Christmas is Here!

With the arrival of almost 1 foot of snow has come much joy and delight. This joy and delight can not be rivaled by the joy and delight experienced upon the arrival of our 50 pound package from our home church Covenant and the purchase of a fresh pine smelling christmas tree! If all goes as planned pictures will be posted of us lugging our package home!!

Merry Christmas to all!
Kristen

All Things Christmas

With the Cookie Countdown has come a festive Christmas spirit. I get the urge to decorate and Garrett... well he gets the urge to build! His big project is a set of shelves for our kitchen. He drew up a nice sketch (Kenton would be proud!) and bought all the wood and borrowed a saw and he has set off! Here are some pictures of our various ways to indulge in the Christmas spirit!

Yum Yum

Since coming to Ukraine I have become an avid visiter to AllRecipes.com. It's a great website for finding a recipe for anything your little heart desires to cook up! Yesterday I found The Cookie Countdown!! They send you a different cookie recipe every day until Christmas, what a great idea!! So I of course signed up and started off our Cookie Countdown yesterday with a yummy but not so pretty Pumpkin Roll and today Pecan Sandies (made with walnuts since pecans are a special imported delicacy saved for those oh so special pecan pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas). One of my favorite parts of the Cookie Countdown is that you can't peak at what is coming tomorrow! I of course would like to know what the rest of the week holds, but I can't find out until the e-mail arrives in my in box!! I was at first concerned with the thought that I would feel tied into making the cookie recipes I was sent. But I have decided that since I do not have all ingredients readily available to me I can take liberties with the Countdown and switch out recipes I want to make with ones like Peanut Butter Cookies. (Just can't bear at this point to use up my precious peanut butter in a cookie batter!)
Any Christmas favorites you think I should try?

At Long Last

This is a day I have dreamed of for much of my teenage and adult life. I have always loved children and all things surrounding them. I can remember when I was 12 or 13 years old just LOVING to hold babies and Mrs. Hampton telling me that she hoped it would be at least 10 years until I was holding one of my own... Well that day is finally on the horizon and I am so excited, to say the least!

So today I made history for myself, I purchased my first official piece of maternity clothing!!! I know kind of ridiculous to be buying clothing I won't be able to wear for another couple of months, but oh well, I just couldn't resist. A beautiful pair of wool H&M Maternity pants with belt loops and pockets in the back, nicely lined... I didn't even try them on. Ok so that would have been way ridiculous! I am still wearing my favorite jeans and fitting nicely into all my normal clothes, I'm only 14 weeks you see. But the deal maker with these pants was they were only $1.35. Now who in their right mind can pass that up? I mean even a non-bargain shopper (unlike myself) could not pass that up!

So, I am the proud owner of a pair of pants that I may come to hate in the next months since they may be the only ones I can wear after a little while! I'm so excited it will be wonderful!

Dreaming of a big tummy,
Kristen

Swine Flu

In a word (or picture)...




Poor Piglet.

New Adventures

A couple of months ago a couple of friends were sitting around my kitchen table and we started talking about "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway. Our impassioned discussion got us to thinking about how fun it would be to start a book club! Many moons later we have finally gotten around to doing just that! Tonight is the first meeting of our very own book club! We will begin with a real duzy, "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri. T.S. Eliot said, "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third." I vaguely remember reading this esteemed poem in High School (thank you Mr. Patton) but I'm looking forward to stimulating discussion (in Russian) to help me delve deeper into the meaning and ideas presented by Dante in his world renown poetry.
Wish us luck!!

p.s. any suggestions for other good books to read and discuss?

Kristen

Reunion and new Bibles

Over the weekend we had a reunion for one of our Summer Camps. It was fun to get together again and we gave everyone a Bible. Please pray for these students that the Lord would use his word in their life and that they could discover him through reading their new Bibles this fall.