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.

Airbus 380-800

On our return trip to Moscow, we had a layover of about 8 hours in Frankfurt and as we had a very early start in Ireland we were all quite tired so we were all falling asleep in McDonalds where we had camped out for the 8 hoours.

As we were in the airport so long we saw a few of Lufthansa's Airbus A380-800 coming and going. This was our first time to see one of these up close.

How's the garden - June

This is how our plants looked when we reurned the end of June. Our friend Julie had done a good job of looking after them when we had been away.

Summer In Ireland

This summer we had three weeks of vacation in Ireland with family. We went shortly after the kids got out of school and of course being Ireland, you can never be too sure of how the weather will be. Daniel asked if I thought it would rain while we were there, to which the answer was almost certantly. Anyway it wasn't too bad, we really had only one bad day when it rained almost all day and it was horizontal rain! We got to do quite a lot while we were there, took the kids swimming a couple of times, to a movie, visiting friends and of course lots of shopping to take advantage of cheaper clothes prices. We stay with my (Ivor) parents and it was nice to be able to relax and spend some nice time with them. my sister and her family live right next door so the kids were able to spend lots of time with their cousins play football, riding bikes and of course the trampoline. My dad had got our old car back on the road, it had been sitting there for two years since we were last home, but it ran great and we managed to put over 1000 miles on it in the three weeks we were home and we never went anywhere that was more then 40 miles away. The last weekend we were there, the whole family came to visit and it was great to see them all, we had a great time together, went out for a meal all together, took family photos and just spent a really nice afternoon sitting around our parents house talking. The three week went all to quick, but it was time to head home and I had only a few days at home before I was off on another trip, but that's another post.

Not to forget our Girls

Both Girls were recognized for their achievements. Karina is second from left and I am sorry we have no photo of Sonja getting her awards.

Daniel goes to High School

Daniels class, 8th grade were recognized as having successfully completed middle school and able to enter high school. Daniel had pretty good achievements for the year, he had "A" average over all and achieved the highest grade in maths.

Timothy finishes 5th Grade

For those of you reading this who are non-American, 5th grade is the last grade in elementary (primary), after which the student goes into middle school, which is 6th - 8th grade. Well Timothy has finished elementary and next year will be in middle school. So in recognition of the fifth grades moving up to middle school they have a 5th grade promotion celebration.

This is Mr Hays the 5th grade teacher acknowledging how Timothy has done during the year, sharing about his character and giving him advice and encouragement for the future. In 5th grade Mr Hays gives all the students nicknames that suite their character, Tmothy's was T3, at home we have always called him TT, this was primarily because of all the Ts in his name, in 5th grade T3 came from him being given the nick name "Tenacious Timothy Tutty"
The 5th Grade Class

Timothy with Mr Hays. We consider ourselves to have been greatly blessed to have had Mr Hays teach our children. Having taught Daniel and Sonja, Timothy is the third of our four children he has now taught. We are so thankful for Mr Hays, not only is he is a wonderful teacher, he has a deep love for the Lord, a strong desire to live for the Lord and as such he not only want to teach the kids but he also want to encourage them to love Jesus and to live for Him. Our kids have really loved having him as a teacher and we are so grateful for his input it their lives. (this in no way takes away from all the other teachers who have had a part in our children's live or how much they enjoy and like all their teachers and how much we appreciate them) We hope that Mr Hay and his wife will still be here when Karina enters 5th Grade!

Our Garden

Our little garden is starting to take over our balcony. Have transplanted the seedlings into bigger pots we have far more plants then we need or can keep, so we are starting to give some to our friends.

Karina arrives home from school one day with two tiny seedlings and what they were we had no idea, so I put them in two pots (the two on either side) and they quickly started to grow and produce big leaves. Shortly afterwards Karina said to her mother, "Once my plants grow you won't need to buy cucumbers anymore"! (Bless her little heart) Yes they are cucumber plants.

How does you garden grow?

Just to up date you on how our garden is going, not sure what we are going to do with all these tomata & pepper plants, if you would like some give me a call.