Changes

In these last days God is requiring much of us that His Word could be shared with all. For this reason He spoke to us as a family that we are to move to Europe! The process that has brought us to the place we are at now has been a huge change for all of us, yet we are excited because we know that God is leading us and taking care of us.

I have always thought that it would be great if we moved to a foreign land to do missionary work, but surprisingly, when I was given the opportunity I wasn't so sure that I wanted to. After all, it would mean leaving all that I had ever known- the places where we lived, worked and grown and the people that we love so well. The idea became real to me and when I grasped what it would mean, I shrank from it. I spent time praying, asking the Lord for confirmation that this was His will for me. He told me quite clearly that it was, and I accepted it, but not- I admit- with the most joyful attitude! I dutifully cleaned out my room, got rid of 1/3 of my clothing, packed my entire bookshelf contents into 2 boxes and helped pack up everything else. Our house went on the market and was sold in 1 week. Clearly God was opening doors for us because homes comparable to ours were not selling well in our neighborhood.
We now had 30 days to completely leave the house. Family members helped out in packing everything. It's funny, but you never know how much you have until you start cleaning and clearing out. And times that by 10 people and you have quite a bit!
My siblings thought it all a great adventure as some things went into storage and other things left to find a new home. Our piano went, very out of tune, but very much used and loved. (I do have a keyboard, though and it's a great consolation :)
Those 30 days just flew by- late nights, boxes everywhere, busyness and excitement. Even I was excited sometimes. Then, that last week it hit me that I was leaving my home. I stood there in the near empty living room and I could have wept. I let sadness come over me. I knew that I should trust in God, that He would have something better in store for me, but I wouldn't let go of my self pity and sorrow.
My mom told me that it was hard for her too, but she also said "You, know, Hanna, it's okay for you to feel sad. But you cannot be so overcome by it that you can't or won't see the things God has in store for you. You miss out on the joy and peace that God gives in the midst of change."
I knew that it was true, and tried to overcome my grief, but I couldn't do it by myself. As we left our home I cried to God, "Oh Lord, you see how my heart's breaking. I feel it, Lord. It's painful. I'm leaving everything I know."
And clearly, sweetly, I heard Him say, "My precious daughter. Give Me your heart so I can fix it and fill it with Me. Don't you trust me to take care of you and know what is best for you?"

I broke, and tears came down hot my cheeks. God touched me. Now that I have my eyes focused on Him, I can see more clearly. I can see past my situation, my feelings and even what I am leaving. I can look ahead and catch a tiny glimpse of what He has in store for us as a family. I don't know the extent of it, but I know that it is something wonderful. It's the beginning of something amazing. I can't describe to you the peace, joy and expectancy overflowing in my heart when I look at our move across the Atlantic Ocean into a completely new country.

Yes, we will miss our family and friends here most dearly. And yes, I do and will miss my old home. And yes, change is hard. But it is much easier when your heart is in the right place and you are allowing God to fill it.
 This is the most exciting, marvelous time of my life.  

Sometime...

You might be asked to put a bridal bouquet together.

I agreed to do it because I have always liked putting flowers together - and how hard could it possibly be?

A large mound of assorted flowers reposed on my bed that evening.


But some of the flowers were dirty and needed to be washed. Then I thought it would be nice to bleach some of them.


Then they had to dry.


The bride wanted white and gold flowers. I had the white flowers but needed to paint some other flowers gold.


Painting them by hand wasn't hard at all, just time consuming. The flowers had to be pulled apart, each layer painted, and after they were dried, put back together.


They painted easily enough, but the color was wrong - more of an off-brown than true gold. A spray bottle of gold paint was gotten hold of and it did the trick, covering both flowers and fingers until I had the sense to put a glove on.


Then, I suggest you get a creative aunt to come and help you, since you may have now realized that you don't know how in the world you're going to do this. Pack up all of your stuff - not leaving anything behind. This will prevent you from having to send family members back for some items.

Make a mess, of course, as you try to create a lovely bouquet for a bride halfway around the world.


Find paintbrushes, hot glue gold beads onto flowers, eat some carrots for lunch, stick pearls onto floral stems and rip fake foliage from flowers while your extremely creative aunt works on the bouquet. She will have many good ideas - like creating a long bouquet to be carried over the arm. This will make it easier to be packed in a suitcase.


After a while you might have come up with a pretty bouquet, like we did... although, your bouquet might not be going to a bride in Sierra Leone.

Ours is.


In Sierra Leone things are not readily available and the bride, Tina, asked my grandparents, who travel on mission trips regularly, if they could bring some flowers for her wedding. White and gold flowers.

Isn't it interesting the way things work sometimes? How incredible to be a part of preparing for a wedding in Africa - never having met the couple!

Yet, I can do things like this for unknown persons because of the love of Jesus that connects the body of Christ, no matter how many miles separate them.

It's 7 o'clock...

and the cake is made,



the flowers are in their vases,



the table is most carefully set,



and our prettiest outfits are put on.



A new baby in the house calls for celebration, don't you think?



Little Ellie has been most warmly welcomed into our family- we are all vying for chances to hold, hug, kiss, dress and pet her. She'll never lack for love or attention!

Princess Viv

"Now Sam, you have to bow to me and call me "Princess Viv", okay?"
"Nooo... I want to play by my self!"
"Sam! Don't put grass on my head! Saaaaam! you're ruining my pictures!"
"I just want to play!!"
- at which point Sam grabs the sash of her dress and tugs with all his might, undoing the bow. At which point Viv starts yelling. At which point Big Sister puts down her camera and steps in to rescue them from each other-
I don't think I will be taking pictures with them any time soon!

A Day at the Park

Want to know a fabulous exercise? Running up and down eight flights of steep steps- three times! Whew. That was definitely the highlight of my day. :)



When you finally get to the top of the Tower, I think you are amply rewarded by the panoramic views form all sides.






One last stop: the memorial garden at the base of the Tower. How nice it is to sit and relax and catch your breath after all those stairs!

*Sigh*

After hugging and kissing six little peoples goodbye, the girl climbed out of the van only to hug one more person. Her mom whispered into her ear, "I love you and I'm so proud of you, sweetheart," which only brought tears into her eyes. Her heart felt as heavy as lead at the thought of not being able to go with them. *Sigh*. The car started without a hitch and amid many loud goodbyes (a.k.a. yells thrown out of car windows by little peoples), and some horn blows the car pulled away from the curb and rode smoothly down the street. It turned at the intersection and was lost among the morning traffic. She turned to go inside the quiet, still house with a lump the size of a baseball in her throat.

That girl is me. This incident happened today.

Today is the first day of camp- I've had so much fun every year so far and I really wanted to go this year. Really wanted to go. But I have a job. And with most jobs there comes a certain level of responsibility. There was no one to take my place so I decided quite on my own that I was going to stay home this year, even though it meant a huge disappointment for me. You have to grow up some time, right?
My boss was overjoyed though, and there's a small consolation in that, I suppose.
Plus, I only have myself to grumble at since I made the choice.
Double plus, all my siblings are gone so I have one whole week with just me and my daddy. Complete silence will reign in our home.

Although, *groan* my mom made me promise we'd eat almost all food in the fridge. (You'd have to see our fridge to understand ;)

Nine!

Happy birthday Sophie! We all hope you have a wonderful day on you're birthday- nine years old! We all love you so very much, sweet girl!
-Hanna and all of you're siblings

Ramblings of a 13 year old

I am finally taking the time to post, lest you think this blog has been abandoned. I'm really sorry we haven't been blogging lately and I know that you've probably heard this before but, we are literally swamped! School takes up a fairly big chunk of my day, and afterwards there's always something to be done: laundry, cooking, cleaning and school corrections. Plus, our dad finished the master bedroom in our house, and then, much to the delight of my siblings and I, he started working on our 2 bedrooms upstairs. My dad decided to start on the boys bedroom first so they had to move into my bedroom, which included them taking all of their numerous belongings into my room (a.k.a. two hefty dressers, two boxes a piece of items that were too precious to throw out, two twin mattresses, and all of their extra paraphenalia.).
It was actually okay and very livable, but I can tell you it was a relief when they moved down into the living room for a while. Then dad thought he might as well do both of our bedrooms at the same time, so out we went into the living room, dressers, beds and all. Now the boys had to move down to the basement and we took over the living room, which is where we are at this moment. Dad has almost finished mudding the walls so we will soon be able to prime and then paint the walls which means that soon we will be able to move back upstairs! Hooray! - because the living room does all very well to sleep in, but it is rather crowded and when you have 3 little siblings who tend to be very destructive, and your "bedroom" is the first thing people see when they walk into your house, um, well, let's just say it makes for an interesting life!
Well, I think I'm going to head to bed now, seeing as there is school tomorrow. I am earnestly going to try to post a little more often, but I'm not going to make any promises! Until the next post (whenever that is!).

Camp!

We had a totally awesome time at camp! My mom was able to go this year and she brought Sam with. The theme was Pilgrims Progress- which I think is a good theme. Plus, a lot of my friends were there, and it was great to be with them and to talk with them. We had great meetings, fun activities such as water balloon throwing, races, volleyball, kickball, bean-bags (which I'm horrible at :), charades, a bonfire, talking, staying up late in our cabins (and I mean late!), we had wonderful food- did I mention dilly bars? Group pictures, Camp shirts, God's word, life lessons, I could go on and on about all of the things we did at Camp, there's so many!
Something that really blessed me- when we came to the end of the Wall of Salvation, there was a cross and, like Christian, we knelt in front of it and had a quiet moment with the Lord. It was at this point that we were freed from our burdens. It was great experience and when I knelt down and prayed a wonderful feeling crept in, like I had just done the best thing I've ever done. Anyway, this picture is of Viv, kneeling in front of the cross. (special thanks goes to Mrs. W for this picture :)

Overall Camp was great, I learned a lot, had fun, and was blessed. Hopefully more posts will start to come... we're swamped right now! Maybe as school starts back up again I'll have more time to post.

Pecan Torte

My Grandma's birthday was this past Saturday and I made this yummy Pecan Torte- although instead of corn syrup I substituted maple syrup to make it a Pecan Maple Torte. Everyone liked it and grandma said it was 'one of the best cakes she had ever had'. This is a picture of the cake below. Enjoy! Go HERE for the recipe.

Lego Land

Si and I have been at Grandpa and Grandma's this week. While we've been there we started building the Lego sets that used to belong to our uncles. We built a lot of them. It was a lot of fun. These are the Robin Hood, Knights and Pirate series. It took us 3 days to build them. My favorite so far is the Viking Ship. We still have more to build.

Lego Land Continues

When we first started building the Lego sets, we had Lego pieces all over the family room floor.

We enjoyed building the Legos so much that I think it is even more fun to build them than to play with them (although that is a lot of fun, too!).

Spring Is In The Air

Lately our household has been fairly busy with a lot of things. School ALWAYS keeps us busy, piano class and practice for us four oldest, and this weekend our grandma who lives out of town is staying with us. In fact, two of our uncles are here and we are going to have a ham dinner together.

Another thing that has been going on has been some kind of flu bug or something that has been hitting a lot of people. First Daddy got hit and then it made the rounds with most of us kids. It seems like it has taken quite a while for us to get over it but we are thankful that we have!

Spring is almost here, our weather has been warming up, for which we are all grateful! Our Magnolia tree has started to bloom (we'll post pictures of that when they open up - they are SO pretty!) and robins have been circulating through our area. For me, when I see robins, that's a sure sign that spring is coming soon. I think I can speak for my siblings when I say that we are all glad that spring is finally here!

Sculpey Babies

This week we are on winter break and have been doing different projects that we don't normally do (such as ironing and mending - my mom's two biggest goals :). But today all of us kids (save Sam) made little baby animals out of clay. I made the yellow duck, Si created the butterfly, Chris made the frog, and Soph shaped the bear. I helped Lil make a white kitten and Viv was trying to make a girl out of the clay but she ended up with a big lump of red clay with two black balls of clay stuck on top! So, mommy came to Viv's rescue and transformed the three lumps of clay into a face of a girl. Viv was happy about that and couldn't wait until the clay babies had baked enough for her to hold her little girl. This was such a fun project to work on and we all enjoyed it.