The shortest month

And it went by so fast! 

We stayed close to home this weekend. We hadn't really done much exploring in Kaiserslautern and since the sun was out today we decided to check it out! It's not the most beautiful downtown area, but it has some great shops and a beautiful church, which was a completely surprise to me! 

Joshua and I both got new shoes (mine are actually bright yellow rain boots!) and Joshua got a new fur hat as well. We had cheese pretzels (yummmm) and brought home a beautiful bouquet of flowers. The flower arrangements here are just so gorgeous. And so inexpensive compared to the US. I may have to vow to keep fresh flowers in the house always...

Joshua and I took a nice long walk the other day....and he did a little adventuring.

I also have been doing a lot of sewing lately. I made a few things for this little peanut....

and some things for other babies I know. 

Here are a couple of my favorites.

A little snuggly taggie blanket

I love this little elephant. His ears have crackly stuff inside (I used parts of a cellophane spinach bag!) and I put bells inside a little capture before I stuffed him so he jingles. And he has a ribbon tail for little baby hands to grab.

We had a baby shower at church for a sweet mama who's due in three weeks..

And his morning, the Soldier and I did some Black Friday shopping, Germany-style! It involved getting up at o'dark thirty (that's a technical term) and waiting in the cold for 2+ hours (for him. For me, more like half an hour in the cold, 90 minutes in the warm car) and sweet-talking people and hustling...but he did it! I am now the proud owner of this beauty. It has all kinds of stitches, a special system for slippery and heavy fabrics and quilting, many stitches, including embroidery stitches, and it's dual voltage! It's a 600-700€ machine that he snagged for me for $20!!! Whoop whoop!!! 

And now March. I wonder what wonders it will hold!

Castles, a cat, and candy. Lots of candy.

We finished up the four-day weekend with a trip to some nearby castle ruins. Burg Falkenstein is a short drive from our house and although the day was cold and dreary, we had a fun time exploring!

After looking around the castle a bit, we found an open restaurant-quite a feat since it was Rose Monday and in this Catholic-holiday loving country, most restaurants and bakeries were closed (a double whammy since many are closed on Mondays anyway). It was warm in the restaurant and we were seated right next to the radiator. We were not the first ones to scope out that cozy spot, though. Felix the cat had been enjoying an extended stay on top of the radiators for apparently quite some time. He didn't mind that we stepped inside his personal space...

I ordered the special for the restaurant, as I like to do. Since I eat pretty much anything (sometimes to my detriment) I like to taste the specialties of each chef. This plate had a generous amount of sauerkraut surrounded by three different meats. A typical bratwurst, a spam-like pressed meat slice that, interestingly, had little cubes of potatoes in it, and a very large liver dumpling with brown gravy. I will admit to not being able to finish the liver....there are limits.

On the way back from Falkenstein we spotted these beauties out with the trash! Score! They are now happily residing on my front steps..

I got to FaceTime with this guy this week. He had a lot of interesting things to tell me....

And Thursday Joshua and I took a tour of the Wawi chocolate factory in Pirmasens. It was a pretty short tour, but interesting, and the staff was very personable and friendly. The actual chocolate pouring machine and conveyor belt were not running the day we were there, but we got to see them making some of the molds by hand and watched the chocolate artists "paint" the insides of the molds with contrasting colors of chocolates to give the bunnies, roosters, ducks, etc. their details.

We had a fun time shopping in the adjacent shop and sampled a few (ahem) freebies. 

My Valentines...

We continued our 29-year old tradition (! Wow!! We better do something extra special next year-maybe a stuffed crust!) of making heart shaped pizzas together on a day we spend showing one another how much we love each other. I hope it's not the only day they know I love them, but I do love a special day set aside to do just that...

I got to spend the day enjoying the tulips my sweetheart got me on Friday...

We had a yummy breakfast together before heading out to a couple flea markets. It's still a little too cold out for any really great markets but I still found an antique French cheese board, which is now proudly residing in my kitchen. The guys were good sports and went along, but didn't find anything they couldn't resist. The rest of the afternoon was spent baking, chopping wood, reading, and chit chatting. A nice relaxing day..

I made some "love pies"-little personal pies filled with either Nutella or sour cherry preserves. Yum.

Then it was dinner time. My assistant and I had prepped the crusts a couple hours before so we were ready to shape and assemble the pizzas.

And alf an hour later, dinner was ready. 

We had pizza, salad, chocolate-covered strawberries, and sparkling cider in fancy glasses. All the best for my loves...

We played some games afterwards-there was a prize involved, so the competition was serious. 

Those two guys make my heart pitter-patter.

The games ended in a tie! And the tie breaker ended in a tie. So they shared the prize. :) 

1 Corinthians 13:13-So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The sun came out...

And when it did, we got outside! 

Friday was a holiday and we took a little trip to the city of Speyer, about an hour away. We are studying medieval history, moving into the Renaissance and the Reformation. There is so much to see here in person-there's no way we can just let all our learning be from books! 

Speyer was an important city during the Reformation, but even before that it was important religiously. It was a Roman camp as early as 10 B.C. and later it had a large Jewish population (wiped out by the Plague and again during the Holocaust). 

The Speyer Cathedral was consecrated in 1061 and is a sister-church to the cathedrals in Mainz and Worms, built in the Romanesque architecture. 8 German kings and holy Roman emperors and several wives and children and entombed there. It was quite a sight.

I didn't find it as pretty as the cathedral in Mainz, but it was larger-and the tombs underneath were very cool. 

We headed back out to the sunshine 

and wandered over to the Dreifaltigkeitakirche (Holy Trinity Church) a block away. It was much smaller, but much more beautiful. We had a lovely, albeit somewhat halting, conversation with the caretaker, who spoke very little English, but obviously loves that church and loves telling people about it.

The church is worried about vandalism (the interior is almost all wood) and thus is only open for visitors limited hours, so we felt thankful to be there at the right time! It was built around 1700. The ceiling is beautiful and the balconies are painted with scenes from the Bible-New Testament on the top balcony and Old Testament on the bottom, with the Scripture references added. This was because much of the congregation did not read at the time so the preacher could point to the paintings while he preached. 

We then wandered down the Platz til we came to the last remaining gate to the city. In the 13th century the entire city was walled in, but now the last of the 68 gates sits alone in the middle of town. 

Speyer used to have it's very own measurement standard-the "Calibration shoe of Speyer." We plan to go back later when we can go inside the gate and check that shoe out! 

We ended the afternoon at a Bäckerei as all good outings end

and headed back to the car by way of the "spider park."

Abide...

I feel like I have been looking for a while. Looking for something to do. Looking for somewhere to go. Looking for purpose. Looking for myself, really. Oh, I know I have purpose, and there are certainly enough things to do around here-both mundane and thrilling. It's just that I am in this new stage of life and I don't know quite what to do with it.

I chose a verse from John 15 for my scripture focus of the year. The keyword for me is "abide." I feel the need for a calmness in my spirit, a settling in to where I am now. l need to ABIDE. To BE where I am, both physically and in life-stage, and feel content there. That verse (vs 4) says, "Abide in me, and I in you...."
Christ promises to abide in me when I choose to abide in Him. Imagine that. Christ will take up residence in me, His Spirit will live within my heart, if I make the choice to live my life in Him. And that doesn't just mean He'll stop by every once in a while. He will ABIDE in me. He won't just set up a tent and live out of one little room on the main floor. He'll move in, inhabiting the deepest regions of my soul, from the cellar to the top of the rafters. He wants me to remain in Him; He has rolled out the welcome mat for me.
And when I am trying to find out who I am now and where I'm supposed to be, I know where I belong.

And on the "it's a new year" theme (even though it's February already!), and in my search for something to take up the time of physically raising a passel of kids, I have decided to get back to some of my old loves.
Namely, reading and sewing. And having a routine. As much I hate to admit it, I need a routine....but that's for another post.

I finally got my sewing room mostly organized this week and spent a glorious afternoon sewing away and watching movies. Took a break for some carrot cake and a cup of tea and because the house is clean and laundry is caught up, I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it! 


I posted a question on Facebook recently, asking people to chime in with their favorite books. I got some great ideas and I have a fantastic list going on! I ordered a few, checked out a used book store we found out about here, and am looking forward to hitting the library this week. I'm currently reading these books:

and will update once I start on a new stack.
I've also enjoyed looking back over my Goodreads account at books I read several years ago and had forgotten about. I am committed to getting back to logging the books I read and reviewing as many as I can. What a treat to go back and read them later!
Do you have a favorite book or two you'd like to tell me about?

An update on our life here--it's COLD. Very cold. We haven't done too much because of it.
We had a fantastic missions conference at church, Joshua is working hard on his lines for the play he is in, the Soldier and I are enjoying the Faith Bible Institute class we are taking on Monday nights, and the internet has been working well enough for us to catch some Carolina basketball games. What more can you ask for? :)

Here are some recent photos--

walks in the cold always end at the Backerei, which make the walks utterly useless for exercise, but much more enticing to go on....

Yes, this actually happened.

and the cutest baby turned one month old. He posed with his daddy's Bobo, melting my heart instantly.

Now he's six weeks old and contemplating the complexities of life....