Paddy's Day in Moscow

Happy Christmas

We wish you all, our family and friends a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

This Christmas we decided to have a real Christmas Tree rather than the artifical one we have been using for the last ten years. So as soon as they were available we headed out to get one, as Russians normally only put up trees for New Years, usually it is closer to New Years before they are avaailable, but over the last few years we have seen them being available before the western Christmas of Dec 25, so we were able to have our tree up a week before Christmas.

First we celebrate Christmas, Faroee's style on the 24th with roast duck (sorry no photo of the duck) and all the ususlly delicious trimmings that go with it, stuffing, sweet roasted potatos, mashed potatoes, veggies and a nice sauce. Then after dinner we will sit and open presents and later have dessert. This day we usually have as a family day by ourselves.

On the 25th in the morning we celabrated the birth of our Saviour with our friends in our church and then later we had some of our friends and co-worker over for christmas dinner and as is becoming our tradition we had a leg of roast lamb, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, veggies and again a nice sauce. And of course mint sauce for the Lamb. After dinner we exchanges some small gifts and then had a time where we sang some christmas corals together before having dessert.

Altogether as a family and with friends we had a wonderful Christmas, but...

Christmas is not just about presents and food, christmas is about Jesus Christ coming to this world as a little baby born in a stable in the town of Bethlehem. He came not just to be admired as a new born baby, he came to change the world and to give us the oppertunity to enjoy fellowship with our God and creater. We celabrate Christmas not just because he came, not just because we get presents or enjoy nice food and time with family and friends, we celebrate Christmas because of the life we have with our havenly Father through that baby that was born and who became our Saviour.

Winter mornings

Dec 22, 9.30am, still dark and snowing.

Cucumbers

The cucumbers have done a little better, even if they did try to take over the kitchen window, we have actually got a few cucumbers off it and are hopefully of somemore. The teacher who gave Karina the plants in the first place said that as far as she knows she thinks we are the first who have actually got cucumbers from these plants.

How's the garden - August

Cherry and plump tomatos, hot and sweet peppers, we are starting to see the fruit of our labour, however as it is getting late in the season I don't hold out too much hope of the tomatos ripening. Conclusion; It's easier and cheaper buy them!

Germany

Early July I was in Germany for Leadership Meetings with some of my colleges. We were in a beautful part of the south and were staying with a partner company who looked after us really well. Unfortunitly I got very sick during the time there, which was very busy and rather than paying attention during the meetings I was falling asleep as I had been unable to sleep at night. On one of the last evenings there, we were going out to find somewhere to eat, we were going to one of the local villages and the guys decided to go by bike, to me this seemed like a bad idea as I had been so sick, but decided to go along. When we arrve in the village we finally found a really nice cafe where we ate. The picture above shows what I had to eat (sorry its a little dim, no flash on the phone!) but it is raw meat served on a hot stone and you cook it yourself to however well you want it done and you also have different sauces to dip it in. It was wonderful. Well after eating it was time to head back to where we were staying, but none of us were to sure of the correct way so after an hour of cycling up and down hills and along little lanes through farmer's fields (it was already getting dark) we finally arrived back at the cafe only to decover the road we need was a short distance the other side of the cafe and within 20 minutes we were back at our accommendation.

How's the garden - July

This is how our plants were looking in July, they were starting to take up a lot of space and Gudrun is starting to complain about loosing a lot of space to hang up laundary on the balcony. We are beginig to see signs of fruit.