Fun Times At Home

We finished our time home this week, a whole month has gone by and now that it's over it seems like it went fast. That always seems to be the case with vacations, but at least this time while we were in it we didn't feel rushed or overwhelmed, we enjoyed it very much. We got to see most of our family and friends, sometimes having two or three different get-togethers in a day. Our last week we spent lots of time with our friends who we hung out the most with at home, the Jasperse and beyond clan.

I went ice fishing with Scott, Jonah, and Kevin, it was one of the colder days of our time at home and we weren't terribly successful at catching anything. It was at least fun to hang out despite our freezing toes, fingers, and noses.

We celebrated our last Christmas of the season and Precious enjoyed getting her Sesame Street song book.

Sam and Lexi were excited about their two dollar bills from grandma and grandpa.

Sam and I continue to be best friends, he likes to wrestle and play the racing game on the computer.

Lexi calls Rebecca "my Becka" and still loves to run into her arms.

We had a big brunch before us guys went fishing and the girls played games.

Jonah shows off his new toy.

Jess and Precious show off their new aprons.

Kayleen and her brother Kevin showing their new gifts.

Christine and Scott A try to look normal to make up for Scott J acting like himself.

We had so much fun seeing our friends and playing with our kids, we'll miss them but thankfully there's skype to help us not miss out on everything that's going on.

I couldn't resist putting this picture up of Lexi in her new princess outfit.

Thank you everyone for helping us have such a great time home. We love you all and we will look forward to seeing you again when we come back on our next one year visit this fall.

More Christmas At Home

We had our third Christmas celebration with Mark's mom. We spent the weekend at her place and played games, watched movies and relaxed.

Mom E and Herb

Sandi and Jay

Us

Kevin

We also shared about our mission in Romania at church and asked people to join us there this summer. We had more interest than we expected and some people are already filling out applications with H2H! Praise God!

We also spent a few days in Canada visiting Oma (Grandma) who is 102 years old! Her mind is very sharp and we enjoyed visiting with her, although she currently has bronchitis. We are very thankful to get to visit with her again and share what we do in Romania with her.

Oma looking at our pictures

Us with Oma

My mom, Oma and Me

We have been enjoying our time home with friends and family. But we also have been thinking about the kids we love so much in Romania, we can't wait to see them again!

Christmas At Home

It's good to be home to spend time with our family and friends. God provided for us to make it home in time for Christmas even with flying through the messy situation at Heathrow Airport in London. We went to church on Christmas eve, Christmas day, and Sunday, and enjoyed each unique service.

Our first Christmas celebration was with Rebecca's family.

The second Christmas celebration was with Mark's family.

We still have a couple more Christmas celebrations coming up, since we've done only one each weekend so far. Spending a whole weekend with each part of our family has given us lots of time to spend together. It has been very fun and it is so great to spend time in person.

Our weekdays have been spent visiting friends, most days we see someone for lunch and someone else for dinner. This has kept us really busy but it's great fun seeing everyone again. We are so thankful that we have a longer time at home so we can see so many of our friends.

Here we are with our friend Amanda who has been to Romania twice already. You can see Grand Rapids far off in the background.

We've been able to see our favorite little kids quite a bit too which is a big blessing. They are growing fast but thanks to Skype they still remember us very well. We love playing with them!

We've been able to make it to many great restaurants and are thankful for so many of our friends' generosity. Our number one requirement was to go to San Chez Tapas Bistro, our favorite restaurant. Tapas are small Spanish dishes that are shared by everyone at the table. This allows you to taste many different foods that are all extraordinary!

Two of our favorite foods at San Chez: Blue Cheese Fritters and Potato Empanadas.

We also have eaten Thai, Chineese, Turkish, Mexican, and American food. We are thankful for the variety of food here, something we don't have much of in Romania.

We have also been very blessed by a new partnership between us and Caledonia CRC. God has been providing for us since we decided to go to Romania and it is evident that He still wants us there. He has been very faithful in providing all that we need and this added partnership provides for our longer term needs. We are so thankful and want to ask that you join us in praising God for his unfailing faithfulness. Also we want to say thanks to you for all your support and prayers! We are reminded of what a wonderful support net we have here, and we know we couldn't minister in a foreign country without that.