One Year

Yes, yes, I know... it's been a while. But I'm still here, and still loving Estonia. Like many of you in the blog world, Facebook has stolen my affection, at least for now. I don't know if posting today will herald a comeback to the blog, or if it's just a fluke, but at any rate, here I am.

I chose today to write a post because today we have been in Estonia for ONE YEAR!! Time has really flown by for us. We really like it here and feel absolutely at home; no wonder time has gone by quickly. We feel so blessed to have been put here, even if it is for a short time. I have learned and experienced new things and have met new people, all of which will have a lasting effect on my life. But God's will, will have us moving along to our next mission in life very soon. We will be returning to our country of origin and after having been gone for so long we are wondering if we might not experience culture shock! I'm sure my husband and I will be just fine but our kids will have a few adjustments to make. My son left America when he was 4 months old and when we return he will be 6 1/2 years, so everything will be new to him. He has asked me if they speak English there, and I don't think he can tell the difference between Yen, Shekels, Kroons, and Dollars, but we'll figure all that out too. I'm so very thankful that everyone in our family is a lover of travel and even moving, so there have been no very few complaints in this house.

I'm sure the next couple of months will keep me very busy with moving (and vacationing!), but I will try to post again soon!

Bowling

My children never cease to amaze me with their creativity. If you followed my blog in its infancy you'll remember many examples of this. This creativity never shown through more than when we lived in Jerusalem. We were restricted about how much we could do outside of our home and we had no one to socialize with, so we had to think of ways to keep ourselves entertained. It was especially bad when we had first moved because we didn't have any of our belongings yet. I remember one day when I heard my then 3 year old son squeal with delight after he had found a rubber band on the floor. He was so excited to have a TOY to play with! One day, after twiddling our thumbs became boring, my kids came up with a makeshift game of bowling. They used some empty water bottles for the pins, and since we didn't have a ball, we squished up a piece of aluminum foil into a sphere. We had fun with this for hours....


I was reminded of this yesterday when my children brought me outside to look at their new game....


We now have plenty of toys and plenty of friends, but they still love making up their own entertainment. I love this about them :o)

English Holiday

Okay, after this I am resigned to stop acknowledging my absences from blogging. Just expect some delay between posts. ;o)

Our family had an excellent summer; one of the best I can remember. I can hardly believe that it's over; okay, not technically over, but starting school seems to determine the changes in season more than the weather and calendar. This autumn looks like it will be extremely busy in our household, but we hope to enjoy our last several months here in Tallinn. I know we're going to miss it here so much! But I'm not going to think about that now. Let's talk about more pleasant things..... like, the title of this post. That's right, we finally made it to England!

If you've read my blog for any length of time you'll remember (I hope) that I was hoping to visit England some time while we were living in Europe. Well, God allowed it to happen, and of course, it was wonderful!

My husband had a conference to attend for his work, so his employer was paying for him to fly to England and back, as well as paying for his accommodations during the conference. This was the perfect time for our trip, since we'd only have to pay for 3 tickets instead of 4. Plus, we were allowed to stay in his (free) hotel! The first week we were there my husband had to attend meetings for his conference, but the kids and I stayed busy with shopping, bowling, etc. But the second week was when our "real" vacation began. We moved to a hotel in Surrey (southwest of London), rented a car, and explored!

I won't bother posting too many pictures. Most of them have our family in them, and the others are things you've probably seen pictures of before, like the Tower Bridge in London....


or Big Ben....


Buckingham Palace....


Stonehenge....
and the Roman Baths....

We also went to an open air museum near Chichester that was having a kids' day. There were all sorts of hands-on activities for the children to do. One of them was a Victorian era school that they were able to take a "class" in. They were given little costumes and their teacher taught them a whole lesson from "1895"; even opening with PRAYER! (do you see my son?)....


Sightseeing in England was great. We really enjoyed ourselves and loved the English castles....
and countryside....


But the best part by far was the people. To be specific, my FAMILY! If you'll remember, my mother is British and all of her family still lives in England. There's always been a pesky ocean between us, but we finally found ourselves on the same continent. We stayed at a hotel that was only a few miles away from my Grandad's home. I was impressed when we got to our room, "Wow, they've put fresh flowers here for us!" But after reading the card I found that they were from my Grandad, how sweet!.... (I realize the picture isn't great, but trust me, they were beautiful!)

I was very nervous meeting my family for the first time....

But we got along wonderfully and it was so nice getting to know each other and learning so many interesting stories! My aunt came from Lancashire (northern England) to meet us as well and she was so loving and sweet, you couldn't help but like her immediately. We spent as much time with my family as we could and we loved every minute of it. We have their promises that they will come to see us in America some time soon, and we are so looking forward to that.

Great News!

I know, I know, I've been pretty absent around here lately. Sorry about that. We've been busy enjoying the summer and planning for an upcoming vacation, so the blog has been put on the back burner. I do have some exciting news to share though. I better give a little background so you all will understand.

When I was growing up my family was friends with another family who had a son my age. Since we were always around each other we became good friends. A lot of my memories from age 8 and up have something to do with him. We even went to the same Catholic church together. My family moved away when I was 14, but we were reunited a few years later by some strange circumstances. His father passed away and his mother and my dad got married when I was 17. He came to live in my house and now all of a sudden was not just my friend but my brother. The marriage only lasted about 4 years though and before I was really even used to the idea of a step-family, it was over. The divorce was not a pleasant one (are they ever?) and between that and the fact that we were then both adults and out of the house, my friend and I lost touch. That has been about 9 years ago. This past week I was able to finally find my friend on Facebook, after years of searching for him. I just received a message from him, filling me in on what his life has been like this past decade or so. (this is where the great news comes in....)
This last October my old friend/ ex-step-brother, was gloriously SAVED by the precious blood of Jesus Christ! It is SO THRILLING to know that I have one more loved one to look forward to seeing in Heaven. Praise the LORD!

Open Air Museum

Last weekend we took advantage of the beautiful summer weather we've been having and decided to visit Estonia's Open Air Museum. Many countries, and even U.S. states, have something similar... a little "village" of old houses, schools, barns, etc. We had so much fun visiting this one; here's a little bit of what we saw.....

The first set of houses we came to had a gathering of people in costume outside of it, so we knew something exciting was about to happen. And we were right....
It turns out that only 2 days a week, once a day, these people perform Estonian folk-dancing. We had no idea that this would be going on, the Lord just led us here at the perfect time to see it. Here is a video of just a little bit of the dancing....



I loved this one because these two cute little girls were in the dance; they are so adorable....

They even asked my husband and son to join in the dances. Here is the lady thanking my son for the dance.... (I blurred his face)
There were many interesting buildings to look at, such as a summer kitchen....
Barns and wells....
A church....
And a school....
Some interesting things inside of the houses too like an old kettle with "temperature control". Very interesting design, but I'm thankful for my knobs and dials....
I'm assuming this is an attempt at keeping your child contained, like a walker.... (In case you can't tell, it's just a hole in a table with the "child" put inside)
The decorations in this pantry reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I don't remember which book she talked about it, but they would make pretty shelf liners out of paper; I imagine they looked something like these....
My favorite sights though were the people. They were sitting out in front of the buildings doing different types of handicrafts; some of them for sale. Like this older lady crocheting, and of course the precious little girl beside her....
This lady was spinning wool....
And this sweet lady was making crafts out of what looked like wheat....

We had a really wonderful time. I hope you enjoy the pictures and video and can get a little feel for what it was like :o)

Medieval Estonia

We've been able to do a little sightseeing the past few days and I snapped some pictures to share.

On Wednesday we went to the Museum of Estonian Struggle for Liberty. Right away we were taken with this old bridge leading into the museum area....
The man who operates this museum has collected at least a dozen tanks and other military vehicles from Estonia's history. Several of them are still running and being used!....
Here my kids are just looking at the tank, but soon after they were climbing on it and exploring.

The curator of the museum told us that the missile in this next photo was on display in a museum in Tallinn. He approached the owners and asked if he could purchase it, but they refused to sell it to him. He said that he studied the rotation of their guards and one night came and stole the missile and brought it here. Not sure if that's true or not, but after listening to him for a while, it doesn't sound too far-fetched....
On the property was also a house that belonged to the first Estonian president's brother. Inside was jam-packed full of Estonian history. Pictures, documents, books, uniforms, weapons, ammunition, etc. My husband was intrigued by this next item and made me take a picture. It's a torture chair used by the KGB during WWII. It even has bullet holes in it....
A while back there was a ceremony at the museum where representatives from many different countries came and planted trees. I thought it was interesting that the tree planted by the American ambassador was quite a bit taller than all the others....

On Friday we went into Tallinn's Old Town to visit their Medieval Days celebration. It wasn't as great as I was hoping it would be, but we did see a few fun things. We got to watch an archery contest....
And then afterwards they allowed children to try on all sorts of fun medieval-wear....
This is my son, ready to do battle. The kids had fun having "sword fights" and "jousting" with each other.

In the center of town there were many people selling their handicrafts. Here's one view of a couple of vendors all dressed up....
We enjoyed watching this lady weaving. She and her husband made bases out of wood, drilled small holes around the upper edges and then the wife did basket weaving all around the top. She had many different designs and they were all very pretty (I brought a couple home with me ;)....
We are really enjoying this summer in Estonia. It's too bad that the warm weather will be gone in only a few short weeks. We'll try to soak up as much as we can while it's here!

Birthdays

This past weekend was a busy one, with two birthdays to celebrate. My daughter's on the 3rd, and our country's on the 4th. On the 3rd we took our daughter to the zoo here in Tallinn. It's not the largest, or nicest zoo we've been to, but it was still enjoyable. It only cost $16 for all four of us to get in, so we didn't feel cheated when it began to rain and we had to leave early. We got a few pictures before the rain started; sorry I can't show them here.
On the 4th of July we did have lots of fun, but not in a traditional Independence Day sort of way. We attended the Estonian Song Festival, with singers from all over the country coming together to sing in one choir. Those involved began the day with a parade, walking from the center of town to the Song Festival grounds. The processions began at 2:00 and didn't end until 7:45! There were SO MANY participants!! Here's just one shot of the parade....
We walked, and walked, and walked some more until we got to the place where we could set up camp on the grass to watch the performance. We had to wait about 4 hours before everything got started, but there were plenty of merchants there selling their wares and food, so we had enough things to occupy our time. Finally, the singers filed into their places and the concert began. There were almost 25,000 people in this choir!!!....
You'll really have to click on the picture to enlarge to get the full effect. Sorry it's a little dark, I guess I should have had my flash on.
You might also be able to tell from the picture that it began raining on us. We had rain coats on, but considering that we still had to walk several miles to get home, we decided to leave early. It was a great experience though, and we're glad that we went. My friend Penny tells the story of the day much better than I did, if you'd like to go read her account.
Tallinn will be having their Medieval Days this weekend and we hope to attend at least one day. Hopefully I'll have more pictures for you soon!