I think we may have a winner!

This may be a long post so beware. I missed yesterday so not only do I have to journal about the weekend but Mon and Tues as well. LOL

Well... the weekend was awesome. I wasn't able to participate much but the few things I did were wonderful and the times Isabella slept and I couldn't go far, I took time to read my book and magazine and was challenged more than I have space to share. Anyway... I wish I could show the video that Brian put together for our 'Ash' service. It was simple yet powerful and made me think about the meaning of ashes. Having them put on your head signifies your repentance before God and Ash Wednesday is a day to contemplate your sins and mourn over them. So often we just say.. "Okay God, I'm sorry. Please forgive me." without really taking the time to think about what we've done and therefore often repeat those sins. This service forced us to take time to mourn over our sins which was something I've never really done before but was so awesome to experience. The sunrise service was great although it was so cloudy we couldn't actually see the sun rise. LOL It was awesome to sing praises to God and to take time to focus on His death and celebrate His resurrection. Our students seemed to enjoy themselves but didn't quite understand all that we did. That's okay though because we know they will continue to think about it. An awesome thing that came out of this retreat is that one of our students, who was actually made to come, was excited to talk about doing our own youth group retreat. We have been trying to get her involved without luck but it seems that maybe we've had a breakthrough!

We all crashed and slept most of Sunday afternoon and just relaxed into Monday. We met Sammy, our real-estate agent, Monday afternoon to see some flats and I think we have a winner! It has most of the qualities we were looking for and on top of that a VERY western OVEN! It's very spacious, with big windows, 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. It's a smaller and little older complex but our neighbors below us have grass! We won't have our own but to even see grass here is amazing so we will certainly enjoy the treat! Now we just have to wait and pray that someone will take our flat by the 1st of June.

Our flat would be the empty one on the left... first floor but it's actually the second.. I just couldn't get the whole building in the pic.

Today I wore Isabella out! We were outside pretty much all day and if you've seen her in action, you know she keeps busy crawling and climbing everywhere. At our second playground we met a girl named Min Ju (have no idea if this is the correct spelling but it's how you would say it). She is Korean, temporarily living in HK, 4yrs old and speaks wonderful English. She kept Isabella busy for over an hour and she was quite the talker. It was so much fun playing with her and watching her care for Isabella. She asked me to please bring her back often to that playground because she lived right next to it and wanted to see her grow up. I also met another little boy who was a little over one but no one in the family spoke English. Those interactions are always harder because I never know what to say but he must have liked me because he gave me several big hugs. Made me smile.

So after a busy day crawling around, Isabella was quite dirty so a bath was in order. We put bubbles in and gave her a bubble tiara as you can see in the photo. She went down without a peep. Hopefully that means she'll be out until late tomorrow! LOL! Now I'm busy working on her birthday plans. I can't believe my baby is turning 1!



I'll have to post a few of the things from my book that really stuck out to me another day but I will leave you with two quotes to think about...

"You have to open your mouth and say what you want. Your husband is not telepathic."
"We do things in spite of, not because of."