Monday, November 28, 2011

Thanksgiving 2011

This year for Thanksgiving as with all the others we had much to be thankful for.  It's always unfortunate how sometimes it takes struggles to remind us of how blessed we are.  Nevertheless, I am thankful for the reminder.

I am thankful to have my husband home and with us (not deployed especially).  Also, I have known quite a few people who have lost their spouse this past year.  So it's wonderful to have him here with me.

I am thankful for my family (on both my side and Tom's side).  Even though we are an ocean apart, we are only a phone call or skype video call away thanks to technology!

I am thankful for my boys.  Even though they are more and more work every day that goes by, I love the hugs and kisses I get from them and the smiles the bring me.

I am thankful for our apartment.  Even though it's smaller than where we were in Colorado, this is way better than some of the other places we've seen on base.

I am thankful for the few new friends we've been making here in Germany, thankful for the old friends here in Germany and thankful for the friends we've been able to keep in touch with even though we are so far apart from them.

I am so thankful to have TWO vehicles again!  It's really chilly here in the mornings especially.

We had plenty of food on the table, fun crafts to make, even the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and we topped it off with a fun trip to IKEA at the end of the day.



Click here are a few pictures to see how we enjoyed the holiday... http://tomandroxannecook.shutterfly.com/

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Impact 2011 - Belgium Youth Retreat

In my previous post I said we've been busy, busy, busy.  One of the things in our lives that kept us a little extra busy was planning for and participating in Impact 2011.  This was a retreat for youth put on my the International Baptist Churches in Europe.  We attend one of those churches and attended a different one when we lived up in Ramstein.  We've kept in touch with our friend Jan Horak, who is the youth pastor at Faith Baptist in Ramstein so this is how we got roped into helping...just kidding...we were invited to help and loved helping!  Unfortunately, I was just getting over being sick with bronchitis and Tom was just getting sick when we were leaving.  So the whole weekend Tom wasn't feeling real well, so he didn't have as much fun as he could have, had he been well.  So Tom was in charge of the recreation time (games) and I was in charge of the food (for about 100 people).  There were many challenges during the weekend, but we did our best and came out happy to have gotten to enjoy the time away in Belgium in spite of the challenges.

Some of the highlights of the weekend...
-Gregory got to pretend to be a teenager for the weekend :-)
-Joshua got to hang out with mom A LOT in the kitchen
-Joshua also got to help make 7 cakes and 6 pans of bars before we left for Belgium
-Gregory got to help peel 48 apples for some of the applesauce we made at home to take to Belgium
-Got to see an old friend from a retreat about 4 years ago...when we had the same speaker
-Got to make new friends - had wonderful people to help in the kitchen (about 6 adults)
-Got to stay in an OLD Chateau...it was so crazy and beautiful there!
-Like I said Tom was sick, but he enjoyed using a megaphone, especially since he was so hoarse.
-Most importantly 8 youth committed their lives to Jesus Christ!

To see more pictures, go to our shutterfly website and to see even more pictures, listen to some of the messages and read some of the youth comments go to these websites:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/IBC-Youth-Impact-Fall-Retreat/199974680079930
https://www.facebook.com/events/179351518814328/
http://tomandroxannecook.shutterfly.com/

We've been busy...so let's catch up

As always, we've been busy...busy unpacking, packing and unpacking.  In the past three months we've taken four trips to Ramstein (2 hours away), one trip to Belgium and numerous trips to the grocery store :-) 

We've gone to Ramstein to visit our good friend's Jan, Ginger and kids, celebrated Tom's birthday, visited my other good friend (Jean and her two boys), had another good friend take some pictures of us at a castle for our Christmas pictures (Thanks Anna!), stopped through on our way to Belgium, and most recently for Tom's medical appointments. 


Of course there has been much unpacking of boxes going on in our house and last night we may have unpacked the last boxes (other than some large pictures).

The boys have had lots of fun playing, coloring, pretending and just being boys.  Joshua loves coloring.  Gregory loves legos.  Joshua loves being in the kitchen helping with dishes and making cakes and brownies.  Gregory loves dressing up like a doctor and says he wants to be a doctor like Uncle Bryan when he grows up. 

Here are a few recent pics.