A typical Sunday at Bridge Community

Bridge is our church start.  It's going well, but slow.  We shouldn't really be surprised, that's just part of being a church start in this part of the world.  But we are loving it!
So here is a typical Sunday in the life of the Barnwell Crew on their way to church.

Getting ready to go out in the elements.  Takes about 30 minutes to get us all dressed and out the door!

Calling the elevator, with a little Spiderman action there.

The tram ride to church.

  

Walk to our meeting spot from the tram.  We meet in the breakfast room of a hotel.

  Always have to stop and say hello to the fishies, especially "Nemo!"

  

 The girls go to their " secret hideout" under the breakfast tables.

Setting up.

Pause to take pictures of cute babies!!

Dinner time while set up is going on.

 Warming up!

  

 The kids getting ready for worship!

 Goofin' off while mama sings!!  Hee hee!

  

 Still working on dinner.

 The kids go off to children's church

 Bible Story Time!

 A little play time!

 And some more goofin' off before heading home!

We love our church!

Toasted Raviolis!!

Tuesday was our Bridge Community Cooking Time that I host at my house. We've met 2 times (we're meeting twice a month) and even though our numbers have been small, we've had a great time. We did have a grand total of 5 this week. We had fun! This time Andrea brought a recipe for toasted raviolis, completely from scratch!! No already prepared raviolis for us!!
I learned this is a Saint Louis specialty and their traditional Christmas Eve meal.  It's time consuming if you don't have frozen raviolis to use, but living overseas, we learn how to do the long process of making our favorite things even if it takes more time because the end result is almost always oh so good!!  I say "almost always" because I've had a few flops but practice usually proves fruitful.
We had a good time rolling out the dough and filling them up.

Mary Ann doing some rolling!

Dina crimping the dough with the fancy crimper.

Andrea showing us how to crimp without the fancy crimper!  Ha!

Ready to bread or boil if desired.

Whew! Andrea had some already frozen and ready to go for us to fry up and eat. Funny that these little delicacies are called "toasted ravioli," but they are fried!! Ha! None the less oh SO good!! I prepared a marinara sauce to serve with them. Yum!

Enjoying the final product! 

What a find!

I wish I could say that I was a good bargain hunter.  I am not!  I'm not good at digging or taking my time to find that bargain!  Let me also say that for the longest time there has been no such thing as a sale in Czech Republic.  No.  Such.  Thing!
Until now!!  Just in the last 2-3 years, we are seeing more sales.  So many more choices.  So many more character toys,.....Like Spiderman!!!  Ha!

For this very reason and because of the expensive clothing in Europe, I always stock up in the States before coming back.  Last year while in the US I bought the kids all the winter gear I thought they would need.  Shoes, hats, pants, everything.  But I could not find just the right coat for Karis before our return, so I decided to look online and found a cute coat on Amazon.  Some how I did not realize how much of a parka it was!  It's been nice in some ways, but Karis has a built in heater set on high and that girl gets hot.  She has not liked that parka whatsoever.  Plus, it has fur around the hood and it makes her itch!  So not fun!
Now the temps are starting to warm (sad that I think 40 degrees is warm! ha!) and she really does need a lighter jacket.  I had my babysitter for the day and decided to do some looking around in some of my favorite haunts....C & A, H & M, Zara.  Zara was actually my second stop and where I SCORED!!  I could not believe what I found.  Zara just happens to be a Spanish clothing store. =)  And can be quite pricey, but I knew that things were starting to go on sale so I thought I'd take a look.  Wow!!
Not only did I find a coat, I found TWO!!  And a cute dress!!

These two coats were originally 1,299 crowns each.  That is $68 each or $136 for the two.  Seriously??  Do people pay that for a kid to wear a coat for one season?! 
I got these coats..


wait for it....


 269 crowns EACH!!  That's $14 for a combined total of $28 for the two!!!  Score!!!  I was ecstatic!!
The dress was 129 crowns (which was more of a markdown than was listed at 169 crowns), so that's $6.76 and was originally 569 crowns or almost $30.
So I got 2 very nice quality coats and a dress for a whopping 667 crowns or $35!  Big time score!!
I could not be happier!  Woohoo!!

Sledding!

My friend Renata & I, with our kids, got together Friday.  Renata suggested sledding.  I knew my kids would love that!  We hadn't gotten out to sled this season and knew it might be our last chance.  The snow was already starting to melt so it was a snowy icy combo, but it actually made it nice and slick for sledding!  They had 2 sleds and she brought along some grocery bags to slide down on.  I didn't know how well they would work, but wow!  What a great cheap sled!!

None of us have sledding gear.  I knew there was really no need for us to buy it when we were going to be moving where snow doesn't stick around long at all.  I didn't even think about the fact that I might go down the hill a few times so I wasn't dressed accordingly, but I didn't let it stop me!
 Renata's oldest, Isabela, is just one month older than Karis.  When we first got back to Prague and would get together, they didn't always do well playing together, but somehow they finally got past that hump and are just inseparable!  They would hold hands going down that hill and just laugh and laugh!!

And once Brennan knew that I was going to be sledding too, he did not want to go down by himself and almost always took a turn with mama!  He is so cute because when he is having fun he just gets so giddy and goes "Love you mama!!"  We're walking up the hill to take another turn and he's just a runnin' & laughin' up that hill and saying "Love you mama!"  So sweet!!

 We really did have a fun time!  We were pretty soaked afterwards and headed to their house for a snack and more playing.  Renata grabbed some pants for all the kids so they'd be dry.  What a fun afternoon we had with our friends!!

Showing You My Ministries

Hi All!!
Kelly from Kelly's Korner is hosting a "Show Us Your Life" each week and this week was definitely one I could participate in, "Show us your ministry!"

I have 2 passions (ministries) I want to share with you.  Sharing Christ to the people of Europe and supporting ladies through the pain of infertility as well as educating people on the pain that infertility causes. 

I'll start with infertility.  My story is a long one, struggling through several IUIs, an exploratory surgery for endo/blocked tubes, moving on to adoption, adoption losses (2), considering IVF, a successful adoption and within weeks of that adoption a successful in-vitro (IVF).  If you are interested in the VERY LONG (ha!) version, I hope you'll read and be blessed and encouraged by my journey through infertility.  You can find our story at our former website (it's only former because I crashed my hard drive and can no longer access it.  Ugh!). 
After our first adoption loss, I got to googling "Christian Infertility" and through my searching I found a wonderful forum called "Hannah's Prayer."  It is an online community of ladies struggling through the painful journey of infertility and loss.  If you find yourself desiring support on the often lonely & painful journey, please come check us out!!  I have been a member for 5 years and now am co-director of this wonderful ministry!  Our website will tell you a little more about us and direct you on how to join our community.  We'd love to have you!!

That brings me to my next passion.  Being missionaries in Europe.

Jerry and I have lived in Europe for over 10 years.  We work with the International Mission Board (Southern Baptist).  We moved to Russia at the end of 1999 doing church planting.  Then moved to Prague, Czech Republic to do media for our region of Central & Eastern Europe and Jerry has been leading the media team for 6 of those years.  Recently our organization experienced a big reorganization and Jerry now leads the Forward Communications Team (still media) for all of Europe. We have lived in Prague for 9 years.  With this reorganization the decision has been made for us to make another move and we are in the process of obtaining a work visa to live in Madrid, Spain and hope to move there sometime in late Spring.

What do we do?
Our team creates videos, write stories about the work going on among our missionaries in Europe, take incredible pictures and have even shot a music video for a Christian Artist, Jeni Varnadeau.
That just touches the vast amount that our team does!!  Our old website gives more information on that too if you want to take a look around.  =)

So, that's my 2 passions.  Sharing the love of Jesus Christ to the people of Europe and supporting women on the difficult, painful journey of infertility & loss.

Thanks for stopping by!!

Dinner or Supper?

This has become a recent family feud in our home!!  It's a fun one though!!  I have always called it "dinner" and Jerry grew up calling it "supper."  And at the moment, in our family, the girls call it "dinner" and the boys call it "supper."  The kids crack me up when they get going back and forth "No, it's dinner! "No, it's supper!"  We do it all in fun and love!  And I caught Brennan today calling it dinner, so you KNOW I had to rub it in!!  Ha!!
A long time ago, I came to the conclusion that it was a north vs. south thing.  My mom grew up in Ohio and my dad grew up in Texas, and we lived in a northern state (Alaska) so that made sense to me.  I've always found this a funny little thing and have surveyed people over time and found that it is indeed not a north/south thing!  There are people all over the country who use both words!
Some using "dinner" for a big lunch or "dinner" referencing the time of day you will be eating.  It's fun to hear people's take and what their families call it.
So what about you and your family?  What do you call it?

Kinda Funny

...I post my coffee love story on Valentine's Day!!  Ha!  I love Jerry very much and he is my first love, next to Jesus of course!  Happy Valentine's Day, my hubby who asked me to marry him 16 years ago around Valentine's Day!
We're having a low key day at home.  I'm a little sickie and not feeling like doing much.  I'm about to break out a movie and just relax. 
Hope you have a very special day with those you love!  Happy Valentine's Day!

Coffee Love

I am so addicted!!  This is my absolute favorite coffee right now, my coffee love.

Fighting Aggie Band Blend Coffee!!  Several years ago Kenny & De (Jerry's brother & wife) gave us some of this coffee for Christmas.  They are Aggie Alum and often times get us Aggie gifts.  It's been at least 5 years because I remember that while I was pregnant with B & R that coffee made me nauseous.  But the smell of this very coffee brought me back to my coffee addiction!  I remember that first cup of coffee of Fighting Aggie Band Blend Coffee after a long hiatus from coffee.  What sweet bliss!  I think I had 2 cups!!  And I've been hooked ever since!
I soon found that I could order it online!!  Every time someone came for a visit, I ordered some.  And during our 18 months in the US, I had it sent to us every couple of months!  That is how much of a coffee love that I have with this stuff.
My last few bags were brought to me by Jerry's parents in October.  These past few weeks I have been down to the very last grounds, savoring it, using it when Jerry went to his men's breakfast each week (hee hee!).  Then I remembered our Michigan friends were coming for a visit and offered to bring us stuff!  So, I jumped at the chance to get me my "fix!"  Do you know how many bags of Aggie Coffee I bought??  Not one, not 2....not even 3!  I bought SIX!!!  Ha!!  I am going to try and limit it to one bag a month.  That's 6 months!  We'll see if I can do it!!
And look at what our friends brought us!!  Michigan Cherry Coffee!!

I hadn't had cherry coffee before and it's interesting, but good.  They also brought us a Detroit Starbucks mugs to add to our collection, but I completely forgot to take a picture.  I will do that soon!!

Week at a Glance

Sunday I set to work on preparing party food for our Super Bowl Game.
One item on the menu was sausage balls.  In the States you buy a roll of sausage, grab a box of Bisquick off the store shelf, mix with some cheese, bake and you've got sausage balls.  My version without those handy items takes a little longer, but the results are still very yummy!!
When my computer crashed a few weeks ago I decided to store my recipes online and found this nifty site.

I started out by consulting my online cookbook by finding and then mixing up a homemade version of Bisquick.

 

Mixed up my own sausage.  The recipe was given to me by a fellow missionary who is now retired.

And then followed the traditional recipe for sausage balls.  Sure, it's more work than the American way, but it's really not that difficult.  Just a tad more time consuming.
Then I began preparing the layers for my 7 Layer Dip.  Lately it has been harder to find refried beans.  Another of my missionary friends has made her own for quite some time, so I consulted her on the tastiest of refried beans and set to work.  It was so easy.  It was just a matter of mashing some kidney beans and adding a little taco seasoning for a punch of flavor.

I also mentioned making sausage queso.  I did happen to have one last block of Velveeta on hand that my inlaws brought in October, so the queso was a cinch.  One of our Czech friends just loved it!!  It was a new thing for them!
We had a full house.  This is from the kitchen, so there are a few more people to the right and the left and kids coming and going!  It was fun!

 

Tuesday night was my ladies cooking/baking time.  Sadly, there were a lot of people who were sick or had sick kids so there were only 3 of us.  Oh well, maybe next time.  But the 3 of us, along with my 3 kids decorated the Valentine cupcakes I had prepared.  

 

My idea was to decorate some cupcakes and also prepare a batch of cupcakes.  Due to the fact that I had already made 2 dozen cupcakes, we decided to stick to decorating.

Next time, we'll be making raviolis!!  I can't wait!!
And I cannot believe that I went all Friday night at our Italian Potluck without getting the camera out once!!  In my defense, I was too busy chatting, eating, laughing and picking out colors for a Mary Kay compact to even THINK of pictures.  We had a nice spread with Pasta E Faglioli (Olive Garden's recipe!), deep dish pizza, garlic bread, sausage ziti and some great salads and finished up with Italian Cream Cake, almond biscotti & double chocolate biscotti.
These sweet ladies from Michigan (I'm going to write more about them & their church later) brought us a small box of Mary Kay make up.  It was so fun to sit and peruse all the colors.
I laughed when I saw the box of full of Mary Kay with my name in it!  All for me?!  Ha!

 

 This is what is left after we've gone through it.  There is still a lot left!

 

My compact minus the lipstick.  I'm not a lipstick girl anymore, but I did pick out a lip gloss.

One fun and busy week.  Now, for a day of rest.  I'm nursing a little cold that I think was passed down from my kiddos!

So Long Insecurity

I've been following Beth & daughters' blog, Living Proof Ministries, for a short time now.  Just last week her new book was released.  We just happen to have some friends coming to Prague this week.  So, I snatched up Beth's new book off of Amazon and it will arrive tomorrow!
I'm excited to read it and I am getting involved in the discussion group that she is starting up on the blog.  Go check it out!

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

 

Oh how I want to go back to this place!

One busy, crazy, fun week ahead!!

Today is the Super Bowl!!  What's funny is, I could really care less.  I am all about the social and food aspect!!  Ha!  I love any reason to get together!!  And I've got lots of it this week.  It should be fun!
Seeing as the Super Bowl is playing live, which is the middle of the night for us, we are dvr-ing the game and watching it Monday night to have a proper Super Bowl Party then.  I'm sure Jerry will get up and watch part of it in the middle of the night. We'll have our colleagues and church friends over for a game and fun foods night!!

On the menu:

7 Layer Dip
Sausage Balls
Sausage Queso Dip

Others will be contributing as well.  Fun fun!

On Tuesday I'll be kicking off a cooking/baking time.  Not that I am a whizz or anything, but baking is something that I love to do and thought it would be a great outreach opportunity through Bridge (our outreach/church).  It's just going to be a fun time to fellowship and share recipes.  My hope is to kick it off by sharing a recipe of my own and then each week someone brings a recipe to share and make with everyone.  I think it will be fun!  I'm still figuring out what I want to make this first week.  I've got to get busy on that!

Then we have some down time the next few days and then I host another party!  We have some friends/volunteers coming from Michigan and want to have some time with all the missionary ladies in Prague.  We are going to have an Italian Potluck on Friday night.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it!  More fun!!

Saturday night we'll be getting together again with these same ladies to meet some of their Czech friends that they have made from English Camps that they have put on the past few years.

I've got to remember to get out the camera during all these fun times!!

Cookie Madness

Yeah, that would be me!  I am cookie mad!!  I LOVE baking cookies.  I'm finding that I slightly despise cut out cookies.  I'd love to be better at it, but we just don't do well together.  I do love finding fun and different concoctions of cookies.  One of our all time favorites are called Sweet Dreams.  I found it in a B & B cookbook.  It's a variation of a chocolate chip cookie.  You add in some cinnamon & nutmeg (I changed this one ingredient, it called for ginger and I'm not a huge ginger fan) and then roll in powder sugar before baking and they are oh so yummy!! 

I digress.

I was in a mood to make some cookies.  I had some bananas that were getting brown and instead of baking bread or muffins, I thought I'd hunt down a cookie recipes.  And that I did and found this one.
Karis isn't a banana fan.  At all!  She has tried on a few occasions because she knows how much the rest of the fam loves them.  She just doesn't like a fresh peeled banana and sometimes doesn't like muffins or breads either, so I thought I'd make peanut butter cookies.  I haven't made them in awhileanut butter can be quite precious around here.  We can find it easily enough, but you have to buy about 20 jars for it to last long enough in this house.  That's why I call it "precious."  Somehow we ended up with crunchy peanut butter (my kids only do smooth), so I thought we'd use it up for cookies.

Funny thing, the Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies have been the biggest hit!  Even for Karis.  I'm thinking it's the chocolate!  Yeah, gotta be the chocolate!  But they do have a healthy aspect to them too.  Can't go wrong with oatmeal, right?  I, however, reach for the peanut butter more often.
Now I'm in the mood for some Sweet Dream Cookies!!  It's been too long!!

Friday Family Fun

With Valentine's Day around the corner I thought we'd do a little project today.
We started our day with making heart elephants!  You cut out various sizes of hearts, make an accordion nose, glue it all together and Ta da!  Brennan lasted all of about 2 minutes.  He is NOT into art or sitting still for very long for that matter.  Maybe it's a boy thing.  My girls love it though and sat there for the longest time cutting and gluing and drawing!  What fun!!

I know so many families that do pizza and a movie on Fridays nights.  I thought that was a great tradition to start with our family.  It's nice that the kids are getting older and really look forward to and enjoy these kinds of things.  However, we could "do" pizza more than once a week or sometimes we get a hankering for it a lot sooner than Friday!  And my kids are all about Happy Meals right now, so Jerry went to Flora, that's our local mall with our closest McDonalds, to pick up some Happy Meals for dinner.

It ends up that the whole family isn't really together.  Brennan loves to watch the Spiderman movies, where Karis is scared of them.  So, mom or dad take Brennan to mom & dad's room to watch so Karis can't hear the movie and Karis watches something else or has us play games.  She is really starting to get into games.  I think I heard her say that daddy played Trouble, Candy Land & Shoots & Ladders, then went and played her V-Tech Tinkerbell game.  She's becoming quite the gamer!!  And Reegan bounces around between rooms!!  It's been the start of a fun family tradition for us!

Simple Pleasures

I follow a blogger, Kelly's Korner, and she was sharing about Simple Pleasures.  I thought it was a great blog topic and thought I'd do my own!

My Simple Pleasures

♥  Doing devotions with my kids

♥  Hearing my kids ask questions about Jesus

♥  Happy Hour Sonic Vanilla Dr Pepper (that is really a simple pleasure to me now when I can't get one!)

♥  Watching my kids play together, no fighting, just having a good time together

♥  Lunch or coffee with a friend

♥  Playing in the sand at the beach (oh it's been too long since I've done this!)  This is high on the list when we get to Spain!

♥  An unexpected hug, kiss or "I love you, mom!"

♥  Stick to your fork cake!  This is a joke with my friend, Jill,  but you know that traditional vanilla wedding cake that is so moist it just sticks to your fork!  Ha!  Yum!!

♥  Having a break from a regular day by shopping by myself or reading at a coffee shop!

♥  My hubby bringing me a treat or present when I've had a rough day.

♥  When the Lord touches my heart with truths from His Word!

And my kids?

Today I asked if they wanted raisins for a snack.  Reegan told me that she wanted to eat them from the bag, that it makes her heart happy!  So, I guess her simple pleasure would be eating raisins out of a bag!  SUCH a simple pleasure!!  Ha!!

Brennan's would probably be Spiderman!  Of course, what else?

And Karis?  Pizza, mac & cheese, cake & grapes!  Ha!  The girl likes her food!!

This and That

My friend D'Anna asked about my daily cleaning chart.  The best way for me to show you was to just take a picture.  This is for you D'Anna!!  It's pretty basic at this point and may be add to in time, but it's a good start for me!

And here is a view with my Ireland sheep magnet.  Ha!

You know, normally I wouldn't take a picture of my nasty floor, but I was so inspired by my blog friend, Kari, who was brave enough to make QUITE a post out of dust bunnies that I couldn't resist!  Take a look at her post.  I still laugh when I think of it!  Now, I'm not quite the writer or photographer, but my muffin crumb/playdough infested floors could be quite a match to her Dustbunius savagus.  Hee hee!!