Gingerbread House

We thought you would like to see our Ginger Bread House from this Christmas!

Wigilia

The Polish Christmas Eve dinner consists of 12 meatless (not including fish) courses. Our landlord and his wife brought us this sampling of their evening meal. It included an "oplatek" (pronounced: Opwatek) which is a wafer of very thin bread like material, similar to Lord's Supper wafers but thinner. Polish family members take turns breaking off pieces of each other's oplatek and giving each other wishes for the next year. You will notice, the wafer they brought us has been broken a symbol that they have given us good wishes for Christmas and the next year.

Feliz Navidad

No, it's not Polish. The girls are studying Christmas Around the World this week and so they made Farolitos on the day that they studied Christmas in Mexico. It was a nice reminder of New Mexico for Sean, he grew up there! Wesołych Świąt... now that's Merry Christmas in Polish!

The First Christmas Box

Here are the girls opening a box from Greenlakes Baptist Church in VA. It was a real blessing and the girls has a blast! Thank you!

All I want for Christmas...

Becca lost a top fron tooth this week and the other is loose! She may loose it by Christmas, but I she will be toothless for awhile!

Raising the Tree in Old Town

I just happened to be in Old Town today and witnessed this exciting event! Christmas is almost here in Poland. Soon this old tree will be covered in all kinds of decorations made by the children of Olsztyn. We'll post more pictures later! Enjoy.

Thanksgiving Day 2006

We hosted three other missionary famlies at our home for Thanksgiving Day. This is a picture of our 37 pound turkey. Yes, 37 pounds... the biggest turkey any of us had ever seen. It's not that common to roast a whole turkey so we had to special order it. The ranges you can order in are 9 kilos and smaller or 13 kilos and larger. We didn't think 9 would be enough so we ordered a 13 kilo bird. When we went to pick it up, they had a 17 kilo bird for us which is 37 pounds! It barely fit in the oven and it took two of us to lift it out! We will be eating turkey until Christmas!

Show Time!

Here are Caroline and the Great Mario. We don't know where the names came from but Abby wrote the script! This is the Amazing Star Magic Show. It was very entertaining to say the least!

Feeling better!

The girls are all feeling better. We have had a week of ballet and magic shows in our house. Here they are dancing for the camera.

Kids program at SC Retreat

Here's our kids doing a musical program at the SC Retreat a week ago. It was a Lifeway musical based on NASCAR. Lydia was really excited!

And then it snowed!

We put a picture here on the 2nd and then we were in Warsaw for several days. When we returned, it looked like this! It has snowed about a foot in the last few days. It has compacted down and melted a bit so it looks like 8 inches now. Still, it is a great deal of snow for so early in the year. It didn't snow like this until January last year.

November 2nd, SNOW!

This is behind our home, the first snow of the year.

Why did the cows cross the river?

Poland Returns Cows That Swam From Belarus
WARSAW, Poland, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Poland transported 240 cows back to Belarus Thursday when vets established the animals were in good health after swimming across the Bug River. On Sunday at Janow Podlaski, in eastern Poland, border guards tried to herd the cows back across the river to Belarus but after their efforts failed they placed them in quarantine, Radio Polonia reported.

Radomir Banko, a Polish vet said the cows, all 14 to 18 months old, were "very good swimmers" and all in good health.

Banko said he believed the cows were attracted to cross the Bug by the sounds of cattle grazing on the Polish side of the river.

Fishing Boat

Here is one of the fishing boats that the fishermen use on the Baltic Sea. The letter/number designation on the front of the boat show what fishing community the boat comes from. This one comes from Piaski and is number 44. They don't have 44 boats however, only about 10 or so. I wonder what happened to the other numbers that are missing?

Mending their nets

Fishermen around the world still mend their nets. These on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Piaski are no different. They work during the afternoon mending and untangling their nets. They put them into these blue barrels and load them into the boats so they are ready for the next day of fishing.

Wild Pigs!

We were driving back from dinner to where we were staying in Krynica Morska and we found these wild pigs having a feast in the grass. They totally destroyed this park and flower bed! They were huge; the largest easily twice as big as Rebecca!

Baltic Sea Weekend

We had the opportunity to go to the seaside this weekend. It was very nice; cold at night but the days were comfortable with a jacket. This is a pretty picutre of the sun set on Saturday night.

Special Delivery

We received a box of books from a church in Arkansas today and can you see the look on Abby's face? She was so excited!

The girls need your help!

We are conducting an experiment for our science class. These 4 stalks of celery are sitting in 4 glasses of colored water. The girls would like to hear your hypothesis about what will happen to the stalks and how quickly. Please let us know, the girls are waiting.

Tacos? In Poland?

We were in a store the other day and they had these boxes of taco shells for about $1 each. I was amazed. Usually if we can find them, taco shells cost a small fortune. So we did what we have been conditioned to do after living here for nearly 4 years. We bought them all. You might think that is strange, but things are not regularly restocked and sometimes not at all. So when we see something that we like or want, we buy it because we may never see it again.

Friends Return for a Visit!

These are friends of ours here in Olsztyn. They have been living in Scotland for the last year and returned for a short visit. We were so glad to see them. We hope that someday they will return to Poland to stay. We were reading on the internet the other day that 50% of Poles between the ages of 18 to 24 plan to leave the country for work in the next two years. Pray for the economic situation here, that Poles will be able to stay here and work instead of having to leave the country.

Sugar Anyone?

A new hypermarket (grocery store) opened last week in Olsztyn. It is a French outfit called CarreFour. I don't know why, but it is very popular to offer sugar at a low price as an enticement for new shoppers. We went to check out the store and came out with our very own 10 pack of sugar. Yes, 10, 1 kilo packs of sugar. Every single cart in the store had at least one pack of sugar and so we just felt like we had to join in. We were very proud of our sugar and brought it home to display as a badge of honor. Our Wednesday night Bible study group saw it and they were proud of our shopping prowess as well.

Beautiful Fall Day

We spent Saturday outside visiting some nearby cities and having a picnic on a lake in the park. Here is a picture of the girls, aren't they getting so big?

New Nephew

Lydia's younger brother's fourth son was born this week. Here he is with the rest of his brothers.

Castle in Ogrodzieniec, Poland

On our way back to Olsztyn from Katowice, we stopped to see this awesome castle. No picture could really capture how large and awesome it is. It lies in ruins now, but it must have been quite a site when it was complete.