"We live in the Shire."  That's what Rob says almost every time we leave the house.  This is our village of Jettenbach and the surrounding area.  It is, indeed, incredibly beautiful. The young woman in the bright red coat is Kathryn and she is a familiar figure in the village.  New villagers we meet always recognize das Mädchen im roten Mantel (the girl in the red coat). 

 

 

Speaking of Hobbits...

 

  

"Don't touch my mushroom!" 

A week after we moved in was September 22nd, Frodo and Bilbo's birthday for those of you who are up on your Lord of the Rings lore.  We often have a Hobbit Party on that day and this year we found the perfect spot.  This beautiful area is just a short walk from the house and appears to be an old outdoor classroom.  It was perfect to celebrate with a couple of new friends.  You can't see, but in the field beyond the trees is a horse farm with many beautiful horses.  Rohan nearby!

In keeping with the barefoot theme, in early September, we also went to a Barfußpfad (barefoot park) in Bad Sobernheim.  This is a very cool thing and, when the weather warms back up, we'll be back.  You walk along a 1.5km trail outside with no shoes on.  There are all sorts of terrain and climbing areas, a river to ford, and, as pictured below, a mud channel.  They ended by playing life-sized chess with four to a side.  It was a beautiful day!

 

 

 

But life isn't all special events.  There's mostly everyday things.  Rob is preaching and leading the Traditional Protestant Service on base.  It's a unique ministry because the population is so transient and travels around so often.  It's difficult to form community.  The kids are involved at an off-base church with AWANA and youth group, and Rob attends a men's Bible study there, too.  (I just learned the word for that last night: Männerbibelstunden.  I think it's funny.)  I am beginning to meet with a new pastor's wife friend, still learning German, and doing lots of grocery shopping!

 

 But the big change in our days here is that the youngest five are IN SCHOOL!  For a forever homeschooling family this is a really big deal.  We love, love, love having our kids home with us, but the opportunity to have the children exposed to another language all morning (and it is basically just for the morning) was just too good to pass up.  So, prayerfully, we put Isaac, Elliott, and Tessa in the local elementary school - grundschule - and Brigit and Callum are attending the Protestant KiTa (Kindertagesstätte) or kindergarten.  Tessa is in the first grade and loves her teacher, which is a double blessing because the teachers stay with their class all four years of elementary school.  Elliott is moving to a different class when he goes back after the holidays because they initially placed him with all of the other American kids in the grade. (There are strangely two second grade classes this year.) That means he's relying on the other English speakers instead of learning as much German as he could.  The teacher, also, will be a better fit for him in the other class.  Both he and Isaac were placed in a grade lower than they would have been in an American school so they wouldn't have to worry about keeping up with the material and learn a new language.  This is mostly working.  Isaac, then, is in the third grade class and he, too, is making progress.  We are so proud of them for this brave thing that they are doing.  They regularly attend outside events or play with friends, making do in Germglish...Englan...hmm...

 

 

 

 The two littles are enjoying their kindergarten time in the morning.  Callum especially.  He loves Miss Maren (pictured behind him in the church service below).  Because the KiTa is run by the church there are lots of holiday/church celebrations.  Frankly, there are in the school, too.  I'm posting the picture of Brigit with the apple to illustrate the mentality of the schools and the culture of trust and safety that still exists here in the country.  So, this picture was taken on the way home from KiTa.  Brigit grabbed an apple from a wagon on her way out and started to tell me about the walk they had gone on today (I vaguely remember a sign telling me to make sure she was wearing mud boots) to a nearby apple orchard.  And by nearby I mean probably half a mile from the KiTa building.  The class had all walked there and picked apples.  (The tree in the play yard being almost empty.)  They had a delightful time climbing and picking and walking home.  I was pleased, but amazed that this had happened without my knowledge and certainly not my consent.  I didn't mind; we trust the teachers with our children.  But I could imagine the nine forms I would have had to fill out and the legal disclaimers to sign to agree to this in the States!  The children are allowed a great deal of freedom and autonomy and the town still looks out for all of the kids in the neighbourhood.  Brigit would be allowed to walk home alone (at 5 years old) with my permission.  Tessa, Elliott, and Isaac regularly come home from school without me. 

 

 

 

German Unity Day service (left) and St. Martin's Day service (right)

 

 

 

Making Christmas Plätzchen (cookies) with Elliott's class

We've had three birthday celebrations since we've been here.  We were traveling during Elliott's birthday, so we took him for his first train ride after we got here.  We rode about an hour and fifteen minutes away to Bad Kreuznach, got him lunch and a brief shopping trip to spend his first euros and then home. 

 

Katie's birthday present was a base-sponsored trip to Lohr and Mespelbrunn.  Lohr is where the legend of Snow White was born (look it up; the history is fascinating) and Mespelbrunn is one of the last remaining Wasserschlossen (water castles).  It was a lovely day with our own Snow White.

  

The origin of the talking mirror (left) and the smallest house in Lohr, home to a family of 12

 

 

Mespelbrunn Wasserschloss (still inhabited by the Baroness Someone-or-the-other)

 

 

Brigit also had her 5th birthday! We took her bowling!

 

 

 

Then everyone got to take a train trip.  We headed to Mainz, which is just about an hour and a half away by train.  There is a wonderful farmers' market there, the Gutenberg Bible Museum, and the cathedral.  We saw them in that order!  The littles are not really familiar with museum etiquette (we basically never left the house in sweltering San Antonio), making that a very short visit.  We'll be back.  

 

The market square and cathedral (left) and the Gutenberg museum (right)

Maybe my favourite thing so far is the return of a real Fall season.  Cool, wet weather, falling leaves, comfort foods.  We picked pumpkins at a farm where we sometimes get raw milk.  They had a corn maze, too, with a scavenger hunt inside.  Look at Abba pull that wagon!  It was colder than we had planned for!

 

The holiday season here is delightful, as you might imagine.  We spent Thanksgiving at home with our dear friends from Travis AFB who we get a year with here. 

It's only snowed once this winter so far.  We've been told this isn't a particularly snowy area.  But the day it came was such a blessing.  We experienced our second miscarriage this year (our fourth total) on the 3rd of December.  The family was grieving and feeling low as we entered Advent.  Our waiting hadn't ended in the hoped for birth.  The next day we went up to our upper field to bury our little one - Stephen Anselm - and it had just started to snow.  The snow fell heavily for the next couple of hours and we spent them all outside as a family.  Sledding, snowball fights, clearing paths and sidewalks.  It was a joyful reminder of all that we have, even in a time of loss.

We decorated for Christmas right away after Thanksgiving...
 

 Emma has been perfecting her eye makeup game

We opened our St. Nicholas Day gifts a few days late because of work and school.  That's a hazard of doing your big gift day not on a federal holiday.  It was a lot of fun to watch the kids give to each other and see all the candy St. Nick brought because Mama was feeling a little homesick and nostalgic. (Also, European candy/chocolate is epic!)

Ice skating in Homburg and Chanukah followed quickly.

fff

Tessa with the class Eule she had for the weekend

And a few more excursions:

Sarah went shopping in Mannheim with Kathryn and Emma and with her friend T in Trier (pictures below)

Rob and me in Strasbourg, France 

 

Skiing in Amnéville, France (indoors) just after Christmas

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Tessa wanted to be in the village church's Kreppenspiel (Nativity play).  She said she just wanted to be seen, she didn't need a line.  She was a perfect little sheep (pictured far left).  The evening service was beautiful in the very cold church and then we also attended the 11:30 pm candlelight service at the Chapel.  It, also, was very sweet.  As I sign off for now, I pray that you have found a special joy this Christmas season and have great hope for the new year to come.  We love you all very much! 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Roses!

God bless you all!

 

Wir wohnen in Deutschland! (We live in Germany!)

 Hallo Freunde!

Hello Friends!

I'll be trying to write in English more than German, but I find myself using more and more German every day.  It's great!  Actually it's an answer to prayer, but more on that later.  We have been in country for two and a half weeks now.  Yesterday, I confirmed that with Rob because it feels like so much longer.  We think it's because we've been on the road for a month and out of a "permanent" home for four months.  We're still in temporary digs and that's making it feel like we've been "on the way" for a very long time.  Our trip here went very smoothly and we even met one of the other chaplains and his family on the plane to Ramstein.  

We are staying for now in a little village called Schwedelbach and it is adorable.  I wake up most mornings, look out my window, and wonder if this is a movie set!  The fog rolls over the fields which have either brown cows or small deer feeding in them.  I walk to the little bakery in the center of town, past the flower store run out of a person's home, the ice cream vending machine next to the fountain, and the walking pool (think knee deep cold water for after a long hike or bike ride) surrounded by cafe tables and chairs.  The streets are narrow and the traffic is fast.  Roundabouts everywhere!  But our driving is improving and I can get from our home to the shops in the next town or the base or the flower field where you cut your own flowers and pay per stem on an honor system.  

(We've been doing a lot of puzzles.  This isn't our village, but it kind of looks like it!)

We don't have enough seats in our car to get everyone around yet, so we're taking a lot of walks.  There are fairy tale woods and it's delightful to see my children playing in them.  Getting out of the house is good, too, as it is quite small and it's easy to step on  each other.  The older children (Elliott and up) often walk 650 meters to the Spielplatz (playground) in town.  

(Fairy tale woods; the snails are huge! Golf ball sized shells)

Rob is figuring out work and what that will look like.  He is glad to be back in regular Air Force ministry again and is looking forward to working with the most diverse group of chaplains ever.  The office is about 20 minutes from the house that we will move into in two weeks.  Which brings me to the many answered prayers we've seen so far.  I had three concerns about moving to Germany.  The first was finding the right place to live.  Our family is pretty good at being content with less than people might think we need.  But we are 12 people.  The second concern was with the language.  I don't want to live here for three years and rarely speak German.  Or have my children rarely speak it.  And I don't want to be stuck in a situation because I don't know or can't speak the language.  Finally, and this is a smaller one, whenever I move to a new place, I'm quite disoriented for a while.  And it's upsetting not to know how to get home from wherever I am.  Google Maps aside, I like to know how to get to my most common destinations and to have a general sense of direction.  

(Today's Five Guys fries farm location)

So, praises:  1) We have a contract signed for a lease!  The house in Jettenbach has four bedrooms in the main house and one more in the guest house, which also has two kitchens and an entertaining space in it!  It's an old restaurant, so the kitchen is larger than most German kitchens, and the landlord has a full-size refrigerator in it already!  He's leaving us the trampoline and all of the outdoor furniture for the property.  The lot is probably an acre in size and has a small orchard of apple and pear trees and blackberry bushes!  He wants us to enjoy and plant in the garden and though he's amazed by our family size (zehn kinder!!!), he says he's happy there will be children in the home.  

(Coming into Jettenbach)

2) I am finding that my German improves every day and the miracle is that I'm not afraid to use it!  I've had interactions with people in multiple shops and gas stations and even at the park.  I just speak German until I run out of things I know to say!  I understand most of what I hear, even if I couldn't translate it back to you.  I don't know what has given me the boldness to risk embarrassment when I've frozen in the past, but I'm just giving thanks for it.  We're speaking as much at home as we can, too.  Well, at least I am.  The kids are still kind of rolling their eyes at me, but I don't care and they're coming along.

3) And as a reminder that our God cares even about our small fears, I'm not having any anxiety about navigating the area.  Not with tiny streets, unfamiliar signs, or even driving a stick shift again!  Praise God!

Okay, that was a long update.  I'm hoping to write more regularly, or at least only when really interesting things happen.  I'll probably even have the kids write occasionally for practice.  We love and miss our dear ones in the States!

Sarah

Silence and Simplicity

I just returned from a 4 day Ignatian silent retreat.  if this is not something that you have done before, I highly recommend it to anybody. It was an amazing time of focusing on all the things that are most important and bring reminded that my worth doesn't come from how good my life looks, but on how loved by the King I am.  I don't know how much this connects to a minimalist lifestyle, but it is important to who I am. 

One of the most wonderful things about the retreat center, is the obvious care and thought that was put into the design and decoration of the facilities. Each piece of art, each theme for the lodge, even each pillow on the chairs, was thoughtfully designed and placed. No Hobby Lobby trite decorations here! The overall design was simple and yet I felt so pampered. The items were carefully chosen to create a certain atmosphere, just like we all hope to do in our homes. Nothing cluttered, nothing that doesn't truly reflect what's important to us and who we are.

Rocky Mountain High

 Monday, July 31st the big adventure began!  We had said all of our goodbyes and with the car packed fuller than we thought possible, we hit the road!  Only to stop five minutes later when someone realized Callum wasn't buckled in!... Now, we were off!

We stopped in San Angelo to see Rob's college roommate and our dear friends, the P's.  Then overnight in Roswell, NM ("why is everything decorated with aliens, Mama?"), and on to southern Colorado to see Emma's godparents and dear seminary friends, the T's.  By the time we got to Colorado, I was nearly in tears. Texas' climate and landscape has been so hard on my soul. I love green and mountains and "flowy water,"as Rob puts it. It felt like I could breathe again to be surrounded by real trees and cold water. 

We hiked a short way in some national forest territory and even saw a "toothy cow" for those of you who are in the know. (And if you haven't read the Wingfeather saga to your older children, I would remedy that.)  

The next day we drove up through the center of the state almost to the border of Wyoming and stayed for a blissful 24 hours with our longest-time friends at their family cabin.  It was an honor to be invited into that special place. We played and climbed and explored and swam and cooked and worshipped and chopped wood together. (This was mostly Daniel who had also chopped some wood the evening before at the T's.) 

It was a hard goodbye and we stretched it out as long as we could.  But lunchtime on Thursday saw us headed north to Idaho (with a stop to see a wild moose!) and my parents.

To all who are reading this and praying for us, thank you.  We love you all so much and will miss you. We are so grateful for the part you have played in our family whether it has been long or short, recent or ancient! You are a gift!  I will update as frequently as I think will be interesting!

Sarah