We have now been in Berlin for a week! Hard to believe! And we have been away from our Oregon home for 19 days, almost three weeks. Our little guy has been a champ and we are learning sooooo much with him as we travel but I have to admit….traveling with a toddler is hard…

On Friday evening we flew from Belgrade back to Berlin. We are subletting an old neighbor’s apartment right next door to where we used to live. Our old neighbor/friend has a toddler as well so the apartment is perfect for our little family and exploring/playing toddler. His world is full of learning and activity. It…

The day after Easter, April 1, the three of us boarded a plane at night to head to Europe for the month of April. Just the day before, we celebrated with the family after church by finding eggs, opening an Easter basket and eating all together. We packed up a few carry ons and our…

The crocus are starting to flower and the dandelions are threatening to come up after a few days of warmer and sunnier life in the PNW. This is what I call faux Spring. There are always these days in February that give us a false sense of Spring just right around the corner. We all…

Ana flew out early Sunday morning to head to The Bahamas for a week of work. Yes, it sounds really lovely and everyone says, “oh yeah, ‘work,’” but the reality is that she is in a coworking space (overlooking the water) all day each day that she is away. The weather sounds really horrible there currently and…

Yesterday I made the call. Just outside our door it was still a sheet of ice and while I could see that it was thawing, it just wasn’t thawing fast enough. I texted a few people that live near the church and asked them about what it looked like. One person even sent me a pic of…

It is day six in our house this morning. Yesterday we thought the ice would melt but it only began to melt yesterday. Last night, Ana tried to work her way down some ice to try to take Pushkin out and she had told me she had walked through ice before but came back to me to…

I just looked at my memories on Facebook from seven years ago. I was serving at Rose City Park UMC and it had snowed. Quite a bit! I remember shovelling the sidewalk with our custodian Michael who has since passed and we had quite a few laughs that day together. We had decided to have just one…

It started days ago with warnings of storms and snow. In Oregon if there is a threat of snow, everything shuts down. I warned Ana about this but this is the first time she has really seen all of this in action. It has been making her chuckle all along the way. She keeps telling…