birthday pics

the girls preparing my beautiful birthday dinner!










from left to right:
Emma
Jenn
(me)
Elizabeth
Petra
Simone








Simone, me, and Petra in Schaffhausen with the backdrop of the Rhine at night

~birthdays~

I'm 23. My friends reminded me several times of this.

Tuesday was a good birthday. (You only turn each age once!)

Some 23rd birthday highlights:

• prayers
  
• cranberry-almond muffins (I LOVE MUFFINS!)
• the last 4 of 23 beautiful roses
• 17 birthday hugs
  
• tea with friends
• tea with myself and 2 amazing chocolates
• CANDLES galore!
• girlie food and stories
• an "almost" movie. maybe next week the devil will wear prada.
• an amazing phone conversation with my sister
• sleep

Thank you Jesus for love and life! And 363 days until the next 28 November...

***pictures soon to come***

Teams... gotta love 'em.

This week, a Work and Witness team showed up. (For those of you not schooled in Nazarene-dom, W&W is a team that comes to do work and pays for it! It's really an amazing concept.)

Providentially, at least for my kitchen, my dad met the leaders of the team at a meeting earlier in the fall and asked if they would bring anything in for me. Thus, the list began and two nights ago I got a GREAT fall gift.

• Brown sugar -- 10 lbs of it!! My baking adventures have only just begun. (Real brown sugar, contrary to what Europeans seem to think, is NOT colored white sugar!)
• Enough dryer sheets to make my tiny room (2 m. by 3 m.) smell fresh -- almost too fresh -- almost my own laundry room. :-)
• Over-the-counter Tylenol. Germans can't get it at Wal-mart, only at the pharmacy. That's annoying.
• Pecans and corn syrup for a pecan pie and pumpkin for all of my pumpkin cravings!!

Happy fall. Thanks to the team, it has arrived. As has TONS of noise above our heads in the communications centre, but for 2 weeks, we can handle it. I hope. :-)