Snowy February

In Klaipeda this winter, we've experienced one of the coldest and for sure the snowiest that we've had in our seven years. During times like this, its important to get out and do your best to enjoy the time even if its a bit bleak and very dreary. We do get an occasional sunlit day and this winter we've been busy taking advantage of some of the limited options of things to do on a cold snowy day.

One weekend we took a trip to the Sea Museum which is on the Curonian Spit - across an inlet of the Baltic Sea from our city of Klaipeda. Our plan was to go to the dolphin show, but we missed the only ferry that would get us there in time, so went to the museum instead.

Kim & Ieva waiting for the next ferry to come

Andrew & Ieva outside the entrance to the Sea Museum - it used to be a castle fortress - very cool!

We couldn't believe we had never been here in our 7 years of living in Klaipeda! Seals, penguins, dolphins & lots of interesting fish -- very fun!

We tried again the next weekend to hit the Dolphin show with our friends, the Boschs: Chris, Lydia, Josiah and Levi, and this time were successful! Levi took a turn at pushing Ieva down the snowy kilometer-long road from the ferry landing to the Dolphinarium.

We finally made it to the show and the boys and Ieva loved it. (and we were also pretty impressed!)

Ieva's also been trying to get to know her little brother. While she can't see him, she can talk to him and give him hugs...sort of.

We're all looking forward to him joining our family this June!

On Valentines morning, we celebrated with raspberry heart pacakes - yum!

On another Saturday Ieva and Kim got outside (while Andrew was at LCC playing in a volleyball tournament) and enjoyed a snowy sculpture park with a little sunshine.the wooden play structure was even more fun covered in snow!

You can see our apartment building way down at the end of the road behind Ieva.

That evening Ieva got lost in a bowling ball forest as our church held a bowling and dessert event & she got to bowl for the first time!

Practicing with Dad

Our biggest news of 2009

We figured it's about time we officially announce on our blog that

we're expecting!!

Our estimated due date is June 10th.

After experiencing two 1st-trimester miscarriages (in January & in May 2008), we were excited but nervous when we discovered I was pregnant in October. Relief set in at our 12-week doctor's appointment when we saw (via ultrasound) a healthy fetus! Each subsequent appointment has been equally as exciting.

This past Tuesday on the 13th, my OBGYN referred us to an ultrasound specialist for our 18-week appointment. There, she did an in-depth ultrasound, measuring the sizes of the major organs, the bones and was able to tell us the gender of the baby.

We're having a BOY!!!

So, for those of you with boys, please give us your advice! We've gotten used to having a girl & feel much more confident in that arena. Now we have to learn what to do with boys...and buy all new clothes...and think of names! We're thankful we have the next 5 months to work through everything!

When we told Ieva, her initial reaction was "but I wanted it to be a GIRL!!!" But when we told her that God made the baby a boy and there wasn't anything we could do about it, she said "okay. I guess I'll be okay with a baby brother..." And now some of her dolls and toys have become boys (earlier, ALL OF THEM were girls!) so we think she's coming to terms with the idea.

Since our insurance only covers us here, we plan to go to Vilnius (the capital) and deliver the baby at the same medical center where Ieva was born. Then we hope to come back to the States in early-mid July for a visit. If you have leftover baby boy clothes that you want to get rid of, save them for us! We've got loads of pink & purple, but now need to stock up on the blues, greens & yellows.

Please join us in praying for the continued growth and health of our unborn son!

We moved!!

In mid-December, we recieved an email from our landlady informing us that her family would be moving back to Klaipeda from the city they've been living in. She asked how soon we'd be able to move out, as they would need to move in. At the initial news, we were devastated! We've lived in that apartment for nearly 6 years & have loved it. We were hoping to stay there until we left Lithuania. But, we had no choice. We prayed that God would provide us with a place in the same part of the city & started researching apartment rentals.

Packing up Ieva's 1st home

As we were packing the kitchen, Ieva brought her toothbrush out to make sure we didn't leave it!

Ieva's last time playing in the snow on our balcony (we all LOVED our balcony & will miss having one.)

Her last bath in the bottom of the shower! Our new home has a real bathtub!

Her last time laying on her crib mattress (after daddy took the crib apart). She'll have a big bed in her new room!

We found a place listed online that looked really good, and it turned out to be in the same building where one of our LCC colleagues lived who spoke very highly of the apartment owner. We came to see the apartment & loved it even more! It turns out that the landlord was looking for long-term renters (committing to more than 1 year) and that his daugher is an LCC student! He wanted more for rent than we could afford, but was willing to lower his price for us, making it possible for us to move there! The apartment is literally only one city block away from our old place and we absolutely love it!

It's nearly twice as big as our old place and has some much-appreciated ammenities like a bathtub, a dishwasher, a spare bedroom & a 2nd bathroom! Last Wednesday we had a moving party and had an overwhellmingly wonderful group of around 15 people who helped us move, watched Ieva, and cooked food for all the movers! We are so thankful for our community here!

Moving into our new living room

Our new kitchen

Sarah, Lydia & Josiah getting Ieva's new room set up.

The members of the moving crew that stayed til the end!

(Andrew, Chris, Lydia, Jeff, Chris, Levi, Paige, Andrew, Alene, Charlotte, Sarah & Sandy)

We're now settling in & are daily praising God for the gift He's given us in this new home! It's better than we ever could have expected (isn't that so like Him to do that for us?) and we are extraordinarily thankful!

Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

For the 2nd year in a row, we spent a relaxing Christmas here in Klaipeda together as a family and with the closest thing we have to an extended family - our friends. The evening of Christmas Eve we had our Canadian friends Chris & Lydia Bosch and their two boys Josiah & Levi over for Chicken Pad Thai. Chris' brother Nelson was in town visiting and we all had a great time together. After they left, we opened our stocking presents. For some reason when Ieva was playing with the boys she pulled out her bathing suit & put it on over her tights & shirt! We let her keep it on while she opened presents. Silly kid!!!

On Christmas morning, we got up & opened presents in our PJs. Ieva got LOADS from friends & colleagues here at LCC and from family who had mailed gifts! Thanks to so many of you for making her feel so special even though she's so far away!

On Christmas afternoon we went to our other Canadian friends, Andrew & Alene Kaethler's home to join the Boschs and our friend & Student Life colleague Chris Hatton for Christmas dinner & a fun evening together.

Lydia & Paige, Josiah & Levi

Ieva & Charlotte - all our kids love books!

The big kids at Christmas

It was on Christmas day last year when Alene told us she was pregnant - and now it's Paige's first Christmas!

And this Christmas I get to be the pregnant one!

The Christmas Girls always match!

This is becoming a tradition! We spent Christmas day at the Kaethler's last year too. Look how much the girls have changed since then...but they still love each other like sisters!

Christmas Day 2007

Overall, we had a wonderful Christmas & are extraordinarily thankful for the "family" that God has blessed us with here in Lithuania!

Christmas Programs Galore!

This week, Ieva's been involved in two more Christmas programs! One at our church & one at her preschool.
Church was Sunday evening & just like last year, she was an angel. Last year her friend Charlotte, only 1 at the time, was baby Jesus in the Christmas program, but this year Charlotte was big enough to be an angel with Ieva (and her baby sister Paige was the new baby Jesus). Our program was a very low-key affair, as everyone there was involved either by wearing a costume or reading a piece of the script. Geri (LCC's English Department Chair) did a very nice job of writing & organizing it!

Ieva's preschool (called Darzelis in Lithuanian) program was on Tuesday & it was a cultural experience for all 3 of us! Here in Lithuania, kids dress up in costume for a Christmas program. The theme for Ieva's class was wild animals, but you'll see from the photos that aside from the 3 wolves, there was a clown, spiderman, a mushroom & a couple other unidentifiable costumes. Ieva was a ladybug & loved being in her costume! She didn't love participating with her class in the program, however. There were only about 15 parents there in the audience, but after about 5 minutes of being up front, Ieva's lip started quivering, she started wiping her eyes & within a minute was running to jump on her daddy's lap. I got her to go back out to the floor to sing & dance with her classmates, as long as I stayed with her. When Santa showed up & give out presents, she seemed pretty excited (she had been talking about him coming for weeks!), but when he read her name & tried to give her her present, she freaked again & refused to approach him to even take her present! Oh, Ieva...our little stage-fright girl!

All in all, both programs were great fun & Ieva's had fun having multiple opportunities to be in costume. Now I'll stop typing & show you the photos from both events.

An Angel at the International Christian Fellowship program:

Ieva & Josiah

Ieva & her good friend Charlotte

The Wise Guys

with her friends Eric & David

And then a Ladybug at her Preschool Christmas program:

with her babysitter Renata who came to see her program!

Holiday Parties...and parties...and parties...

Over the past 10 days, we've had the joy of hosting 5 different Christmas parties in our home. It's been really fun to have so many different groups come through, since we haven't been hosting as much in the past couple of years as we used to, and many of the students who came had never been in our home before. There were White Elephant gift exchanges at nearly all of them...I think that's a record high for how many gift exchanges either of us have ever done during one Christmas! The parties prompted my early cookie baking...and kept me baking, sometimes morning & night! All in all, each one was fabulous! But I'd be lying if I didn't say that we're looking forward to some low-key down time coming up soon. Only a couple more days & our 3-week Christmas break is here! Woo-Hoo!Our Tri-S Group of Study Abroad students (we host them for a meal & talk through cultural adaptation issues 3x during the semester)

The Residence Life staff (17 RAs & 3 RDs)

We don't have a photo from Andrew's 1st Year Seminar class who we also hosted last week.

LCC's Student Life Staff

And ending with the Community Life staff (who I directly supervise) for breakfast this morning! Don't worry...Maija really does like sausages, but we just played a little joke on her! It's a hilarious story...(read more below)

For those of you who are interested in knowing the story behind this photo, I'll share it as a great example of the frequent types of cultural confusion that can happen here! Maija (in the front with the sausage) is from Latvia & in her family, sausages are served for breakfast to special guests. Keith (the tall one to her right) went home to meet her family for the weekend (they're dating). An average Latvian breakfast is oatmeal or something like it. So, the morning they were there, Maija's mom made special sausages just for Keith, but made Maija & her dad eat oatmeal & leftover crepes. Keith is a man's man & likes a good hearty breakfast. He couldn't help comparing what everyone was eating & felt like he had gotten the short end of the breakfast stick (having NO idea that what he was being served was the priority meal for guest only)! At one point he even asked if he could have some oatmeal, for which Maija's mom thought he was crazy. Once they got back to Lithuania, Maija & Keith talked through the breakfast issue & discovered their cultural misconceptions!

So at our staff breakfast, I made a big deal about how American the tradition of waffles for breakfast are and how, since Maija is the only non-American there, I wanted her to feel more comfortable and at home. At that point, I pulled a covered bowl of cooked sausages out of the oven & handed it to her, telling her that I hoped she enjoyed her Latvian breakfast! We all had a good laugh, as we often do when we're together. I love working with this team!

Christmas has begun!

Here within our LCC Community, Christmas began on November 29th...immediatley following our staff/faculty Thanksgiving Potluck when we decorated our campus for Christmas! This was the 2nd of the holiday events that I (Kim) was coordinating, and by the end of the day, I was exhausted! We had a good number of people stay after the dinner to help deck the halls & now the main lobbys of our primary campus buildings look beautiful & festive.

Andrew & Ieva decorating at home (I don't have any photos of the LCC decorations yet!)

The Christmas culmination at LCC is always the annual Christmas program. In past years (since 2002), we've had the muti-talented Dave Rhodes here to put on an enormously-complex and amazing Christmas program. He would start planning before September was over and spent over two months training students to sing or play the bells & conducting a 60+ person choir & multiple bell choirs on top of recruiting dancers and actors from our student body. Since Dave left last spring & we haven't been able to find a replacement Performing Arts Coordinator (if you know anyone, please let me know!!), the Student Life staff was left to our own devices to figure out what Christmas should look like this year.

We decided we'd still have a program, but at a much smaller scale than in past years, and we'd follow it with a home-made dessert reception: asking students, staff & faculty to make their families' holiday desserts to share. In a moment of weakness, I agreed to coordinate the program element & another colleague coordinated the reception.

So, enter Kim's 3rd holiday event to coordinate for the LCC Community. Thankfully I have learned a lot from Dave after working so closely with him over the past few years and that experience helped things run more smoothly. I adapted a narrated script that we had used at our church last year and planned to do nothing more than have the narrator tell the story of the birth of Christ, interspersed with a small choir leading congregational Christmas songs & costumed characters come stand on stage at the appropriate times. However, a number of students approached me asking if they could coordinate special dances or songs into the program. Since everything fit within the script, I let them run with it, doing nothing more than finding music that fit the script & telling them when to go on stage.And I am please to announce that everything turned out beautifully! Our students have SO much talent and they really made the show what it was. We also incorporated a staff/faculty kid's choir this year to sing 'Away in the Manager' (North American kids sang it in English & LT kids sang it in Lithuanian) and it was ADORABLE!! We had candles across the front of the stage & a couple boys were much more interested in blowing them out than singing! We were a little nervous that Ieva would whimp out at the last minute (like she has for her 2 flower-girl debuts and at the Christmas dress rehearsal on Thursday evening), but she did great! She confidently walked on stage holding the hand of her adpoted big brother, Josiah, and sang like a champ with the rest of the kids.

The LCC Kid's Choir (with Josiah behind Ieva)

In past Christmas programs, Mary always came out to the stage riding on a huge straw horse, led by Joseph. After many years of use, our straw horse has gotten pretty beat up & since his tail was literally hanging by a string, I didn't plan to use him during the program. The biggest surprise for me was to see our horse (with tail repaired) rolled out during the final narration! Instead of Mary on it's back, Steve (an RD on my staff) dressed as Santa was riding on it! A few staff members had planned this at the last minute & hadn't told me about it, which made it REALLY funny. They rolled Steve out into the lobby where the reception was starting & he became the most popular guy of the night with students posing for pictures & parents putting their kids on the horse with him to do the same!

Kim & Ieva with Santa Steve & his Straw Horse
Christmas isn't even here yet and I'm already exhausted, but being LCC's holiday events coordinator this year has been very fun & rewarding, nonetheless! And everything that's left will be a piece of cake...literally! Now I get to start baking for all the Christmas parties we're hosting (3 next week alone) -- one of my favorite parts of the holiday!
'Tis the Season!