!

Oh, and I am down to my last 82 days!! Isn't that just crazy!!!!!!! I can't even believe it! Exciting but at the same time so sad! ...

Cosmic Bingo, Duluth and Kaleena :)

2010-07-25T19:29:00.006+02:00

Hi guys,

summer is here and I am loving it!

The kids are out of school and if they're not in camps we get to hang out and do fun stuff.

We go to the pool, the splash pad, museums etc. or just hang out around the house in the back yard or in our "small" pool.

It's been a little over a month since my last post, so let me look up real quick what some of my main fun things were I did. :)

Some friends and I discovered our new favorite weekend activity:

Cosmic Bingo

It's at a Casino about 30 minutes away from here.

We usually have dinner at the buffet, which has a lot of different foods from different countries and isn't expensive at all.

The first Cosmic Bingo session starts at 11pm (fridays and saturdays) . There are two sections (smoking+ non-smoking) and I guess there are about 350 people there at one night (one night they had a ladies night and it was packed! :) )

There is a DJ and the lights are off and they have lasers going through the room and loud music.

It is a lot of fun and there are different Bingos you need to get, so it's doesn't get boring. One session lasts about one hour and there are two a night. I like to stay for both sessions and get home around 2 am in the morning. :) I love it!

Oh right, I haven't told you about our trip to Duluth yet!

So we left on a wednesday morning and drove for about...um. 4 hours I think.

We stayed at a house where all the kids shared a room and I got my own. :) We were close to the beach and I even went for a run at it one day.

Every time we went into town, we had to cross over a big bridge, which went up to let boats through. It was neat to see it operate.

We did a lot of fun things and sightseeing which was awesome.

One day we went to a big Lighthouse and spent some time there. Walking around the property and hearing stories about the people who used to live there. It was great.

After that we went to see some cliffs and also the Gooseberry Falls. Waterfalls which were gorgeous and a great walk through the woods.

We also went to a train museum, where they had all sorts of..umm, well trains (hehe).

You were able to climb up on them and learn about them.

The same day we went to rent a bike for 4 people. Four people get to sit behind each other in twos and peddle and the boys got to sit up front and just enjoy being taken everywhere.

On our way back on saturday we stopped at a fur trading post and had an awesome tour there. It was like walking into the past and our tour guide was awesome!

I have spent some nice days at the pool, just by myself. Reading and hanging out all day. It's nice to just do that every once in a while.

Last week I got to see my dear friend Kaleena from Canada after a long time again.

She and a part of her family were on a roadtrip and had time to stop and see me. It was soo good to catch up with her and spend time with her, her mom and sisters!!

We went to Under Water World at the MOA which was nice. Then got to have dinner together and just talk for a while! I loved it!

I also just got my papers to request my return flight.

I have about 4 months left in my year, and it is strange to think about the flight home yet.

Well, that's it for now. Leave me a comment! :)

Love ya!

A race, a baby and fun with the kids

2010-06-22T04:35:00.006+02:00

Hey everyone,

hope you are doing good! :)

I had some different, but also nice weeks and did a bunch of things with the kids or my friends.

Let's see, where should I begin?

Oh ya, my first "race".

So I did my first 5K race at the beginning of this month and I loved it!

It was fun to run with all these other people and that really helped me to push through.

My only goal really was to make the race without having to stop or walk, I wanted to run ALL THE WAY! and..I DID! It felt so good coming around the last corner and seeing the finish line, all of a sudan I had a lot more energy left than I thought I had and sprinted over the finish line. :)

I did pretty well and came in after 32,40 minutes, which put me right in the middle field. :)

Courtney, my hostmom's sister and her baby came along to cheer me on, which was so nice and helpful to see them waiting for me there at the finish line! :) Thank you!

The day before the race I drove 4,5 hours one way to meet up with a friend of ours to pick up Matty, who had spend some time there. It was a nice drive through Wisconsin and great to be be driving in Wisconsin, seeing another state. We met half way and had lunch at a neat restaurant that has all sorts of old tin toys inside and a carousel outside, that we got to ride. :) The drive back with him was pretty relaxed (he did great) and so even the rain that started half way back, didn't matter to much. :) It was good to be back home after a long day though.

Meredith's sister (as mentioned above ;) ) and her baby William came to visit us for a couple of weeks to be with Mer. It was so nice to have them here and to get to have a baby around for a while. :)

I got to spend a lot of time with W. and had a lot of fun! He is a happy baby and so funny! :) It was great to get to know Court better and also spend some time with her.

I am having a great time with Isaac right now! We discovered his love of fairytales and so whenever we have some alone time together he wants me to tell him a new story. It kinda showed me, how many different fairytales I actually know the beginning of, but can't remember the ending to...but at the end they just all end the same, right.. and they lived happily forever after.. *haha*

Matty is growing up way to fast. Some days I look at him and thing.."what?! who are you?" :)

He wants to go to the restroom by himself now, and always makes me close the door (from the outside :) ) *haha* wants to do everything by himself, and thinks he can do anything! *haha* amazing! he is a lot of fun to be with, and he still loves to cuddle, so that's good! :)

Gracie is off school for the summer, which gives us some more time together which has been great!

Just the other day she told her mom, that she wanted a day where I take her and a friend out without the boys, because she never gets to go out with me when she has school. :) we had a great time!

Today we played with her Polly Pockets, which was a lot of fun! :D I loved putting new outfits on them, so we made them go for a swim and change their clothes after that.. :D

Another fun thing is skyping with my parents. We started doing that a few weeks ago. Now that I have my own laptop, it just is the smarter thing to do than being on the phone the whole time. And that way they get to see me, and the best part: I get to see them!!!!! That's so amazing! I love it!

Last friday we went to the pool for the first time! I am glad we have a membership, it costs 10$ to get in otherwise! :o

But it is a great pool with lots of fun things to do even for the little kids (and big kids like me) :)

I realized that I needed a new swimsuit (badly) and so went to buy one, no two, the next day. :) I got a one piece and a two piece with skirt and I love them! :) And the best part was, it didn't even take me that long to find them! :)

The next day I took the boys to a splash park. They have a soft floor there with lots of things that spray out water and you can run around and get wet. It was soooo much fun! But sadly we had to leave after a short bit, because it was just not warm enough that day to stay. But I will for sure go back there with them soon!

Well, besides that I spent time with my friend Steffi and we hung out at the mall, an art fair, the movies, and had german food again, this time at a different place with another friend of ours and it was soo good! :)

Wednesday we are driving up to Duluth, about 4 hours away from here to go camping in a cabin. Should be a lot of fun! :) I'll tell you about it next tim!

Take care and leave me a comment! :) Love ya!

new friend, german food and a long walk

2010-05-23T17:25:00.004+02:00

hey there,

it's been a while again.

There are a lot of things going on right now and those close to me know about them so I won't go into detail here on the blog. It would be great if you could pray for my family here and me as well.

I personally am doing pretty good. I love being here at this time of year and have been spending a lot of time with my new friend Steffanie, who just moved here after a rematch about 3 weeks ago. She is from Germany also and we were actually at the same orientation at the beginning of our year.

We've been having some fun days together.

Friday we went to Albertville, an outlet mall about 35 minutes away from us. I bought a pair of converse shoes in purple which I love! :)

Today we get to go to my friend Sarah's birthday bbq, which will be great too.

Sarah is a nanny from friends of the family and we get to have playdates with the kids and hang out every once in a while.

Some weekends ago, she asked me to join her and her friends in a 5 K walk around the MOA for breast cancer. All the money made that day goes toward b c research! It was a fun event and there were soo many people walking, it was a lot of fun!

A couple of weeks ago, Steffi and I went to a german restaurant called "Black Forrest Inn", we hadn't had "german" food in 6 months (yes, that's ho long I've been here now, isn't it crazy!)

I got a "Sauer Braten" with "Spaetzle" and "Sauerkraut" and a "Semmelknoedel" . The "Sauerbraten" was amazing! I loved it and kinda want to go back right now and have some more. :D I also got to have a "radler" which wasn't as good as at home, but fine. :)

my first 5K run is coming up and I haven't been as good n training myself, so I really need to get of my backside and do some more running soon!

Well, that's it for now. Let me know how your week has been!!

running, screening and a birthday

2010-04-24T18:26:00.003+02:00

Hey guys,

hope everyone is doing as good as I am.
For some strange reason I woke up with a big smile on my face this morning. For about the last two weeks I have felt happy a lot of times with no "reason". I know there are a lot of reasons for me to be happy right now, what I mean is that nothing really stood out that I could put my finger on and say:" hey, that's why I'm so happy"! :)
I am just gonna take it and be thankful for it I guess! :)

One reason is the weather for sure. I has been great to be able to take the kids to parks and play in our front or back yard! There is so much more to explore for them outside and we love to enjoy the sunshine!

One thing the weather has done to me, is turn me into a runner...well..ok I have only been 4 times so far, but everyone has to start somewhere right. :)
One nice day I was just out to go for a walk, when somehow walking wasn't enough anymore, so I started running. :) And let me tell you, I love it! It feels so good when you realize, that you are getting better at it, even if it's slowly ;) .

Church has been amazing too. I just love the teachings at the upper room community, there is something that touches me every time and the worship times are awesome and really uplifting!
It refreshes me for the week and I got something to think about all week!

Last week Martina and I went to our first movie screening. We got free tickets to see "the backup plan". You need to get to the theatre early, since they give out more tickets than they have seats, so when we got there there was a long line already and we were amongst the last 10 people or so that got in.
We had to sit pretty close to the front and off to the side, but hey, it was free right. AND the movie was soooo funny. I laughed soo hard, one of the best comedies I have seen in a long time..and I have seen a lot good ones lately, so that makes it even better! :)

It was Matty's birthday yesterday. He's 3 now, ohh my... :)

Leave me a comment! :)

love ya!

Colorado, Friends and Spring

2010-04-14T18:28:00.004+02:00

Hi there,

it's been more than a month (oh no!) , but I have a good excuse. :)

We were gone for some days and then I've been sick or not really to a PC for longer than a few minutes, so here is my last month in a nutshell!

Colorado

We went to Colorado for a little over a week at the end of march.

It was a long ride in the car, but the kids did great and the time actually went by pretty fast. :)
We had a great week with lots of swimming, ice-skating, hanging out and skiing and snowboarding! :)
On some days me and the boys went on little adventures up the hill. The gondolas were a lot of fun for them to go in and the little village was fun to walk arround at. :)
One day we went to the Hot Springs and had a great tiome floating arround in the water!
Snowboarding was ok, but I decided that it isn't my most favourite sport

Sick

I was sick last week. My first time here where I had to stay in bed all day. I won't make you read the details, but I felt super sick! No fun! Took me some days to get better all the way.

Friends

I've been doing a lot of fun things with my friends here.
One weekend m y friend Inga came to visit me from Connecticut. We had a great time and it was fun seeing her again. We hung out with my good friends Klara and Martina that I've been doing a lot of stuff with lately.

AND the most wonderful thing!

SPRING is here!
the weather is great right now. It is warm enough to run arround without a jacket a lot of times and the lakes are great to walk around and and and...it's just great!
It's great to be able to go outside with the kids and so good for them to be able to run around outside too!

Well, here it is, as I said, "in a nutshell". There has been so much that's been happening, that it is hard to write it all down, but I will write again soon, so it won't overwelm me again!

Love ya!

friends, snow tubing and snowboarding

2010-03-01T16:49:00.003+01:00

Wow, it's MARCH!!
Well, let's see what I have been up to those last weeks. I was going to write every two weeks, but it's sometimes just not possible for me to be on a computer for long and not doing anything else that needs to be done, so the blogg kinda has to wait the longest most of the time. But I know you understand! :)

I had to deal with a little bit of homesickness a couple of weeks ago. It's just that time I guess.
It wasn't to bad, just not nice to be emotional all the time. (not that I"m not way to emotional all the time anyways... ;) )
What has helped me a lot was meeting new friends here. I'm kinda jumping ahead here, but I just last week met some new girls that I am having a great time with.
One girl is MArtina from Sweden and she just arrived here 2 weeks ago. We went to the MOA a couple of times and I introduced her to my favourite hobby here "Scrapbooking" So we go out and buy stuff for that together and she just came over on saturday so we could work on a few pages together. :) It was a lot of fun, although I had to sort through my stuff first and get some order into it, cause I have so much stuff, that I started loosing track. :)
That night we met up with another swedish girl, Klara, and we went out to dinner downtown and had fun. Sunday we also met and went to Ikea and had dinner there and bought some boxes. :)
Nathalie, another swedish girl also came with us! :)

OK, back to the beginning of February

I met two other very sweet girls some weeks ago. Rachel and Arielle. We went out for lunch and dinner and a movie on some saturdays and just had a good time talking and getting to know each other! I am really thankful for all those amazing people here!!

Another highlight was watching the movie "Avatar" with my friend Emma. The movie was fun and well made, but the best was probably that we watched it at the IMAX in 3D. super fun!

We had a cluster meeting on the 21st and went to Buckhill to go Snow tubing. That was a fun experience! The tubes get really fast and it's so much fun. The wait at the top of the hill was pretty long, but worth it.

I also had a great time going to "the upper room community" a fun church group that I really enjoy going to!

Last thursday it was time for me to bundle up for my first snowboarding lesson!!
LEt me tell you, it was a lot of fun once you get the hang of it, but super painfull for my legs. I didn't fall as much as I thought I would, but my calfs (is that how you spell them?) really hurt. :)
I can't wait to go back this week and see how it goes. We were only women and all beginners, so that was nice to not be the only one there. :)

I got a new pair of glasses last week and I really like them. :)

I am having a good time here with my family and love them very much.
Spending time with the kids and doing all kinds of things with them is fun and I love to see them grow and our connection grow stronger.

Well, that's my last month in a nutshell. Leave me comments! :)

I miss you all!

build a bear, scrapbooking and California

2010-02-03T01:05:00.003+01:00

Hey, so I'm not doing too bad with updating so far. :)

The last weeks have been fun and actually went by really fast.

One of the fun things I got to do these last weeks was taking Gracie to the MOA one daz. She was off of school and so asked me if I could maybe do something fun with her, since the bozs always get to go to different places with me when she is at school.
So we went to the Mall and to the "build a bear" workshop, where she made her own little stuffed animal (dog).
Afterwards we got some icecream and went into the small arcade that they have there.

On wednesday evenings we have "family fun night" and I finally had time to be a part of that on one wednesday. We went to a restaurant called "chatterbox", which was fun. We got to sit on couches in a corner, where they had a TV set up with the old Nintendo NS set up. It was great playing some levels of Super Mario after so many years. :) We also played some bord games with the whole family, which was awesome!

One friday Gracie got to go to a fun birthday party. One of her friends invited some of her friends to a sleepover at a hotel! :) I dropped her off there and she had a great time, swimming and hanging out with her friends. I was home with the boys where we watched a movie and had Mc Donalds.

I got to go take Gracie to Skiing the next morning too, which was fun to watch. I might take some snowboarding lessons starting next week, but I have to wait and see if there are any open spots.

I still love scrapbooking a lot, and been able to do some pages over the last weeks too. Saturdays I get to spend a few hours with that while chatting with home. :)

Monday the 25. I left to spend a week with my dear friend Jill in San Diego, California. We had a great week together and I got to meet some awesome people. :)

One day we went to a cute place called "Julien". A small town with cute stores along main street and AWESOME applepie! :)

Another day we went to "Knott's Berry Farm" which was fun until one ride made me feel like my brain had stopped half way and gotten out during the ride. I was suuuper dizzy and did not feel so good for about 2 hours. So I didn't do any big rides anymore, but some smaller ones and we had some awesome food, which we ate with our fingers! :D fun!

On friday night Jill invited some of her friends over to meet me, so we had a small party going on. :) It was great to meet new people and to get to know some of Jills friends. :)

Saturday we went to the beach at Carlsbad, just so I could see the ocean,w hcih I haven't in a while. We had some jummy mexican food there too. :)
In the evening we went to a friends house, where they had a meeting with friends. Hanging out and talking about different toppics. Everyone got to write down a question and they were put in a pot, then we picked some out and talked about them with the whole group. Everyone got to say what they thought. It was super interesting and I hope I can do something like that again some time.

On my last day (sunday) we went to church and then out for lunch with some new friends afterwards. It was great and I really enjoyed spending some quality time with them. After that we went to see Jills nephews which was fun, they are some sweet boys!

In the evening we met with our friends again to watch the movie "the book of Eli" and let me tell you:
YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT!
It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time!

We had dinner at TGI Fridays afterwards and it was sad having to say good bye.

Monday it was time for me to go back home. I met Keith and two of my kids at the airport and Mer picked us up there later.

I had a great week with Jill, but also realized how much I missed my family here. :)

My first workday is over now and I am still pretty tired from traveling and the (small) time change. So I will go and enjoy my bed now. :)

Take care friends!

it's COLD when there is SNOW in the SUNSHINE :)

2010-01-14T21:06:00.003+01:00

Hey there,

so I brought my journal down to look up what kind of stuff I wanted to tell you about. :)

It's been about 14 days since I last updated, that's not to bad. :)

We had some pretty cold days here the last weeks. (-28* C on some days)
I am starting to get used to it though. From a certain cold on it doesn't really matter how cold it is, you just out on as many layers as possible and you"ll be fine. :) I have been pretty good with bundeling up, so I haven't been freezing lately. At least not much. ;)
And even if it is cold, the sun is out a lot and I just love that. The snow is crisp and nice to walk on.

Two weekends ago my Hostparents went out of town and we had another friend stay over to watch the kids with me. I really liked Rachel and we had fun taking the kids out to Chuckie Cheese's.

I also met my friends for a dinner at the Rainforest Cafe a week or so ago. We were 6 girls and I had a great time, especially because I was able to meet up with my friend Sam again that I don't get to see that much.

2 Tuesdays ago me and my boys went to meet Anna and her kids at the Minnesota Zoo which was very cool! They have most of their animals inside at the moment and a big gardenlike area where you can walk around and see all kinds of animals. They also have an under water area, where you get to touch starfish. They also have Dolphins that are fun to look at. One came to say hi to us on the side of the pool and then splashed us with the water to say hi. :D

the following thursday we went out again. This time to the indoor playground which is soo much fun! :)
It has this big climping structure with lots of different slides and things to climb on or go through. I had just as much fun as my boys did. :) We met Anna and her kids there too. Our kids get along very well and we had a good time again.

On Friday I had to be fingerprinted. My family is a foster family at the moment and so every caregiver has to be finger printed and have a background check done. It was strange to be in the building that I had to go in, kinda felt like I was on my way to prison or something like that. Small rooms and hallwayz and I had to go through a savety check before I was alowed to go in. The person fingerprinting me was pretty nice though, so that was ok.

That evening I finally got to go to the Cheese Cake Factory with Emma.
The food was great and the Cheesecake... soooo good, I've been craving it all week! :)
Spending time with Emma was very nice too!!

Sunday I got to scrapbook again, which I started when I got here (not sure if I told you about that yet. :) ) 3 hours to get 3 pages done... :) I love it so much though!

In the evening I went to a church service at "Upper Room" and loved it!
The atmosphere was great, the teaching deep and touching and funny, and worship and the people were really nice! I am for sure going there again.
There is another church I went to some sundays ago, that I might go to again aswell, we'll see. :)

Monday was a short working day for me. I got off at 2, went to Ikea to get some boxes and then to the Mall to return something and get an Ice Cream from my favourite place: ColdStone :)

Tuesday the boya and I met Anna and her kids and Emma at the indoor playground again. *fun*

Well, I am having a good time here with the normal ups and downs. :)
The kids are great and I love them already very much. :) I've been getting to know them better which has been a nice experience.

I also just booked my first plane ticket here. I will be heading out to California to spend a week with my friend Jill there. My family will be gone too, so I got to take one of my weeks that I have for vacation. I can't wait to see Jill again after about 3 years!

Take care everyone!

Updates, Christmas and a Happy New Year

2010-01-01T19:07:00.003+01:00

Hey everyone,
first of all I have one thing that I really need to do this year: get better in updating this blog!!
Seriously, I was so good about it at the beginning of last year and then just stopped...sorry!

Well, this update will be without pictures once again, but once I have my own Laptop where I can arrange my pictures, I will upload some for yo to see!

Weeks have passed since I last updated and to bring everyone up to date will take a while and I need my calender for that. But I can tell you already that I"ve had a great time here so for, with ups and downs that make this life worth living.

Christmas was nice!
For some reason I couldn't really get into the "christmas mood", but I had a good time anyway.
My friend Anna (you will here about here pretty often in my posts) came to be with us, because her fanily was out of town.
On christmas eve we went to my hostdad's brothers house, where the whole family met for dinner and some time together. It was a fun night with really nice people!
Anna spent the night at my place.
The next morning we exchanged gifts under the christmas tree and I got some nice things from my family here! (Thank you again!! )
We then went to have dinner with some friends at their house and played some fun games there. :)

The end of 2009 I spent on my phone and in my bed. :)
I didn't feel like going anywhere and was pretty tired from my day. So I got to talk with Germany for 2,5 hours ( ;) ) and then just went to bed at 10.30 pm. :)

Ok, I know this post is not really that interesting, but I do need my calender to figgure out what would be interesting for you to know. I promise I will get better at updating and maybe even set a specific day of the week when I will update. A lot of things happen here and some of them are just routine for me now, so I don't think of them as interesting for other people anymore maybe. :)

Have a Happy New Year!
May it be a blessed one!

Birthday, Thanksgiving and a full 2 weeks!

2009-12-04T16:44:00.002+01:00

Hey,
it's finally time for an update, so here we go! :)

1 week

My first week here went by super fast.
We had family over from New York, Pennsylvania and San Francisco and it was so great to meet them all and to get to spend some time with them.

monday I got to pick up M. from "mdo" all by myself for the first time and it went pretty well. Since then I've been out by myself a lot of times and am starting to find my way arround a lot better.

Birthday!
On the 25th of November it was my birthday, which I got to celebrate with the family and also share it with one of my hostmoms friends! We had a nice dinner together and a lot of fun playing a game. I was super blessed with some awesome gifts!!! (Thank you!!)
Later in the evening I went out with my friend Anna.
We went to the Mall of America for the first time, and let me tell you, it is BIG!
Sadly the shops were about to close, so we ended up at the movie theatre and watched "2012".
It was ok, just a little overdone.. and it went on for 2 hours and something...so I got home way later than I had planed!

Thanksgiving
We had an early dinner with the family, which was soo good!
Afterwards we all played games together and just had a great time hanging out!!

I started taking the bus more often now. It is great that I actually have a bus going here. Most of my friends don't even have a bus in their area. It's a great way of getting around, although I felt a little lost the first time I took one, just like first grade when mom puts you on the school bus for the first time by yourself. ;)

Saturday I finally got to meet Sam at the MOA (Mall of America). We only had time for a quick coffee, but I was glad that I got to see her!
I stayed at the mall and bought a bunch of stuff to get started with my scrapbook! Spent way to much money on it, but hey, you need a hobby, right?! :)
Then I went to see "New Moon" later. I decided to get tickets to the VIP theatre. It's inside the normal theatre, but every friday and saturday they have VIP rooms. You have to be 21 to get in and the seats are bigger than normal and you have a small table next to your seat. But the coolest thing were the waiters. You didn't have to get your Popcorn or anything, the come and take your order!! :) So I got a beer and a lemonade and made myself a "Radler" :)

Sunday I went to church with my family and then Anna came over to my place and we took a bus downtown.
We walked arround a little bit and then decided to go to the MOA so Anna could look at Scrapbooking stuff too..

2 week

Since the last week had been pretty busy with having visitors, this was my first week of "normal" living here at the house.
And you know what, I still love it! :)

I didn't so to much this week, since I was tired after work or just sat down to Scrapbook a little. I got 4 pages done so far, and I really enjoy making them.

Wednesday my hostmom gave me a gift. Striped Pyjamas!! Everyone in our family has them, and they are only to wear during the month of december! :) fun! I look like an elf in them! :D

Yesterday I met some new girls and went out to dinner with them. We were six germans and I had a good time meeting them and finding out where they live arround here.

Tonight I hope I can go out with Sam and some other girls.

Well, that's it so far.
Work is going very well, I enjoy spending time with the kids and have a fun time with them. Of course there are things I have to get used to first and things I need to learn how to do, but that's all part of the fun!

Hope to hear from you!

4 days, great time, great family

2009-11-24T01:45:00.003+01:00

So, here I am again. I hope I will stay good in updating, cause right now it feels like time is flying by!

So on friday I got to meet a bunch of new great people. Friends of the family, neighbors,...
There are a lot of new names to learn, but I was welcomed so warmly by everyone, that that won't be a big deal!
My hostmom and the "old" AuPair and I went out of the house after dropping the kids off at school for a little bit and so I got to see Lake Harriet for the first time up close. :) That'll be a place where I'll be spending a lot of my time in the summer, and hopefully get some nice walks in during the wintertime aswell.
In the evening mz hostparents took us out to dinner, and I had a great time with them. Getting to know eachother a little better.

Saturday was sad, since Cilla had to leave for California, where she will be for a few days before returning to NewZealand.
In the evening we went to the house of friends for a Pizza dinner, which I reallz enjoyed. (not just the pizza, but the people too!)

Sunday morning I went to church with my family and then had my first Clustermeeting at an IceScating Rink. I had a lot of fun and didn't tdo to badly after all. :)

Today was my first "workday". I started at 7.30 am with helping to get the kids ready for school.
G. is picked up by the schoolbus and I and a friend are taken either by my HM or me, or by the other boys mom. Today I drove to school so I would know my way there and then to another place to drop off M.
My Hm was out of town for most of the day, so I got to pick up M. which was my first time driving by myself here, but it went really well.
The day went by fast and without any bigger problems. The kids are great and I really enjoy being with them!

I am excited to see what the next days will bring!
Leave me a comment!

New York, Connecticut and MINNESOTA!

2009-11-21T03:03:00.003+01:00

Hey guys,
I finally make it back to the desk to update about my new adventure that just started!

So, monday afternoon, my parents and Daniel and Sebastian brought me to the airport in Frankfurt where I met with some other AuPair girls, to check into our flight to NEw York.
After getting my bags checked I left the other girls again and we went for a coffee at Starbucks (where else ;) ).
When it was time for me to go through security I really didn't want to leave, but at the same time I was so excited, that I finally was on my way.
I met with the other girls again and even got to sit with one of them on the flight.

The flight was pretty quiet and I got to sleep a little bit at least.

After 8 hours in the air, we finally landed in New York City and met with a bunch of other girls and were taken to our hotel in Stamford, Connecticut.

There we had a 4 day orientation. Learning about childcare, american culture and so on. So nothing really new to me, but I enjoyed meeting the other girls, and even got to talk to them about my first AuPAir-experience 6 years back.

Thursday afternoon we were put on a bus to the airport again and a swedish girl (anna) and I took a plane to Milwaukee, WI and then one to Minnesota from there.
Let me tell you, I can not remember being this tired in a long time. My eyes hurt and I just wanted to finally meet my hostfamily.

We got to the airport in Minneapolis about 9 hours after leaving the hotel....!

I recognized my hostmom right away. She brought some baloons for me and gave me a big hug. It was just like I had expected it to be, as if we had been friends for a long time already. Well, we started talking in January, so it is kinda true. :)

We went home and after looking around the house for a wee while, I finally put my head down to sleep in my new bed!!! It felt sooo god! :-)

I felt so at home the first moment I entered the house, I can't discribe it. It is just amazing!

I will tell you a little more about my first day here later. Right now I am tired and can't wait to take a shower and get to bed.

Big hug to my friends in Germany, I will miss you!!!

many months passed, just one more to go...

2009-10-16T13:08:00.003+02:00

Wow, I really haven't updated in a long time. But you know what, it's not, because there would have been nothing for me to write about..NO, it's because there was so much that I could have written about, I couldn't filter out the information that I wanted to share with everyone.

A lot has changed over the last weeks (months) and I am so thankful that God is in control of my life and knows whats best for me.

I decided to switch churches and am super happy with that choice. My new "family" is amazing and I won't even start telling you about them, since I would never find an end. :-)
I am thankfull for the years I had at my "old" church, they were good, but it was time to make a change.

It's only 4 1/2 weeks before I leave to the states, isn't that crazy!!!
I am super excited and can't wait to meet my family and see my friends Sam and Inga again!!!!

Since I don't have my own laptop anymore, I can't upload any pictures at the moment, but one of the first things I will buy once I'm in Minnesota will be a new one, and then I will update this blog more often again.

Until then be richly blessed! And trust the Lord with your future! HE KNOWS BEST!

1..2..3..TEENSTREET

2009-08-09T14:54:00.004+02:00

I just got home from a great week at TeenStreet. (google it!!)

Before I went, I felt kinda unmotivated and would have rather stayed home to chill, because I had had a tough couple of weeks before, but GOD had better plans for me!!! (as he always has)

We left Siegen at 7 am on saturday (1st) and it took us about 4,5 hours to get to Offenburg, because we couldn't go any faster than 80 km/h since we took the caravan with us.

After we arrived we signed in and I got to go to the sleeping area where my girls and I would be staying. I think we were about 500 girls in one hall, which I thought would be tougher than it turned out to be.

In my group I had 5 girls that were 13 years old. We grew pretty close over the week and I had an awesome time with them! Since I went as a coach, I was responsible for them and had to teach a small bible study/devo every day. (which had already been planed out by the leaders before.

There were about 3500 youth and helpers from about 20 nations!

Every morning we had a short topical teaching and every evening met for "Throne Room" a time of worship and prayer.

Seeing so many people praising Jesus, singing, dancing, laughing... was just amazing!!!

I met a lot of amazing people and we became great friends. Some I really hope to see again soon! (Love ya!)

It is hard to put the week into words, and there are so many things I could still talk about, but that would take forever. If you want to hear more, let's talk sometime!

I wish I had taken more pictures, but I was so overwhelmed by a lot of things, that I didn't remember... :-)

Nights, paper fights and fires...

2009-07-19T15:11:00.006+02:00

My last week was packed with lots of great things again. :-)
I spend a lot of times with my new friends and I enjoy every single minute of it!
I don't get to bed early these days, but I guess I need to soak up as much time as I can get with them before I leave for the states. (Can't wait to finally meet you!!! )
We've watched some movies, went on night walks, hung out talking about a lot of fun and serious things and had a paper fight. Well, ok, I kinda only watched, but it was fun. :-)

Work was also good. We did a lot of circus things with the kids which was a lot of fun. Now there is one more week and then I am off for 3, but gone for two of them. It will be a good time, but I won't get to see some ppl for a while, which is sad. Oh well, guess I better get used to it now. :-)

Today looks like a slow day. I am at church sitting in the cafe with my laptop tiping this. I might read for a while and then go to the service. Going to bed early tonight sounds like a good option for later! :-)

pictures, Bilder, moments...

2009-07-14T20:25:00.008+02:00

Just some pics I wanted to share for fun! :-)
Since my last posts didn't have any in them!

Love ya!

2009-07-10T12:08:00.006+02:00

Ok, seriously what's wrong with me and updating this blog?? I think about it all the time and once I am at my computer I find other things to do or I'm to tired to write anything... DISCIPLINE YOUNG LADY!! :-D

I didn't get to bed til late last night again, which isn't to bad, since I am off work for the week. :-)
I went to a concert at Burger King again last night with Steve Savage whose music I really enjoyed!
Afterward we went to my friends house and the band came to join us which was great. We had a good time hanging out (in general, not just because of the band!) .

Lately I've been spending a lot of time with some "new" friends I met, which is awesome. I really enjoy their company and we have good times together. I get to meet new people a lot and also started going to some Jesus Freaks meetings which are fun. We've had some good conversations as well.

The sun decided to come out in Siegen finally about a week ago (ok, since then we've had some rainy days again, but at least we saw the sun for a bit :-) )
Sunday me and some friends went to sell stuff at a local flea market and somehow my skin did not like that at all. My sun allergy came out worst than ever! I had to go to the emergency- pharmacist to get medicine that didn't even help. I went to see a doctor on Monday but the stuff he gave me didn't seam to help either. I decided to just try using my allergy sun lotion and that seams to be doing the trick, it's getting better. I hope that once it's gone it stays away!!!
At least now I have my lotion that should keep it under control. I hadn't had the allergies in such a long time, so it's really upsetting that it's back now...

I've started cleaning out my apartment, which is more work than I thought. It's a lot of fun in a way though, because with every thing I get rid of I feel better. I can't wait to be done and then life with what's left for the rest of my time here in Germany.

Minnesota is only about 134 days away and I can't wait to finally meet my family!
I have recently come to meet those new friends here and I really want to enjoy my last months, but I am also super excited about my new life in MN for the next year or so! I can't wait. :-)

Ok, I should do some more packing now, my landlord is coming over on the weekend to talk about stuff, so it should at least look like a tidy mess in here and not just a messy mess...hahah

Take care!!!!

Long weeks, large photos and no time...

2009-06-21T14:34:00.002+02:00

Hi guys,

I"m sorry, it"s been a while again.

Ome problem was, that I changed mz camera settings and now mz pitures were to big and took ages to upload. I didn"t have time to make the smaller yet, but I still have some pictures I want to share with you, so I hope I can find some time and motivation to put them up soon. I am not at home while i"mm writing this, so there won"t be any pictures this time either.

Let me try to recall some of the things I did within the last month...

One thing I did, was go to a ballett show of one of my babysitting girls. It was her first show, she"s 5, and they were soo cute. They looked like little princesses up on the stage. All the otheracts were amazing too and so much fun to watch.

I went to a theme park that"s about an hour away from here with some friends. We had a good time and I loved the rides..and the food..haha It was pretty full, wo it took us quite some time to get in and also the waits at the rides were pretty long too. The weather was nice though, so it wasn"t to bad, and the rides are worth the ride most of the time.

Last thursday I went to a concert at Burger King. They put up a stage inside. It was s much fun! Some of my friends played and so I had a pretty good seat. It was so much fun to see all those people dancing inside of BK...haha My frinds music was awesome as well, and the singer did a very well job keeping everyone entertained!!

Friday after working 8 hours and babysitting for another 5,5 hours, I just needed to be with some adults and so I called one of my friends. I asked what they were doing and he told me they were going to Frankfurt and I was more than wellcome to come too. I found out that they were going to go to the airport to catch a plane to Spain, and in the end it was good that I was able to drive with them, since they needed the room in my car.

We met at a friends house and hung out there for a while and then left arround midnight to go to the airport. After getting there and checking them in we hung out a bit more and then me and one of the guys went to get some Starbucks since we were allready there. We then drove back home and I was in bed at about 5 am...looong day for me! But lots of fun again!

Love you guys! Leave me a comment!

BBQ, Swing Dance and Sad Goodbyes

2009-05-21T20:31:00.008+02:00

I wasn't able to upload all my pictures, but they will be up soon!!

BBQ

A couple of weeks ago I went to hang out with the Bibel College Students at the semester BBQ.
We had a fun day with lots of games and food. :-)
We played a swedish game called Kubb which was a lot of fun. My team got had so much fun, mostly because we screamed out lungs out and tried to be all cool...haha but we lost anyway.. ;-)
I went for a walk with my friend Kelsey, (who's Mikes sister) and we took some fun pictures.
We were very lucky with the weather which was great too!

Swing Dance

Later that day we went back to the Villa and decided to have Kelsey teach us how to Swing Dance. It was sooo much fun!!! We had a great time trying things out and learning new things after we kinda got the basic steps down. :-)
A day later Kelsey tought me how to waltz too! :-D

Baptism

Sunday afternoon we went to a close lake where two of the students got baptized. It was a sweet time with worship and prayer. The rain stayed away long enough and it was even pretty warm out.

Graduation

Last wednesday it was time for the Bible College Graduation.
There were 14 Graduates!! We had a great time hanging out after the Graduation Ceremony and took our time saying goodbye to the few that were leaving the next day.

Sam's Goodbye Party

Friday after work I drove all the way to Sam's house to join her goodbye party.
The drive took me a little longer than it would normaly have, since there was a lot of travic on the way. So after about 3,5 hours I made it to her house.
There were about 17 (I think) people there and we spend time eating and just hanging out and talking about all sorts of things. :-) It was fun.
I spent the night at Sam's and the next morning we went into Hameln. (Google it if you have time:-) ) Her dad owns a restaurant there and so we met her parents and sister there and then went shopping from there. We were blessed with great weather again and I even got some bargains. :-)
I went back on the road a little later that day and made it home in about 2,5 hours since there was no travic this time, which was nice.

Sunday I was invited to cook indian food at a friends house. When I got there all the cooking jobs were taken and so I sat down with some friends and we hung out until the food was done. It was sooooo good! Good job Dami and Samuel! We were about 20 people at Daniel's house and it was nice getting to spend some time with them.

Ok, uploading pictures takes a long time lately, so I will come back later to upload some more!

Boys, Heroes and a nice weekend with Inga and new friends

2009-05-04T20:28:00.021+02:00

Last tuesday and wednesday I watched "my" boys again and we had a lot of fun playing around with the camera, so here is one of the pics we took...it's hard to get 3 big heads into one small camera... :-)

Friday I had a day off, since it was a notional holiday here. Met my parents at a friends house for a little BBQ and then wanted to visit my friends at the Bible College. It took me super long to get there, since the police had blocked off half of the village it's in, because of some protest march that was going on. Lucky enough I know the area, so I was able to take the little side roads to school.

When I got there I found out that they were having their theme night that day and the topic was "Heroes and Villains" since I wasn't dressed up, Jessi said I could just be her hero. :-)

Some of the students really put a lot of work into their costumes, and it was a lot of fun to hang out with everyone again. :-)

Saturday my friend Inga came to visit me for the weekend. She will also be going to the states as an Au Pair for her second time and had an interview for her visa at the consulate in Frankfurt. She could have gone to one closer to her home, but wanted to visit me, so she traveled all the way here from her home, which took her about 5 hours.

We took the chance to invite some other Au Pair girls, who also came into Siegen for the day.

We had a great time together. It was nice meeting new girls that have the same experience ahead of them as I do, we were three return Au Pairs and two first timers. :-) It felt like we all knew each other already which was great. :-)

Inga stayed until monday morning and we had a great sunday together with some friend from church. I got to go on my first, no wait, actually my second ride in a convertible, which was a lot of fun! Fun for the wind too, as you can see! haha

hmmm, I can't upload another pic at the moment...but I will put it up as soon as I can!

Scotland, a Finn and a great weekend with Sam!

2009-04-27T21:03:00.017+02:00

Scotland

Thursday the 9th I picked up my car from the garage (it broke down a week earlier) just in time to drive to Weeze where I got to park it at my parents friend's house, so I could go to the airport there (2 hour ride from Siegen) and fly out to Scotland to see my family there.

I had a great week with them. Especially since I hadn't seen them in a year! I stayed with my grandma and also got to see my aunts, uncles and cousin, which was amazing. They are awesome people and I love them very much! Since I am heading of to the states this year, I won't get to see them for a long time which is very sad. So it was even nicer being able to see them again.

The three musketeers! :-) (auntie May, aunt Sheela and my Gran! )

sooooo gooood!!!!!!!!

...!

cousin love! :-)
red sheep on green hills..

uncle Archie :-*

an back home we go... :-(

Well, I made it to our friends house in one piece, then left their drive way and realize a weird sound coming from my rear tires... after an hour at the gas station, checking everything I could think of, I decided, that if I drive fast enough and turn the radio up real loud, I would not be able to hear it and make it home alright...haha ..well I did, thank you Lord! :-)

Finally made it to my parents house at 2 am and fell into bed...

Got up at 7 am the next (or same) morning to drive to Gerson and Brittany's place, where I had a little breakfast and picked up Anssi to take him to the airport in Frankfurt-Hahn, another 2,5 hour ride. :-) It was a lot of fun though, so it wasn't bad at all!

A weekend with Sam

Friday afternoon I left work a little early to go into Siegen and pick up my friend Sam (who I spoke about in my last post I think) who came to see me over the weekend. We had such a great time and did A LOT!

First we had a hot chocolate, sitting outside of a cafe in the sun! The weather was amazing all weekend and I even got a little red... :-)

After that we went to a restaurant where we got dinner sitting outside on the pavilion, it was so nice and the food was good too. :-)

Then we made our way to the store to grab some snacks, hit the video store and rented 4 videos. Went to my place and chillaxed the rest of the evening until around 3 am. :-)

We wanted to go to Ikea for breakfast, but stayed in bed a little to long, so when we got there they had started serving lunch already, so we had that instead. :-)

Then we walked around for about another hour and took pictures with all kinds of stuff :-) so much fun!

Then we went into town and walked up to our castle where we walked around and took pictures again. Walked all the way back downtown to H&M and into City Galerie and back up later on to get back to the car. Our feet hurt so bad that we decided to go back to my place and watch the other movies we hadn't watched yet.

Sunday morning we had to be at church for children's ministry and afterwards just hung out in the sun and played some games of Rummy Cub. We then went to the 5 pm church service, which was good. I love to hear Arne teach, he is a lot of fun to listen to. :-)

Then I took Sam back to the train station where we had to say our goodbyes which was sad. But I will go to her place in a couple of weeks for her good bye party, since she will be heading off to Minnesota in 3 weeks already!

I met with my friend Linda at the Cafe del Sol for dinner and we had a good time just hanging out and enjoying our meal.

I love my friends!!!

to much sun???...NEVER!

Art, Horses, Kids and a Finn

2009-04-06T19:47:00.012+02:00

Work is amazing still. Lately I've been given the possibility to decorate some of our doors and walls of our rooms we use for the after school program. I never knew that it would this much fun to paint huge pictures on walls...I love it!

Birthday calender, I drew the background and we had the kids cut out animals and then put their birthdate on it

my friend brought the clown (He's made of wood) and we put it on the wall and I drew something to go along with it

some stuff i drew on our windows to have a background for our easter bunnies

that's the sign to our art's and craft's room

sign to our office

Wendy ( did you know that I love my name ^^ )

We have a magazine here that shares my name. It's a blond (what?!) girl whose parents own a horse ranch, so obviously a lot of people like to joke about that. A lot of my kids at work ask me if I have my own horse just like the magazine-Wendy. So, I decided I should get one...

naaa, just kiddin :-) A couple of weeks I went on a walk with my friend Kerstin and we met two of our other friends at a lake where they took their horses. So I got to ride a horse again after ages and had some pictures taken. :-)

Au Pair

Last week we decided to have an Au Pair meeting in Cologne, where I was finally able to meet Sam, my new dear friend who will be moving to Minnesota as well, and some other great girls too that will be going to the states too.

We met at the train station then went to Starbucks where we hung out for a while and just talked, then went down to the Rhine where we sat again :-) and then to Subway for some dinner. It was a lot of fun! :-)

Minnesota!!!

I got a package from my family on Minnesota the other day!!!

They sent pictures of the fam and our little addition Matty!!

I also got tags for my suitcases with my name and their address on them, two great notepads with my name on them that my HostMom made, and local magazines. I am super excited and still so thankful that I met them!

Lunch with friends

The last couple of sundays I was invited to a friends house, where we cooked together after church It was a lot of fun and we had some good conversations.

One thing that made my month! (so far ^^ )

Last week I got a message on FB from my finnish friend Anssi telling me that he would be coming out to visit. So, he made it here and it is so great to see him again.

We've been hanging out the last days and I can't describe how happy I am. Spending time with him and Mike is great and reminds me so much of earlier times when we were all together at the BC!

Ok, I guess I could think of a million more things I would love to share, but I am running out of time (it's getting late) and I need to look through my other pictures to see if there are any more I would like to put up.

I will be visiting my family in Scotland next week and I am super excited, it's almost been a year since I've seen them last!

Take care my friends!!

days, weeks, months...

2009-03-07T19:24:00.003+01:00

The weeks seem to be flying by these last couple of months, I can't believe it is March already.

From today, there are 240 days left before I leave to Minnesota. Or better before I leave to the states, since I will be at a 3 or 4 day orientation in CT or NY first.

I enjoy talking and emailing with my family a lot. It is just so awesome to see how God brought us together!

Work:

Guys, I love work so much still, you can't imagine!

The people I work with are simply so amazing, that I started hating weekends, cause I can't be with them then... :-)

The kids are great too. An d I really enjoy spending time with them!

There is this one boy that I really have a heart for (if you can say it that way) He is in fourth grade and comes from a big family. I am not sure how much love or attention he gets at home, but you can tell how much he longs for someone he can be close to. I love spending time with him doing arts and crafts or simply help him with his homework.

I am starting to get more and more areas to myself at work too. From this coming week on I will be having our small morning groups to myself, since my colleague that I work with in the mornings, will be doing other things in the surrounding childcare-centers.

She was also sick on friday and so I had one of my first days alone with the kids. It was a lot of fun and, since we had planed it so well, no problem at all.

I might start my own classes at another school too. We go there once a week (wednesdays) and they would like me to start coming in on mondays also.

So, as you can see I am doing pretty good at the moment!

My days are pretty much the same every week, but I enjoy it so much! Weekends are slow and mostly boring, but I know I need them to rest for the new week.

Leave me a comment!

Love ya!

Finland, friends and wedding reception...

2009-02-19T18:15:00.010+01:00

Last friday Mike D and I took a train to Frankfurt airport to catch a flight to Finland.

We went to see our friends there, but most of all to celebrate our friends Jaakko and Rachel's wedding reception. They got married in Hawaii and then had a reception in Finland for friends and family there.

We arrived in Finland at 10pm and didn't get home until after 12.30 am. I stayed with rachel at their apartment and the guys at Jaakko's parents house.

The next day we had the reception, and I got to see old friends which made me so happy.

I had been most excited about seeing Anssi and Tuukka again, since I hadn't seen them in so long!

It was a nice party and I had the most amazing sandwich cake there!!! SOOO GOOD!!!!

The cake is enough reason to get married in itself!! haha

Later that day we went to our friend Kyle's house and hung out there till late. Tuukka had to leave earlier, since he had to be back at the military.

Our friend Orlando arrived from Mexico that same evening and it was great seeing him too. :-)

The next morning we went to church where Jaakko and Rahel were prayed for. It was nice to be at the Calvary there again, I really like everyone there a lot.

Then Mike and I had to catch a bus to the airport at 2pm, so we didn't have to much time left.

The weekend went by so quickly, and as we were back at the airport I couldn't even believe that it was already over. Next time I need to go for longer.

It was an awesome weekend, that made it easier to get over loosing my car.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Theo died... :-(

2009-02-16T20:54:00.002+01:00

Ok, so for everyone who didn't know:

Theo is/was my cars name. :-) ( ya, every girls car needs a name! hehe)

So, wednesday morning I leave the house, clean off my cars windows from the snow, get in, start the engine and start driving. I notice a loud, not so good sounding sound, but at first thought it's some snow stuck under my tires, so I keep going, but not for long. I decide to stop and check what's making the sound. At first I thought I had a flat tire, because it looked like my car was sitting on it, until I saw the big crack in my back bumper and then all the other damage that started showing under the snow...

So, while I was sleeping and my car was parked in front of the house, someone must have crashed into it and, after cleaning up (!!) just left without a word...

I called the police, which came and wrote down what "might" have happened and took some pictures. SO if the catch the guy/girl, what is most likely not going to happen, I will get some money back from their insurance. Otherwise I get nada... grrr

Oh well, I had a hard rest of the week after that, just because of all the things that came along with not having a car, but I know it will all be good.

I got a "new" car today already. My parents gave me theirs and got themselves a new one, which they were only able to do because we get money for my old car, because they have a special deal at the moment if you turn in your old car and buy a new one.

1,2,3... concert

2009-02-16T20:23:00.005+01:00

I wanted to tell you guys about a concert I went to a while ago.

We had this group "newworldson" come to our church and play an awesome concert!

I just looked at my old pictures and realized I haven't told you anything about it yet.

Anyway, I had such a great time there! They play amazing music and I really liked their style.

Go check them out at www.newworldson.com if you get the chance!

The church was packed and we were all sitting nicely in our rows... for 5 seconds.. :-D

As soon as the music started playing it didn't hold us on our chairs anymore. we started dancing and then had to move out into the isle to have room. It was sooo much fun!

I got to help to sell their CDs afterwards, which was cool too. :-)

Ok, so go and listen to them! :-)

Update!

2009-02-01T18:46:00.003+01:00

Wow, when did I become so bad in updating this blog??? And I was always complaining about other people not updating theirs...tsk..

Ok, so let's see what happened...

So I started my new job on January 7th, and I must say, I love it sooo much!

Even though the kids are different (and a lot more too) and I work longer, I LOVE my colleagues!!!

I get to work at 8 am and work with the other Social-worker, doing a so called learning studio. We have children out of different classrooms (all 1st graders at one point, then all 2nd graders...)

that come to us, which need help in different areas concerning schoolwork. We do things like worksheets to train their logical thinking, concentration, visual perception or games to train their motor function etc.

From 12.30 pm on I work at the OGS ( after school program) where we watch those kids, whose parents have to work longer and need someone to watch after them.

We have different rooms we use to play, read, relax, build, do arts and crafts, eat lunch, etc. And we have homework groups every day and help with the 3rd and 4th graders.

It is a lot of fun, but also a challenge, since it is hard for some of the kids to be at school for so long. (I understand that!)

I get off around 4pm and am always very exhausted and just go home to relax.

As I said, I really enjoy the team that I am working with. We get along so well,a nd I am even excited about going to work every day. :-)

Ok, so that's one big thing, what else..?!

Oh ya, Minnesota! :-)

So, I don't think I ever mentioned it on here, but around November or so last year, I started thinking about doing another year as an Au Pair in the states. It slowly started forming in my head, and I had my heart set on finding a family on the west coast this time, since I had already spend a year on the east coast. Since you don't get to choose states when you apply with an agency, I signed up at a free Au Pair/ Host Family page to look for a family there.

So i had my profile online for a while and then on the 13th of January I received an email from a family from Minnesota, that sounded real nice. Anyway, I thought I should be honest to them and tell them that I was hoping for a family on the west coast, but that I also knew, that if the Lord had other plans that it could work out with us too. But I wanted to leave it up to them if they wanted to stay in contact or not. They wanted to. (Yay!!)

We then kept communicating and somehow (I am sure now that it was God changing my heart) I started thinking about Minnesota and the family A LOT. We just seemed to fit together so well, and they are also Christians, which is a BIG plus.

A lot of things just fell into place, like the fact that their current Au Pair will have to leave the states in November, right when I am available.

We can really see God's hand in this, and so I will most likely be heading to Minnesota in November! Please pray for me and the family as the Lord strengthens our decision!

There will be so much for me to do before I leave. I need to sell my car, get rid of all my stuff in my apartment and put other things in boxes... oh wow, but I know that this is the right thing to do and my last chance to take this opportunity and as long as I trust in the Lord, it will all be good! :-D

Well, I am sure there is a lot more that I could talk about, and I would also love to post some pictures of whatever happened this last month, but that will have to wait till later!

Leave me a comment! :-)

Love ya!

Christmas, New Years and New Job

2009-01-05T10:57:00.004+01:00

Hi!

I haven't had the time to update in a while, so I'll try to tell you about the last weeks in a nutshell.

CHRISTMAS went by way to fast.

My dad came to church with me for the Christmas service, which was great. My mom couldn't make it, but I was really excited that my dad came anyway. Please pray for him and my mom, as they aren't saved yet.

I spent the night at their house and we celebrated Christmas day together. Germans usually get and open their gifts on Christmas Eve, but since we are a half Scottish family, we do that on the 25th.

I got some neat stuff and was very thankful that was able to spend the day with the family.

For NEW YEARS EVE, Ines and I went to our friend Daniel's house to celebrate with some friends, but mostly people we didn't know yet. The evening started pretty dull, but turned out to be great after everyone got to know each other better. We had a great time of worship together later on, which I couldn't really be a singing part of, since I had a sore throat.

The next morning, well actually Ines and I didn't leave there till 6 am, so I guess we could say the same day.. we went back to watch movies with everyone and hung out together.

Now I am coming to the end of my 2 week vacation and will start working at a new school starting Wednesday. I am pretty excited and a little nervous now that it is getting closer.

I can't wait to see who I will be working with. I already know that another girl from church will be there to do a 4 week internship there, starting the same day as me, so that's nice. :-)

I'll try to update sooner the next time.

Love to you all!

Here are some random pics from the last weeks:

Christmas parties, photos and graduation choir...

2008-12-18T23:51:00.004+01:00

Last week I went to two christmas parties from our school. One was by the 1st graders one by the fourth graders. They were a lot of fun and the kids did a great job playing songs and doing some other little plays for their parents.

I brought my play-station and we had the kids play "singstar" ad they had a lot of fun with it and I laughed a lot. They did a great job!

Wednesday I babysat two of my boys again and we took some pictures that turned out pretty good. Sadly some of them turned out blurry cause my battery was dying...

Wednesday evening I attended the BC's graduation. We got to sing three songs with our choir which was so much fun! I was amazed at how fast we were able to learn the songs.

Graduation

I had to say goodbye to some of my friends, which I am used to by know. That doesn't mean that I would not miss them. I just know that I will get to see them again at some point.

(here, there, or in the air..)

If I had stayed in Neverland...

2008-12-14T23:10:00.005+01:00

Friday evening the BC had a theme-party at the café. The topic was "Neverland" so I had actually planed to go in a blue nightgown or dress, as Wendy wears it in the Peter Pan stories. I couldn't find one, so I just put on what I could find, painted some dirt into my face and grabbed a wooden sword. Now I was Wendy who never left Neverland. :-)

We finally made it, for the last semesters we have been trying to get the Neverland people together: Michael, John, Wendy,Peter, and for the looks our friend Rufio. Also notice Peter's shadow in the back, I am fixing him... :-)

I knew it!

Hook, he just can't leave me alone...

sunday, birthday and BK

2008-12-09T21:08:00.005+01:00

On sunday it was Kerstin's birthday, so we went out to BK for lunch.

As you know we like to be crazy every once in a...well ok, all the time... :-)

"You distract them, and I'll get the hot brownies.."

snow, kids, classrooms and friends

2008-12-05T20:35:00.009+01:00

Hi there.

The other day it snowed so much that I got stuck half way to school and so went home for the day. It wasn't to bad, since the school bus didn't make it either and so over half of the kids weren't there anyway. Well, it was nice to have a day off, but I do miss those kids whenever I don't get to see them. So I took my camera to school the next day and we had fun taking pictures with it. Of course everyone wanted their own picture with me. :-) Here are a few of the nicest:

First-graders

Fourth-graders

Ahhh, I love those kids so much. I have to leave them by the end of the year, because I got a now job at a bigger school. It will be a good place to work and I will have way more to do, but I will surly miss the personal contact I was able to have with the kids at the little school. Here we only have 90 students, at the new school it will be 400!

Black Sheep

On thursday I went out to dinner with my friends Alex R., Jason, Patrick and Frank who is Alex's friend from Jersey. Alex invited me for my birthday. It was a lot of fun and I really appreciate this time I can have with my brothers in Christ. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, so there are no pics, but we had a great time and a lot of fun. :-)

Afterward I went to church and hung out with some more friends of mine.

Ines, Matthias, Jonathan and I met Daniel at BK later on ( no, I did not eat again :-p) and guess what...the camera was there too. haha

I just love sharing these moments with you guys and love it when I can put pictures to let you join in the fun! :-)

haha, we were NOT trying to hold hands here..haha, thanks Kerstin for noticing :-) Daniel took the pic, so he's not in it...

oh, there he is! :-)

Big hug to everyone!

girls night, birthday and thanksgiving...

2008-11-30T20:46:00.008+01:00

I haven't been able to update in a while, so let me tell you about a few things I did over the last weeks.

Some weekends ago a few of my girlfriends and I went out to a restaurant for a late dinner.

It's a place called "Cheese" and that's what they serve. :-) The owner had given one of the girls a coupon so she could bring 10 girls and get the food cheaper. We ate a lot, talked a lot.. and unfortunately had to inhale a lot of smoke, since the place is called a smokers club..

Well, as you can see in the pics, we had a lot of fun!

Then I had my..26th... birthday on the 25th. So I invited some of my girlfriends and my parents over to my place and we had cake and just hung out for a while.

It was a great time and I really enjoyed having them. One of the boys I babysit came with his mom and of course he was the center of attention from then on, but I didn't mind. :-)

Friday we had the big Thanksgiving dinner ( or lunch) from the BC. We had lots of good food and a lot of fun hanging out.

good food

good men

some more great ppl

and even more :-)

they are outside taking pictures..I am inside...so is the pie!!!!! haha

Today I watched one of the many kids I take care of. I took her to the movies and we watched a children's movie which was put together from different episodes of a TV show, so I knew most of it, but she didn't so it was a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to the christmas market which isn't as good as it used to be, but she got to ride the carrousel so that was nice for her at least.

Jess, how do we do it ???

2008-11-11T22:34:00.008+01:00

The craziest things always happen to my lovely friend Jess and I, so saturday was a lot of fun!

But let me tell you from the beginning:

I called Jess saturday morning and asked if she wanted to go out, so we made plans to go out for Coffee with another girl from the BC.

When I got to the school the other girl (sorry, I don't remember who it was :-( ) had already gone into town for something else, so Jess and I were trying to think about what we wanted to do.

First we thought about going to Ikea for free coffee, or going into town for one, or doing something totally different. We settled on the going to town and getting coffee thing and went to ask Mike if he wanted to join us. He was going to have a relaxed day and so decided to stay behind. For a joke I told him that we might end up doing something amazing, like finding a medieval-market or something like that. (we had been to one last semester and had an amazing day there, so I knew he would like that) He stayed behind anyway...

Jess and I got into the car and all of a sudan decided that we really wanted to take a road-trip.

So I called my dad and asked if he had any ideas. He told us to go to the zoo in dortmund and that sounded like fun and so we started going in that direction.

Then Jess remembered that she had a coupon for a free Starbucks coffee, and since there is one in Dortmund, we didn't go to the zoo, but there.

We got there and saw a couple of rides on the market-place. It looked like a small fair, not to big, so we went into Starbucks after looking around for a short time.

I LOVE ICED CHAI LATTES!!

So, after we got done with our drinks we wanted to go to H&M to look for deals, but never got there. And then the most funny thing happened...

The first thing we saw were some people sitting on a stand looking at other people SWORD FIGHTING!!! I couldn't believe it, we did happen to be there during the Hanse Markt..which is: A MEDIEVAL-MARKET!!!!

hahaha, we could not stop laughing!!!!

We walked around for a couple of hours and it was so much fun! They had all sorts of animals, and a group playing old music and people baking bread in and old style way, and all sorts of other medieval-things! It was great!

Jess and I just couldn't believe that we had found this, we keep running into fun things like this, whenever we decide to just hang out. :-) I love it!

Here are some pics to share the fun :-) :

Later that evening I got to put my signature on two of the BC guys..don't ask, I though it was funny at the time...haha (they have my name on their wrists)

another pic

2008-10-30T17:52:00.001+01:00

ok, ok, you still can't see how short it really is, I should post a pic from behind some time...

haircut

2008-10-27T22:38:00.004+01:00

well, I decided that it was time to say goodbye to some of my hair today. After having it back in a pony tail for the longest time, I had a bunch cut off today. Here's what it looks like, kinda:

you might not be able to tell how short it got, but I'll post a better pic some time soon.

old friends, kids and sickness

2008-10-21T20:41:00.002+02:00

Yesterday an old friend of mine called and asked if I could do some last minute babysitting for him and his wife. So I went to their house which is about 40 minutes away from mine and watched their 4 kids. I am not sure how old the oldest is, I think maybe 5 or 6, and the youngest and only girl is going to be 1 soon.

They put them to bed when I cam, so I didn't really have that much to do, so I sat down and read a book. At one point their 2 year old boy, who had been sick earlier already woke up and started crying. I realized that he wasn't feeling well and later on he showed me that I was right. :-( poor thing... Neways, I won't go into detail, but after some cleaning and changing clothes, he was back in bed and hopefully feeling a lot better! :-)

His parents came home shortly after that so I went home where I got to chat with Ines for a lil bit, which was great!

project

2008-10-20T16:12:00.003+02:00

a few days ago I posted a pic of my new project, well here it is a few days later...I didn't work on it to much though, so it's not close to being done... :

ok, ok, you can't really see that much of it, but it's on my head...well, you get the idea I hope..HAHA

Psalm 23

2008-10-19T22:45:00.005+02:00

Saturday we had out main children's ministry meeting, where we get together with everyone that works in the children's ministry at church, to talk about our work and to pray together.

We heard about the 23rd Psalm and were told to sit down with a piece of paper and draw or write down what comes up when we think about the psalm.

I thought about how important it is, that when we are in a "dark valley" , that we don't forget that God is still in control, and that he WILL lead os to green pastures.

A lot of times we, or at least that's what I like to do, bathe in our down- times, we think way to much about the dark season we are in and are in danger of loosing the joy that we should have in the Lord!

Well, here is the picture I drew :

The sheep is going through a dry and dark valley, but ahead it sees the shepherd leading it to the green pastures. You might need to klick on the picture to make it bigger, to be able to see the shepherd in the sky...

Today:

I spent today with my "adoptive" family. Even though Ines isn't there.. I MISS YOU!...

I had a great time with my "mom" and "dad" and my "siblings".

We had waffles and a good time talking..and a lot of that!!! :-)

I love those times with them, it is so good to have friends to spend time with and talk about whatever is on your heart.

On my way there I drove through this beautiful forest:

I love my bed...

2008-10-17T20:38:00.002+02:00

Sleep has been my best friends these days. I don't know what's up, but I've been super exhausted all week long.

School started again and I have to get used to getting up early again, but I've never been this exhausted before.

Wednesday I went to bed at 8.30 pm and slept until the next morning, Thursday it was even earlier, 7pm. Yesterday I slept 3 hours from 4 till 7 and today from 4 till 8... yay

neway... tonight I will be playing taxi for a group from the BC. I am taking them to the Hahn airport (2,5 h one way) from where they will be leaving to Ireland for outreach-week.

Pray for all the groups that are going to different places to bless other churches or share the gospel in different cities.

more sun and hanging out...

2008-10-13T23:40:00.003+02:00

soo...there was more sun to be enjoyed today!! yay

School started again today, after a 2 week break. It was fun to see the kids again!

Later on I went over to the BC an hung out with Sabine, Jess and Horst Henning. We all sat outside and read.

I love this fall weather, it's amazing and the colors of the leafs are so pretty!! I should try to get some more pictures of the trees here.

my new project: I hope it will turn out looking a lil bit like a beanie... :-)

Hanging out:

early morning, sad past, waiting fortress, long car rides, great friends...

2008-10-12T01:53:00.010+02:00

After only getting 3 hours of sleap last night, I had to get up early and be at the villa at 7am.

I met up with Mick, Shawn and Cristal and we went on a 3 hour drive to a concentration-camp in Buchenwald.

I wasn't to tired though and couldn't have slept anyways, since I had to tell Mick where to go.

We got to Buchenwald around 10 am and started our own tour with a little gadget that told us things about the different stations along the way. It was a good tour, but of course there was always the sadness in the back of our heads, that humans could do this to another human being.

Around 12 (I think) we got back into the car and went on to get some lunch, which we had at a small lunch-place, where we ate something.

We traveled on to the Wartburg, which is the fortress or castle where Luther had been hiding and translated the New Testament into german. We didn't do the big tour, since we were mostly interested in seeing Luthers room and some other minor things outside of the castle.

We had some coffee there too and had a great time hanging out.

I think it was 4.30 pm when we got back to the car and headed home.

The car ride was a lot of fun and we laughed a lot!

We had to stop on the autobahn after a couple of minutes, because the police had blocked the road, which lasted an hour. We had a lot of fun though as you can see in the pictures.

Mick at one point decided to clean our windows (oh how good it is to have windex with you wherever you go *haha*) and the ppl in the car next to us jokingly asked him to clean theirs too. Of course Mick did not hesitate one second, and did it. We laughed soo much!

We finally got home arround 7.30 pm and had some dinner.

Here are some more pics from the trip:

pretty friends:

Later tonight some guys from the BC decided to have fun with a wrestling-match, which kinda scarred me...but what can ya say...if it's fun..:

Now I'm home..it's 2.30 am...TIME FOR BED!!!!

oh sunny fall!!

2008-10-10T19:31:00.007+02:00

The sun was out today, which was amazing!!!

One thing you can see happening on those days, is how the BC jumps into life. :-)

People start crawling out of their holes and sit outside to soak up the sun. Here are a few pics from today.

Some of the guys decided that it would be fun to go for a.. well I guess you could call it "ride" on the river Sieg:

first they had to blow up the boat though:

(note that Aaron is kneeling on the tube that Harrison is trying to blow up :-D

they tried the boat out on dry land first...I don't know if they ever made it into the water, cause I had to leave... I will find out tomorrow and let you know.

Kersin, movie, friends and black sheep

2008-10-09T22:56:00.003+02:00

I am still off rom work this week and I'm really enjoying my free time. I get to sleep longer which is nice, but I also need to start getting up earlier again to get used to it for next week.

I started to go over to the BC again, which I really missed!

It's been good to see my friends there again and to spend some time with them.

I also went to the Cb a couple of times to read or spend time with ppl there.

Katja taught me to crochet and so I've been doing that for the last two days too. :-)

On tuesday Kerstin and I got a movei which we watched at her place. The movie was called "Made of Honor" and it was cute and fun. :-)

I got to spend more time with Kerstin in general, which was really cool!

Today Alex, Jason, Shawn, Joanna and I went to the "Black Sheep" for dinner. It was soo good, but way to much food, so now I kinda feel sick, even though I didn't finish my plate.

I love spending time with those guys and definitely need to go hang out with them some more!

sundays, retreats, fish and long drives..

2008-10-03T19:01:00.004+02:00

so, it looks like you have to wait longer and longer for my entries..oh well, I'll try to have a more interesting life and send more pictures. :-)

I still haven't found my memory-card, but took one from my parents, so I can at least post some new pics today.

Last week I went to a retreat to help with the children's ministry and it turned out to be a huge blessing to me!!

Friends asked me if I would have time to take care of three little girls during the conference, which was held by a christian organization. The girls were awesome, but I also got to help with the older kids too, which was a great blessing.

But what was the greatest blessing of all to me were the daily prayers for us that worked with the kids. It was so awesome to have older brothers and sisters pray over you. One day I felt very sick and not at all ready for the kids, they prayed for me and it all went away! Isn't God amazing!!!

Another thing that God did during this time, was to take care of my financial problems from last month.

I know that he gave me that job in the school and one big thing was, that he told me he would take care of me financially too. Me, having the little faith we all "love", started panicking as the month came to an end and my bank-account was empty and even below that. So I really needed God to help me.

The last day of the conference me and the other workers had to come up front and got a little thank you from them. They thanked me and then also told me that they had decided to collect some money for me... :-O I had not told them anything about my situation!! ahh GOD is soooo good! The money they handed me was the exact amount I needed to pay off my bills from last month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Praise the LORD!!!

I didn't get to take any pics during the week, but here are some that my friend Rachel took when I came out for sunday service:

whatever it was, we didn't like it....

long walks make me tired

2008-09-23T00:14:00.002+02:00

After work I went over to my parents and spend some time at their house. I do that every day for lunch now, which is kinda cool, cause I get fed. :-)

Arround 5pm I went over to Daniels and we took the dog out for a LOOONG walk. They have a great forrest and the weather was great again. The fresh air was soo good too!!

In the evening I went to David Guziks Bible College Class on "Song of Solomon" which I love. After that Kerstin, Annika Rahel and I went to Burger King for some food. I just came home and am ready for a good night rest! Hurray for beds!!!

Trip, Missions and Concert..

2008-09-22T14:15:00.003+02:00

On saturday Daniel and I went to a small town close to Wetzlar to drop of some car-parts.

It was a nice village with lots of fields and horses and tractors. :-)

We stayed about an hour and then went back to Siegen. It was a 45 minutes drive through some nice areas.

On our way back home we stopped at the Church where the missions day was still going on. There were different tables out which presented the different countries we have missionaries in.

That evening we went to a concert at church which was great. Anja Lehmann, a german singer came and sang for about 2 hours.

Sunday I had children's- ministry for second service and Benny, Mirjana and I went to play mini-golf afterwards.

I went to the 5 pm service with Daniel and then Benny, he and I went to his place to watch a movie. We watched the Born Ultimatum. I had seen it before, but must have fallen asleep, because I couldn't remember the ending. :-)

feeling a lil better with forrest and tea

2008-09-18T20:33:00.002+02:00

I am feeling better today.

After I slept long this morning, me and Daniel went on a long walk in the forrest which was very good. It was great to get out and enjoy some fresh air after being in the house and in bed all day yesterday! It was a great day with sunshine, which was amazing!

Later I went out with Jess T. for a tea, and we got to talk for a while which I really had missed over the break. Love you! :-)

Still no new pictures due to memory-card loss...I am afraid I might have to buy a new one, or "steal" one from my parents. :-)

sick...

2008-09-17T11:29:00.002+02:00

Yup, I am sick. I even didn't go to work this morning, which was more because I didn't want anyone else to get sick, then because I was feeling bad. So I have a full day ahead of me which I will probably spend all by myself or at least in the house wit a warm blanket and tea.

Another sad thing is that I can't find my memory-stick for my camera, so I can't post new pics at the moment. :-( I hope I'll find it soon though!

Leave me some love!

"good" food and a movie...

2008-09-14T23:48:00.003+02:00

So this saturday I planed to invite a couple of girls so we could cook and watch a movie at my parents house, who were gone for the weekend. They all ended up having other plans, so I called Daniel and since he was on the road anyway he just came over.

I made some dinner and then we watched "Shooter" which I liked quite a lot!

Here are some random pics we took, to make you happy. :-)

get out of my kitchen!!

Long time...

2008-09-12T14:40:00.005+02:00

oh wow, it's been a while...

I haven't had the chance to be online for longer these last weeks, so sorry for the delay again!

So let me try to sum up what I have been doing lately.

Work is going really good. I still love my job and I am getting to know the kids a lot better which is so great. I am starting a kids-talk or however you want to call it. It will be a time where they can come and talk to me about their problems at school or at home. I am very thankful that I have the opportunity for that.

On monday I babysat for Tobi and Luci, friends of mine that have a little girl (Talita)

It was our first time alone together, but worked really well. After mom was gone we had a lot of fun and cute moments. :-)

Yesterday was a long day for me. I worked a little later and then had to hurry to be on time to babysit my three boys. It was a sunny day though and so we were able to go outside so they could play in the sandbox. At one point they were digging in the dirt for worms so they could attract birds and then catch them. It was the funniest thing to watch and they were convinced it would work. hihi

on birdwatch

Afterwards I went to real with friends from Bible College, which by the way started last week.

And I finally got to buy new bread to make myself some breakfast for school, I ran out at the beginning of the week and didn't have the time to buy any until then.

Then I went to my friend Daniels house where we watched two movies. One of them was german called "Abgefahren" which I actually liked, and after that we watched Ice Age, which I hadn't seen in a long time. I got home way to late and so was tired all morning today.

But hey, the weekend is finally here and I can sleep in tomorrow!!! Yay!

Ok, this is it for now, but I hope that it won't be as long before I write again!

Freusburg

2008-08-23T13:50:00.003+02:00

Nighttime fun!

Just one thing to say...

2008-08-20T14:46:00.001+02:00

GOD IS AMAZING!

first week

2008-08-19T12:58:00.006+02:00

So, it's been a week since I last wrote. It's been a good week. I love love love my new job!

I've mostly been working with the 1st graders since wednesday and let me tell you, they have a lot of energy!! :-) Haha, they are so funny though. The first few days were challenging, because they still need to get used to everything and are very loud and chaotic. But they slowly getting into it and it is a lot of fun to help them learn and be there for them.

well, but I still have a life after school, and I have been doing a bunch there too.

One thing that I have been enjoying for a longer time now is the pool. I love to go there and just spend hours swimming or just relaxing. I try to go a couple of times in the week.

Sunday we had a good bye party for my friend Ines. She will be going to the states for the next 3 months. We had a lot of fun and entertained the whole restaurant at one point..haha oh the fun you can have WITHOUT alcohol! haha

Clouds

The clouds have been amazing these last few weeks. I took a bunch of pictures of all kinds of them. Different colors, sizes, shapes... and the color of the sky are just breathtaking a lot of times and even almost made me cry at one point. God is amazing!!!

a quick "Hello!"

2008-08-12T13:12:00.002+02:00

hey,
I don't have much time to update right now, but I wanted to let you know that I started working this week. I love it!
I am at a primary school and have a lot of new things to look forward too.
I will be helping with mostly the 4th and 1st grade, but have some insight to the other classes too.
I worked with the 4th graders for two days now and it's a lot of fun and I think I will llearn a lot also.
Tomorrow I will have my first tutoring-class which I am really looking forward too and I will also do some adventure-education elements in PE-class.

The first graders just came in today so I will start working with them some time later this week. I will also get to go into the 2nd grad tomorrow to observe one of the kids there closer, which has some learning disabilities.

It is great to get a routine back into my day again, I just have to get used to getting up early in the morning. :-)

kids

2008-08-07T13:55:00.000+02:00

I love those kids!!!

denmark is beautiful !

2008-08-05T11:38:00.005+02:00

So, I just came back from the retreat in denmark. It was great! The people we got to meet were so sweet and I had a lot of fun. The kids were great too. We were kinda worried at first because we didn't know how many of them would speak english and we also had no idea about their ages.

We had about 15 kids from the ages of 2 up to 13. I took care of the 3 two year olds. And Katha and Sabine watched the others. I had a lot of fun with the little ones. We did all kids of fun things and had a great time! We got a lot of positive feedback from the parents and it was great to be able to keep the kids busy for them so they could enjoy the sessions.

Denmark is super beautiful. I could have taken thousands of pictures. The light there is amazing and they have white fields everywhere that make the scenery look great!

We had good weather most of the time, it only rained two nights, but it was nice again the next morning.

Our drive back was very long. We got stuck in traffic a bunch of times which was so annoying, and it took us 12 hours to get home. We had a lot of fun though and I got to meet up with a friend that I hadn't seen for 5 years. It was so good to see her again and catch up.

Here are some pics for you to enjoy:

full week..

2008-07-28T10:17:00.005+02:00

My parents came back from scotland and so I moved back to my own apartment where I don't have internet yet, so it might be a little longer between my posts from now on.

My week was pretty good.

I went swimming a lot which I really enjoy! It is great fun, especially when I get my friends to go with me. :-)

On friday I also went swimming with the kids I watch and their mom, which is always great, since the kids are so much fun. Josua (the oldest) had the best time going down the water-slide with me, it was hilarious!

We had fries with ketchup for lunch, if you couldn't tell...

Kerstin and I also got to hang out with a friend we hadn't seen in a while, and it was great to catch up.

Yesterday after church Kerstin, Irina, Daniel and I went to my place and cooked lunch and watched a movie. Then we went to the 5 pm service, I had been in the morning, but David Guzik did the teaching and I really liked it, so I enjoyed hearing it again! It was about prayer and really good!

Later I went home but just couldn't get to rest, so I went back to church and sat in the last part of the prayer-meeting we will have every sunday after church now. It was a great time and afterwards Kerstin and I went to BK for a late dinner.

Oh! And my car broke this week, well ok, not the whole car, it's the waterpump for the cooling-system, but will be expensive enough! I took it to the "doctor this morning and hope it will be done soon!

Wednesday Sabine, Katha and I leave for Denmark to help out at the Scandinavian Calvary Conference there, and will be back next sunday. I am excited to see what the Lor will do there and to see some friends again! yay!

Have a great week! Leave me comments!

church, baby and noodles

2008-07-20T23:34:00.003+02:00

Today at church Alex (assistant pastor) talked about the different standpoints that we could have under the cross. Am I one of the scoffers, a executioner or among the mourners...

After church we hung out outside for w a little bit and Nada came with Simeon and I got to hold him for a while.

Later we went to Daniel's house, where w cooked some lunch and then watched "Legends of the Fall" and after that "Raise your voice", they were pretty good.

Daniel's place was fun. He has two parrots, 5 turtles and an aquarium with shrimp. :-)

We cooked dinner afterwards and talked. I think I left there at around 10.30 pm and am pretty tired now.

swimming and friends in a café

2008-07-20T00:21:00.003+02:00

so I went swimming the last three days and loved it! I want to try to go at least once a week but preferably more often then that..we'll see if I have the time for that .

I go to a place 20 minutes away from here, it's fun and I am having a good time. (feel free to join me whenever you get the chance :-) )

Tonight I met some friends (Ines, Daniel, Keith, John) at Café del Sol for dinner. I had a great time talking , hanging out was a lot of fun! We stayed till after 10.30 pm and at first I could have kept going, but then got very tired and went home while the guys stayed a few more minutes to talk about cars. :-)

early morning and fun afternoon

2008-07-15T19:38:00.004+02:00

Today I got up at 5 am to take Tamiko to the airport. She left for england today where she will spend the remaining weeks before the semester starts. I will miss you girl!

The weather was nice today, so it was fun to drive, although the airport is 2 1/2 hours away.

I then went to my aunts house to visit my cousin and her baby girl. The little one was even awake when I came, that was a first. She is so cute and funny. :-)

Then I met up with Sabine and we got some lunch at Aldi and went to eat it at the Bible College, where Chris, Nada, John, and Keith were hanging out.

Sabine and her wrap...

At 2.30 pm I went to babysit my three boys again. Since it was warm outside we spent most of the time in the backyard. Jonathan and Josua went to see their grandpa for a while, so me and Joel hung out and watched ants.

trip with Sabine and pool with Joel and Ines..

2008-07-12T23:03:00.002+02:00

So yesterday Sabine and I were sick of the rain and I was to bored of Siegen, so we went on a 1 1/2 hour trip, which turned to be a ..NO SABINE; NOT 3 HOURS!!...anyway, it turned out to be a 2 1/4 hour trip.

We went shopping at the mall there, which is way bigger then the one in Siegen and the went to the movies and watched "Kong Fu Panda". It was cute and pretty funny.

I went to bed earlier then the other days since I hadn't slept at all the night before.

Then today I went to babysit Joel. Jusua and Jonathan were at their grandmas house. In the afternoon we met Ines at the pool and went swimming. It was great fun, and Joel loved it!

(I am sad that I didn't get any pictures of it)

stolen shoes

2008-07-08T21:30:00.004+02:00

Today this guy stole my shoes...

So I called the police...

haha...I love those kids !!

forest girls

2008-07-07T19:12:00.006+02:00

Today Kerstin, Irina and I went for a walk in one of our nearby forests. The walk turned into a photo shooting, which was super funny! :-)

I thought I would share some of the pics with you, so here they are:

Inina and I

Kerstin

sunday with friends

2008-07-06T21:28:00.003+02:00

After church Tamiko, Ines and I went to Ines' house where we made crêpes.

They were good and were easy to make too. *yummy*

Afterwards we watched "A knights tale" which I hadn't seen in a long time. It was good!

On my way home I caught a nice sun-pic:

A FUN SATURDAY

2008-07-06T02:11:00.000+02:00

This afternoon Tamiko and I went for a nice long walk around a nearby dam. It was a nice day we had a great time being out in nature and hanging out.

Later me and my friend Kerstin went to my friend Janos' house for a BBQ.

We have known each other for a long time and so it is allways a lot of fun when we get together.

They tried to make fire the old fashioned way...

Which amused me a lot!!

To be productive I went and picked some berries... :-)

after Janos got the fire going (using a lighter this time) we made stick bread

and other yummy stuff

I got cold...

haha...dorks
:-)

hahaha, I couldn't handle the heat, so he took care of the stick bread for me! :-)

yes, we were tired...

very tired!!

FUN NIGHT!

Looking back to Egypt...

2008-07-03T20:36:00.000+02:00

So, Ines and I just came back from our vacation in Egypt.

I loved it! I now that doesn't say much, but it is really hard to put everything into words! :-)

But I'll try to tell you a little bit about it.

On sunday (22nd) we took a train to Berlin, where we stayed over night with a girl from the Calvary there. The next day we went over to the church to say hi to our friend Nari. Then we also met Luke (Dean) there, which was pretty cool, and he took us on a little tour through the city.

Later that day we went to the airport and checked in our bags. Since our flight didn't leave till the next morning we got to spend a more or less sleepless night at the airport.

Flying into Egypt was amazing, I even got to take pictures of some pyramids!!

Our hotel was amazing! We had a nice room and the personnel was friendly.

We spend most of the time relaxing at the pool or joining the animation program.

The weather was great. It was very hot, but there was always a nice breeze from the sea.

It felt amazing to really be the guest and enjoy the service. They did everything to make us feel good!

The hotel had it's own reef and we got to snorkel a little bit in it and I took a few under water pictures (not done yet).

The food was also great. We had a big buffet in the morning and evening with a lot of variety.

One day we went into town and got a little tour from a local, which was good. It is strange to see how much the actual life there is so different from the "perfect" life you see in the hotels. He took us to a 400 year old house and we got to go inside and see how the people live there. It was very interesting, but at the same time very humbling.

The most fun thing we did was a tour out to the dessert on monday.

We met with 12 other people and then went on a bus to the safari place that ran the tour.

We all went on quads (two ppl shared one) and then went on a 2 hour ride through the dessert. It was so much fun!!

We went to a bedouin- camp, where we went camel riding, which was a great experience!

After a short tour of the camp we had dinner together and then went to watch the sunset.

The dessert was painted in amazing colors!!! God is amazing!

Then we all sat in a big circle and watched a dance from one of the bedouin guys and all danced together. *so much fun*

We waited for the stars to come out and I have to say, that I have not seen so many stars in the sky as I did that night. It was amazing how far you were able to see and how bright the stars were. We also got to see saturn through a telescope, it looked like someone put a picture up, that's how clear it was.

Then we rode the quads back to the safari place and drove back to the hotel.

The week went by way to fast, but I am happy that we went even if it was only for a short time!

We met nice people and had some great conversations with them!

Our trip back was good. We got to spend most of the time with a couple we had met during the week and so the time went by fast.

We had another night to spend in Berlin before we took a flight to Cologne the next morning where Ines' mom picked us up and took us home.

Here are some more pictures from the week. Enjoy!

Egypt out of the plane

Relaxing at the pool

night view out of our window

towel art

supporting the german soccer team

hotel

in town

Julia , we hung out with her and her boyfriend a lot

watching soccer together

Trip through the dessert

Camel kiss

Sinai

Circus

2008-06-21T21:48:00.000+02:00

I went to the Circus with a little girl I watch. It turned out to be better then expected. It was a really small one, only 5 people do all the acts, but they were good. One guy balanced a wheelbarrow on his chin and like 5 chairs...not at the same time though..hm, that would have been awesome!! :-D

Egypt...

2008-06-18T16:46:00.000+02:00

That Ines and I like to do crazy things is nothing new, and so we played that card again. :-)
We randomly decided to fly to Egypt next week. *haha*
We were planing on going on a short vacation and looking arround for something we happened to look at some pics of this place in Egypt and fell in love with it. :-)
We will be flying out from Berlin, so we will have to get a train there first which should be fun, since it alows us to also spend a day looking at Berlin.
On our way back we will fly from Berlin to Cologne since it is cheaper then the train during the week.
This will be my first vacation in a hotel with a friend, I normaly go to see friends or family and the last time I stayed in a hotel was like 10 or more years ago with my parents.
The hotel looks amazing and the water is christal blue!!! yay
I will put up pics when we're back, but here are some that I took from the travel-webpage.

soccer...

2008-06-17T18:03:00.000+02:00

We watched the germany vs. austria soccer game with the team thats here from Florida at the moment. We put up a big blow up screen behind the villa and made it all the way to halftime, before the lightbulb gave up. So we raced over to the church to finsish watching the game there.
Germany won 1:0!
Afterwards we took our cars and went into Siegen to drive arround with a convoy of cars, everyone honking and yelling... I took a video so you guys can have a look at it. :-)

baby girl, hot sun and wet water..

2008-06-10T23:50:00.000+02:00

I am a new "auntie-cousin-thingy"!!! YAY!! My cousin just had a baby girl the other night and let me tell you, she is soooo cute. She is super tiny and a light weight. (49 cm and 2710 g) Her name is Michelle, which is quite funny, considering that my cousins name is Michaela and her husbands name is Michael... haha.

After I went to see them at the hospital I headed over to Ines' house where we spend some time in the pool and of course talking, since we hadn't seen each other for a week.
The weather was so nice today and I really enjoyed being in the water, i think I haven't been in a pool since...I don't even remember, I think it was last summer.

visiting family in scotland

2008-06-10T23:24:00.000+02:00

I just got back from a week trip to see my family in scotland. I had a great time and really enjoyed catching up with my grandma and the others. I hadn't seen them for a while so it was great to spend some time with them.
We did a bit of everything, shoping, walking, talking, ... and a lot of doing nothing too, which was great and I got to relax. I took the train around a bit and went into the city or out to see my uncle, aunt and cousin. We did quite a bit of family stuff so that wouldn't be interesting fo anyne to read about. :-)
flying in

things to do when your steering wheel goes missing...

Gran and auntie May

YES!

still didn't get over loosing the steering wheel

flying home

sunshine, ice-cream and cologne...

2008-06-01T22:46:00.000+02:00

Today I went to the second service at church and met up with Tamiko and Ines afterwards.
We decided to take a trip to Cologne to go see the dome and eat ice-cream and enjoy the amazing weather! I love sunshine!!!

When we got there we wen't inside the dome, which always makes me sad, since it is so full of skulptures of "saints" and other catholic stuff. :-(
Yet it is an amazing building!!

Later we got our Ice-Cream and had a fun time just hanging out and walking down to the Rhine and talking...

2008-05-31T00:03:00.000+02:00

TRAVELING ON YOUR KNEES

Last night I took a journey
To a land across the seas.
I didn't go by ship or plane
I traveled on my knees.

I saw so many people there
In bondage to their sin,
And Jesus told me I should go,
That there were souls to win.

But I said "Jesus, I can't go
To lands across the seas."
He answered quickly, "Yes, you can
By traveling on your knees."

He said, "You pray, I'll meet the need.
You call, and I will hear.
It's up to you to be concerned
For lost souls far and near."

And so I did; knelt in prayer,
Gave up some hours of ease,
And with the Savior by my side,
I traveled on my knees.

As I prayed on, I saw souls saved
And twisted persons healed,
I saw God's workers strength renewed
While laboring in the field.

I said, "Yes Lord, I'll take the job.
Your heart I want to please.
I'll heed Your call and swiftly go
By traveling on my knees."

By Sandra Goodwin

I.M.Y.S.M!

today: guitar, mom, Döner, movies,...

2008-05-30T01:26:00.000+02:00

I picked my guitar up today!! It sounds good and I had a lot of fun playing it today.
When i went into town to pick it up my mom came with me and we got to hang out for a bit, which was really good. We don't get to do that too often. (sadly)

When I got home I immediately tried my guitar. :-) I didn't get to play to long since I had plans for the evening, but the little bit was fun and I was surprised at the sound.
( bad picture, sorry)

So, my evening plans:

I went to hang out with Anjulie at the villa. We went to get Döner first and then watched two movies. One of them was "Noel", which is good, but the other one is AMAZING! It's called "August Rush" and I loved it! Go watch it if you get the chance!!! I got the music to it right away. :-)

We had a great and fun night, with Ice-Cream, a lot of laughing and some talking. *yay*
It was like 12 am when I got back to my parents house.

Guitar...

2008-05-29T14:30:00.000+02:00

I took my guitar to the "doctor" yesterday.
The bridge broke off a long time ago and it had been living in it's case since then...I know, I'm bad..
Anyway, I kinda got back into playing and so decided I would have it fixed.
The guy just called and told me I could come and get it. I am super excited and can't wait to play it!!

sleep, movies, popcorn, no sleep... 3am...

2008-05-28T11:05:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I slept way to long. Oh, I can't stand it!! Ok, I went to bed pretty late, so calculating the hours...it wasn't that much longer that I slept then normal, but I hate to miss the early hours of the day.
The day went by pretty slow, happens a lot lately...anyway:
At arround 6pm I went into town to pick up movie tickets for me and Ines. Since I had to get the tickets early, but Ines wouldn't be there till shortly before the movie, I sat down in a close cafe and read my bible. It felt soo good. I loved it!

Later Ines and I watched "Love Vegas" which was pretty funny for the most part.

Afterwards I went home with Ines and spend the night. We had the lights out at like 11.30 pm and Ines went to sleep pretty fast. Well, since I had slept long I couldn't go to sleep now...grr, so I was awake...in the dark...until 3 AM!!! *grrr*
In the end I got to have a great conversation with God about some things and that actually made it worth it!

And this morning we got up early, since Ines had to work, so that's great! I am a little tired, but have to get over it, since I am babysitting this afternoon.

parents house

2008-05-26T19:47:00.000+02:00

Today I went over to my parents house and spend a
some time there. I actually planed to only drop something off, but ended up staying quite a while.
Well and since there was nothing to do, I decided to go for a ride which took me almost 2 hours away into a mall. I didn't buy much, just something I could have gotten here too, but at least I was out of the house for a while.

Oh, I also bought a ticket to fly to my grandmas house next week. That should be fun. I hope to spend some time with my cousin, that would be really great.

Now I am back at my pparents house where I will spend the night so I can use the internet and sleep in a normal bed. (I sleep on a couch at my place)

Slow sunday...

2008-05-25T14:02:00.000+02:00

I usually like sundays...but today is just way to slow...we can't decide what to do and the weather keeps changing from hot to cold, so that doesn't help...
I miss you guys!

Phantasialand

2008-05-25T01:31:00.000+02:00

So, it was, well is Ben's birthday today, so we (Ben, Tamiko and I) went on a daytrip to a themepark that is about an hour and a half away from here.
We left arround 9 am and went on our first "ride". :-) (never trust their maps! *haha*)
I must say, the park was definitely worth it's price!!
We went on a ride called "Black Mamba" first, and LOVED it!! We left is still smiling and full of adrenalin. :-) ...sooo good...
More good rides were to follow and we found at least two more rides that mad the whole trip worth the time and money!

Ben was "happy as can be" and he did not fake it either!!!!

Afterwards we went fo dinner at the "Black Sheep" and had a fun time there too.
So the whole day was great and a nice change from the last very slow week I had.

another "Goodbye"...

2008-05-24T23:57:00.000+02:00

Another semester just finished and I am so thankfull that I was able to be a part of it.
I must say, that this semester was on one side the hardest I have had so far.
It was very emotional and the Lord streched me in a lot of areas, which makes it to one of the best semesters I have had also.
It just showed me, that I need to trust HIM so much more with my life.
I always thought I pretty much had it all together, but as we know that is never a good thing to think. ;-) It is amazing, what he uses to form us and to gently bring us where He wants us to be.

This semester he used a lot of people to speak into my life. (the most influential know who they are :-) )
Awesome friends who mean a lot to me! But also students that I might not have been that close with.
Just watching their walk with Jesus encouraged me so much, and little things they did or said ment so much to me a lot of times.

So thank you for an awesome semester everyone!! I love you and will miss you so much! Take care and keep the faith!