Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I love this season and what the Easter celebration means to us as Christians. We had a really good church service this morning. I like that our church sings hymns. So many churches have moved away from singing them and that's one reason we've chosen this church. There's a richness to hymns that I don't find in a lot of the newer songs. Of course, I'm partial to them too because they're what I grew up singing. There are certain songs that I hear that make me think of home and hearing my Dad sing while getting ready for Sunday morning service. I miss those days. I miss my home and family. I'm so thankful that I come from a rich Christian heritage. During holidays I miss my family even more than usual. We always had so many traditions that accompanied each holiday. Probably since we lived in a small town and pretty much had just each other we really made events out of the holidays. I haven't done so well at bringing those traditions into my marriage. Maybe that comes with having kids. I definitely want to pass those memories on to my kids. This morning I had an instant message from my Mom talking about having company for dinner and making the traditional ham and potatoes. I know exactly how the day will go back home. I'd love to be there.

This is what we woke up to this morning. I haven't been able to figure the weather out here. Back home in Alaska I know what to expect - we usually get snow in October and have it until April or May. It's a different story here. We've had some really warm days lately and then this snow comes out of no where. I'm not complaining because I really enjoy the snow days. I do like our Alaska winters better though. In Germany I think the winters are more like the East coast. Really wet snow that rarely sticks and just turns to slush.

Some of our flowers covered in snow. I'm amazed at how hardy the flowers are here in Germany. It snows and they keep on blooming.

I don't know if I mentioned this in an earlier post or not, but one of the things we've been very frustrated with in this house is the cracks in the wallpaper. To us it seems like a strange way to cover walls in a house, but most German houses have wallpaper on the walls then it's painted. We were pretty disappointed with the job done in our house because all through the stairwell the seams have moved apart and there are actually cracks in some of the corners. We noticed them when we first moved in and were going to have the painter come in to do the repairs, but he said just to let him know when we were done moving furniture in so he could do touch ups to the walls at the same time.

Finally last week Sam was able to get in touch with Thomas (the painter) and he came by Friday evening to look at the walls. We were happy to hear him say it was a terrible job and needed to be completely redone. He said they tried to tell the contractor that the wallpaper should not be hung until the walls had more time to dry, but they were being pushed to get it done. Anyhow, we're very happy that the wallpaper will be replaced and it'll look good again. Thankfully things are slowly getting done.

Well, that's about all that's going on with us right now. I hope you had a wonderful Easter celebration. Until next time...