Happy Birthday Allison!

Our sister-in-law, Darlene and her daughter, Allison arrived from Canada yesterday afternoon. As it was Allison's birthday, we had a bit of a celebration. Her waffle might look a bit bare, but she could have enjoyed it with strawberries, whipped cream and homemade maple syrup!

As you can see, there's a bit of happiness going on here as the cousins are reunited!

Sam Rotman

Tonight we attended an amazing and inspiring concert given by Sam Rotman. This was the third time Mr. Rotman has given a concert at BFA. Tonight he gave his 1900th concert since starting his concert career. Even more inspiring than his incredible musicianship is his testimony. Mr. Rotman, who was born a Jew, was saved while studying piano at Juilliard in New York. As you can imagine, the impact this life-changing decision had on his family and friends was devastating. Mr. Rotman was literally cast out of his family and told to never come back. His commitment to his faith, however, has never wavered and what a joy it was to hear him tell his story again (and to listen to him play the piano!).

Daffodils

When I was in grade 8 I memorized the poem "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth and to this day I can still recite it. Over the years I have often wondered what it would be like to see "a host of golden daffodils". After living here, it's not hard to understand why he was able to write "Daffodils" and why they gave him such pleasure. They are lovely little flowers and in the spring, they are everywhere.

Back to Brazil

A year ago this week, we were coming to the end of almost 3 incredible weeks back in Brazil. We had a wonderful time as a family and have so many great memories of our days there. Here are just a "few" pics of our amazing time. After going through these pictures again, I now have a very serious case of "saudades" (longings)...Paddle boating on "Lago Negro". This lake was just a few minutes walk from our house, and a real tourist attraction. We seldom rented the boats but this time there was no question. This lake called "Black Lake" got its name from the Black Forest here in Germany as trees from this region were taken to our little town and planted all around this lake. Pretty crazy.
A great day of fog!
Special, special friends. Werner (on the left) was the person in Howard's program in seminary who invited us to come to Brazil. Raf (on the left) was about 12 at the time and I gave him piano lessons. He is now married to Joanita (a Brazilian Mennonite) and their daughter Alana is about 4 I believe.
No visit to Brazil is complete without taking some pictures of the famous "Fusca". These bugs are still everywhere!

A little taste of Germany.

The amazing pinheiro trees. There are still several on the mission's property.


A visit to our house.
We love Brazilian grass.
The local waterfall called "Caracol".
Our favourite Italian restaurant IN THE WORLD!
A view of one of the valleys around Gramado.

A really BIG tree!

A few days in Rio.

Not a great plan

I finally uploaded this picture from our trip to Munich. One couldn't expect a whole lot of service from a bus company with this name!

I love to go a-wandering...

If you love to go walking or hiking, you want to be in this part of the world. There are trails everywhere with signs to guide the way. There are even hiking maps available so you don't need to carry your GPS along with you! It's a wanderer's paradise.

Nautilus

One of Bethany's funky little drawings...

Munich part 2

I've changed my blog template and I'm not sure that I like it. Anyway, here are some pictures that the girls took on the way to and in Munich. I always enjoy their "impressions" of a new place.

Art attack

I was walking up the stairs at the school the other day, and I literally stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the art hanging in the stairwell. We've had some amazing student artists over the years and here's a sampling of the kind of talent we have this year.

Yellow sack day

Today is another yellow sack day. It's not terribly exciting, but these yellow sacks pretty much control our lives so I thought it would be important to mention them. As you know, Germany leads the world (at least we think so!) in recycling and these yellow sacks play a large role in that. Everything that is plastic, metal, aluminum, carton...goes in the yellow sack (there's a list with pictures on the side so there's no excuse to mess up). You DO NOT put paper or just regular garbage in these sacks or you will get an embarrassingly large red sticker on the side and you'll have to haul that sack back to your house and sort through it. Not a happy scene. Anyway, the yellow sacks go out on the street about every 4 weeks or so. It's on the official calendar so you can't miss it. But if you do, you'll see the sacks going out so you just follow suit. Works for me!